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 doesn't spread across the Atlantic, the industry needs impartial "consumer advocates" to speak on its behalf. In Foreman and the Federation, they have a winner. Foreman believes that "agricultural biotechnology has the potential to provide enormous benefits to society." But she realizes that American consumers are "skeptical, even cynical, with regard to the benefits of genetically engineered foods." When it comes to food risks, "the population tends to be extremely risk averse and not always rational about food." But she wants biotech foods on the market, and the only question is how to get it. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, she has organized a project with the Federation, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union and the Center for Science in the Public Interest to "develop an optimum regulatory regime" to ensure the safety of genetically engineered foods. The project has hired a University of Texas Law Professor, Thomas O. McGarity, to draft legislation. Foreman is skittish on the question of mandatory labeling of genetically engineered products. She has refused to support legislation currently pending in Congress that would require mandatory labeling. Other major consumer groups have endorsed the legislation. "She knows the bills are out there," said Richard Caplan of USPIRG. "We think it is the correct consumer position to endorse those bills, and it is frustrating that the Consumer Federation of America has not endorsed these bills." One reason Foreman might be reluctant -- mandatory labeling could dramatically reduce the market for genetically engineered foods. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on April 30 that Japanese importers and manufacturers of many common food products -- like tofu, miso and canned corn -- are almost certain to switch to non-genetically engineered ingredients if they're forced to label. "I don't think anybody will label containers genetically modified," James Echle, the director of the Tokyo office of the American Soybean Association, told the Star-Tribune. "It's like putting a skull and crossbones on your product." Foreman's industry connections are indicative of a growing problem within the Federation: corporate influence. Next week, for example, CFA will give its annual public service award to Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York), friend of Wall Street, and hardly a consumer champion. And the Federation's executive director, Stephen Brobeck, estimates that as much as 10 percent of the group's $3.1 million budget comes from corporate donors. Stauber points out that at a recent conference on food policy sponsored by the Federation in Washington, D.C., most of the participants came from the agribusiness and biotech industry. Underwriters, benefactors, sponsors and patrons included the Food Marketing Institute, Archer Daniels Midland, IBP, Inc., Unilever, Tropicana -- the heavy hitters of agribusiness. Brobeck says that when Foreman joined Consumer Federation of America, "she completely severed any ties with Monsanto." "Just for appearances sake, we have decided that Monsanto cannot contribute in anyway to CFA," he told us. "They can't come to the dinner. They can't come to consumer assembly. There is no contact between CFA and Monsanto." "When she was a lobbyist, Carol did not do work on biotech for Monsanto," Brobeck says. "She only worked on rBGH for them." (But Stauber correctly counters out that "there has been no bigger biotech issue than genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.") As for corporate funding of the Federation, Brobeck says he's concerned about the perception of corporate influence and as a result, CFA doesn't take direct contributions from corporations or industry groups. "But there is a gray area, and we do sell tables at events to corporations," he says. "We will accept payment on a project for research or education as long as we control the final product," he says. "But the general litmus test is this -- would we be embarrassed if the facts were printed on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times?" Brobeck says. A test that, in a culture awash in corporate influence, allows for all kinds of shenanigans without shame. After all, a former Monsanto lobbyist is now working the same issues as a consumer advocate for one of the nation's premiere consumer groups. If that is not too embarrassing, what is? 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, 20 Jun 2000 14:16:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 14:16:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Big Ideas on Corporate Accountability and Global Sustainability Big Ideas on Corporate Accountability and Global Sustainability By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Sometimes, it is important to think big. In an era where corporations trample across the globe with minimal restraint, and citizen movements around the world are on their heels, it is natural -- and necessary -- for those trying to check corporate power to think defensively and, when they do reflect on affirmative proposals, incrementally. But it is important not to be overly constrained by the existing balance of forces. If they are to engage, energize and mobilize large numbers of people, citizen movements need to be animated by positive visions, as well. And while there is a role for utopian outlines in suggesting what society could be, even more important are concrete medium-term proposals that suggest attainable aspirations and purposeful direction. One would not ordinarily look to the U.S. Congress for such ideas, but two members of the U.S. House of Representatives have stepped forward to offer sweeping proposals to regulate U.S.-based multinational corporations' global operations and to reorient the global economy to the pursuit of sustainable development, not corporate greed. Representative Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, has introduced the Corporate Code of Conduct Act (H.R. 4596, at ) and Representative Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has introduced the Global Sustainable Development Resolution (H.Res 479, at ). "It is time we reclaim the global economy for the people who make it work," insists McKinney, "and stop pandering to corporate interests who build their empires on the backs of the innocent." "Corporate globalization is forcing men and women around the world to run a destructive race to the bottom -- a competition in which workers, communities and entire countries are forced to cut wages, environmental protections, and social programs to attract footloose capital," says Sanders. To address these ills, McKinney's bill would require all U.S.-based corporations with more than 20 employees abroad to enact a code of conduct. Significantly, the code also would apply to the companies' subsidiaries, subcontractors, affiliates, joint ventures, partners, or licensees -- meaning companies like Nike would not be able to disdain responsibility for the practices of their subcontractors. The code would establish a floor for corporate behavior, requiring companies in their overseas operations to: * pay a living wage and ban specific practices, such as mandatory overtime for workers under 18, pregnancy testing and retaliation against whistleblowers; * respect identified international labor standards (including the right to organize, minimum wage guarantees and protections for occupational safety and health); * adhere to both international environmental standards and U.S. federal environmental laws and regulations; * provide public documentation of where they are doing business directly or through subsidiaries or contractors, and extensive information on employment and environmental practices. The bill would enforce the code of conduct through two mechanisms. First, the U.S. government would give preference to complying corporations in contracts and in export assistance. The bill would include certification and reporting requirements for companies, and would also establish an investigative process, open to citizen initiation, to determine compliance. Second, victims of violations of the bill -- including non-U.S. citizens -- would be empowered to sue U.S. companies in U.S. courts. The Sanders resolution covers more territory than the McKinney bill. It too includes a corporate code of conduct, to be negotiated internationally, that contains many of the principles included in the McKinney bill. But the heart of the Sanders resolution addresses the institutions regulating international commerce. One of the key mechanisms for developing its proposals is the creation of U.S. and United Nations Commissions on the Global Economy. The U.S. commission would hold town meetings and open hearings around the country to investigate the effect of globalization on the workers, industry and environment of the United States. The UN panel would both encourage other nations to hold their own series of town meetings and would initiate a global North-South dialogue aiming for negotiation of an international agreement for global sustainable development. The provisions that the Sanders resolution seeks to have enacted through global negotiation or U.S. mandate include: * a tax on international currency transactions, designed to stem financial volatility; * creation of a global investment fund, to heighten demand and meet pressing needs in developing countries; * cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries, with no structural adjustment conditions (the package of Contract with America-style deregulatiory conditions) attached; * a remaking of the World Bank, so that it ends support for destructive megaprojects and instead supports development of poor countries' renewable energy capacity and food security; * a shrinking of the International Monetary Fund; and * trade agreements that "remove labor and environmental rights and conditions and social protections as factors of competition, such as by international agreements to avoid competitive cuts in the social safety nets" and guarantee "the right of nations and localities to plan for local economic development objectives such as raising employment levels, enhancing employment opportunities for targeted populations, raising wage levels in specific industries, dignified work and healthy communities." Neither the McKinney bill nor the Sanders resolution will be enacted any time soon. "This Congress is too beholden to corporate money to challenge its corporate masters," explains Sanders. Only stronger grassroots movements offer the prospect of changing Congress's primary allegiance. The importance of initiatives like McKinney's and Sanders' is that, by offering concrete proposals of steps to a better future, they can help generate and develop those movements. 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, 28 Jun 2000 19:40:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 19:40:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Cop Killer Cop Killer By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Cop killer. No, we are not talking about Mumia Abu-Jamal. After a trial that the National Journal's Stuart Taylor called "grotesquely unfair" and that included "fabricated evidence," Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer. He now sits on death row. We are talking about alleged cop killer Stuart Charles Alexander. If convicted, will Alexander end up on death row? Not likely. That's because Abu-Jamal is black, while Alexander is white. Abu-Jamal is a journalist, Alexander is a businessman. Last week, Alexander, who owns a sausage factory in San Leandro, California, allegedly shot and killed two federal meat inspectors and one state meat inspector who were visiting his factory. According to news reports, after killing the three inspectors, Alexander chased a fourth inspector for a couple of blocks down the street, took one shot and missed. He then returned to his sausage factory, walked inside, fired some more shots, went outside and surrendered to police without resistance. A videotape from a security camera inside Alexander's Santos Linguisa sausage factory "clearly depicts" Alexander killing the three meat inspectors, San Leandro police told reporters last week. Alexander and one of the inspectors each placed a call for help to local police minutes before the shootings. State officials charged Alexander with three counts of murder. Federal officials charged Alexander with two counts of murder -- two of the federal inspectors worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to news accounts, meat inspectors closed the facility in January for not properly heating sausage that was labeled as fully cooked and for not using expiration dates on meat. The inspectors shut down the facility in January after Alexander refused to comply with the law. The plant was reopened earlier this month. A sign outside Alexander's sausage factory read: "To all of our great customers, the USDA is coming into our plant harassing my employees and me, making it impossible to make our great product. Gee, if all meat plants could be in business for 79 years without one complaint, the meat inspectors would not have jobs. Therefore we are taking legal action against them." Nowhere in any of the more than 60 articles that have appeared about Alexander's killings have the words "cop killer" appeared. Yet, when referring to Abu-Jamal, news reporters feel obliged to refer to him as "cop killer" as if it were his newly adopted name, as when the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year headlined an article: "Antioch College Invites Cop-Killer as Commencement Speaker." Every day in this country, meat inspectors and other law enforcement officials are cracking down on corporate crime and violence. And every day, they meet resistance, harassment and threats from corporate executives indoctrinated in a radical, reckless, and lawless political ideology. "There is a great deal of friction and turmoil on the front lines of federal meat inspectors," said Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. "The deaths of the three meat inspectors was senseless -- they were killed trying to protect consumers." Recent surveys indicate that corporate crime and violence is on the uptick. According to a survey released earlier this year by KPMG's Integrity Management Services unit, employees are observing a high level of serious illegal and unethical conduct on the job, workers perceive management as unable or unwilling to deal with unethical conduct, and employees are discouraged from reporting unethical conduct. And earlier this month, a survey by the National White Collar Crime Center found that one in three American households are now the victim of white collar crime and that there is growing public concern with the seriousness of white collar crime and the criminal justice system's ability to control it. Neither of these surveys was reported in the mainstream corporate media. Nor did the mainstream corporate media report on a survey conducted by former Washington Post reporter Morton Mintz and published this month in Nieman Reports. Mintz's survey found that corporate newspaper editorial writers rarely condemn corporate crime and other wrongdoing. He surveyed 124 leading editorial writers, columnists, and commentators about what they had said about egregious corporate behavior during the ten years ending December 1998. Mintz concluded from the responses he received, and from the large number of writers who failed to respond to his inquiry, that "it's fair to say that it's a rare day in 3,650 days when the national media expose Americans to opinions on corporate wrongdoing." Political, corporate, and media elites have little time for and little respect for the victims of corporate crime and violence. They will rant and rave about Abu-Jamal, but hardly give the time of day to Alexander and his rampage. It's time that we begin to give a little respect to those who put their lives on the line to protect us against the ravages of the corporate criminals. Call your local newspaper editorial offices and urge them to take a strong stance against corporate crime. Support your local corporate crime police. Condemn corporate brutality. 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, 3 Jul 2000 21:03:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 21:03:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Time to Cap Big Oil's Profit Gusher Time to Cap Big Oil's Profit Gusher Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The startling concentration of economic power that has resulted from the U.S. merger wave of the last several years is going to require new levels of government intervention in the marketplace. Either the federal and state governments will act to break up monopolistic and oligopolistic corporations, or government agencies will assume regulatory authority of a kind largely abandoned in the United States, or consumers will be gouged and innovation stifled. Case in point: the oil industry and skyrocketing gasoline prices -- now over $2.00 gallon in parts of the Midwest. Vigorous antitrust enforcement may be preferable to government regulation. But government regulation of industry is certainly preferable to industry regulation of consumers and the marketplace. A year and a half ago, when Exxon and Mobil merged in an effective effort to begin restoration of John Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the conventional wisdom was that the merger would not affect gas prices. "The change in the structure of the industry is such that the trend toward lower gasoline prices and more efficient distribution of gasoline is well underway and this is not going to stop it," one analyst said to National Public Radio in a typical remark of the day. The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel went so far as to say that predictions that the Exxon-Mobil merger would increase prices were "delusional." Now, conventional wisdom is rapidly changing. With oil prices skyrocketing nationwide, prices spiking in the Midwest and industry profits reaching stratospheric heights, even the Clinton administration has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the oil industry is illegally colluding to raise prices. The oil industry, as always, has a series of rationalizations for the sudden jump in gas prices. OPEC has cut production and world prices have risen, say industry representatives, even as global demand is increasing. That's true, but it does not account either for the unique price spike in the Midwest, nor for the surge in industry profits. New requirements to sell cleaner-burning gasoline have boosted prices, the industry complains, and led to special difficulties in the Midwest, where refiners use ethanol instead of alternative blending components. That's true, but the Environmental Protection Agency -- noting that the oil industry has had six years to prepare itself for the implementation of cleaner fuel standards that the industry helped negotiate -- says the cleaner-burning gas should only cost 4 to 7 cents more per gallon. The industry also complains that a Unocal patent on a means to formulate cleaner-burning gas has impeded the use of the most efficient gasoline formulation techniques. That may be, but it doesn't begin to account for the huge price increases, the price spike in the Midwest, or the industry's outsized profits. It is hard to escape the conclusion that some significant part of the story involves industry profiteering -- with the oil giants using the input cost increases from OPEC and the reformulated gasoline standards as cover to pile on additional charges. Whether these extra charges were the product of collusive agreements or "conscious parallelism" can only be determined through an investigation that involves close questioning of key industry executives and careful review of industry documents. Either way, the profiteering is a product of industry concentration. Fewer industry leaders (and there certainly are fewer, following the recent mergers of Exxon and Mobil, BP and Amoco and BP Amoco and ARCO) make price-fixing much easier, whether done through overt and illegal agreement or follow-the-leader pricing without illegal collusion. There may be legitimate public policy rationales for raising gas prices -- notably, to spur conservation -- but if so, such price increases should be government mandated, with revenues used for appropriate public purposes. They should not be the result of industry rip-offs and profiteering. Absent government initiative to bust up the oil trust, these kinds of price increases are bound to continue haunting the United States -- unless the government chooses to regulate Big Oil. The first and most pressing need is for a windfall profits tax, to put an end to the industry's gain from consumer's pain due to OPEC and other input cost increases. A second and relatively modest step would involve the issuance of a compulsory license to require Unocal to let competitors use its clean-burning gas patent. A patent monopoly cannot be permitted to block implementation of effective technologies to clean the environment. Representatives Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, John Baldacci, D-Maine, Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, and Tom Barrett, D-Wisconsin, have introduced legislation to make this possible. Finally, it is time to think seriously about price controls. Richard Nixon did. The oil giants clearly do not have complete control over gas prices, but they do have the ability to set prices above competitive rates. Why should industry regulate the market instead of democratic government authorities? There are many needed measures on the demand side -- to increase energy efficiency and facilitate a rapid transition to solar and other clean energy alternatives -- but these are not a short-term solutions. Only direct government regulation will stop the oil oligopoly from persisting in its price gouging. 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, 11 Jul 2000 12:34:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 12:34:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Fronting for Big Coal Fronting for Big Coal By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman So, we're sitting in our office, and under the door comes a note advising us that there will be a press conference the next day where African-American and Hispanic groups will release a report showing how minority populations will suffer most if the United Nations Global Warming Treaty (Kyoto agreement) passes the U.S. Senate. The press conference was being pulled together by Advantage Communications Consultants, a public relations firm in Houston, and coordinated by a group called the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED). A simple check tells us that CEED is a coal industry front group. Of course, the coal industry has a lot to lose if the United States moves away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources, like solar. But nothing in the press materials tells us that this is a coal industry event. So we decide to go to the press conference and play along. And it's a slow news day, so when we arrive, there are many reporters attending the press briefing, including reporters from the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times. C-SPAN's camera is there to beam the press conference out live. And the moderator, Linda Brown, from the Houston public relations firm, makes her opening statement, saying Blacks and Hispanics are left out of the national policy debate on global warming. We are told that six Black and Hispanic groups, including the AFL-CIO's A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, are releasing a report. The report finds that "millions of blacks, Hispanics and other minorities could be pushed into poverty by tough new restrictions on energy use" called for by the Kyoto treaty. If ratified, the treaty would require reductions in carbon dioxin emissions from burning fossil fuels. A video is shown. And then the leaders of the Black and Hispanic groups present lay out the chief findings of the study -- that America's minority community would be hardest hit by a recession triggered by the Kyoto treaty, that the treaty would put more than one million Black and Hispanic worker jobs at risk, that higher unemployment, reduced earning power, and higher prices for energy and other consumer goods would push millions of people of color into poverty. So, now we're almost an hour into the press conference, and not one mention is made of the coal industry's involvement with the study -- a salient factoid if there ever was one in the context of this press conference. We're sitting in the press area, and next to us is sitting Stephen Miller, the president of CEED, the coal front group. So, we point out that CEED is a corporate front group. And we wanted to know -- did the coal industry pay for this report? Yes, the coal industry paid $40,000 for the report, Miller admits. And Harry Alford, of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, said that his organization has received checks from Texaco and General Motors and others, but "that money has nothing to do with what we are doing here today." "I take offense at your thinking that our groups are here because someone gave us a check to say something," Alford said. "So, I'm a little insulted. And I do think the question is racial." Lionel Hurst appeared insulted, too. By Alford. Hurst is the Ambassador to the United States from Antigua and Barbuda. Tipped off to the press conference, Hurst attended and confronted Alford. He pointed out that people of color communities around the world are already suffering unduly from the impacts of global warming. "Failure to act internationally on global warming will pose the greatest costs to the most vulnerable nations of the world due to sea level rise and the spread of infectious diseases in a warmer world," Hurst said. Also offended were the African-American activists who for years have been working on the question of polluting industries dumping on minority communities. These activists, including Dr. Joseph Lowrey of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Connie Tucker of the Southern Organizing Committee, sent a letter to all members of Congress, pointing out that the risks to minority communities from global warming "are much greater than the dangers from the Kyoto Protocol that appear in the biased predictions of the coal lobby." In the letter, the activists pointed out that asthma death rates are two times higher for Blacks than for Whites and that a recent national assessment of the regional impacts of global warming on the United States found that higher temperatures, coupled with air pollution in minority neighborhoods, would further aggravate asthma problems. And the coal industry study ignored the substantial long-term economic benefits of mitigating global warming. These arguments didn't faze Oscar Sanchez, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, which represents 1.5 million Hispanic members of the AFL-CIO. He defended his group's participation in the coal industry-funded event and laid down a slippery slope philosophy familiar to public interest groups throughout the city co-opted by big business money. "We had a story to tell and we found a way of doing it," Sanchez told reporters during the press conference. "We found a sponsor. It's not uncommon. It's not like it's something that never happened before." 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, 18 Jul 2000 15:49:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 15:49:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] A Civics Lesson for Big Tobacco A Civics Lesson For Big Tobacco By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The $145 billion punitive damage award against the tobacco industry in the Engle case in Florida should be celebrated as evidence of a civil justice system that works, proof of the value of juries and a major public health achievement. And the nation should be saying to the Engle jury, "Thank you. Thank you for making the system work. Thank you for delivering a civics lesson to us all " Lesson No. 1: Lives should matter more than profits. "For them -- Big Tobacco -- this trial was about money," jury foreman Leighton Finegan, an assistant principal at a Miami-Dade elementary school, told reporters. "For us, it was about people's lives." Finegan denounced Philip Morris attorney Dan Webb for saying a large punitives award would be "a death warrant" for the industry. "He ignored the death warrant on the millions of lives of people [the tobacco industry] lied about," Finegan said. Lesson No. 2: Corporations that engage in fraud and deceit, with deadly consequences, should be held accountable. "We want this message loud and clear: We will not tolerate fraud and misrepresentation," Finegan said. "They belittled or denied causation of the health effects of smoking and addiction, and had the gall to challenge public health authorities." Lesson No. 3: Punitive damages are a form of punishment -- they have to be sufficiently large to make defendants take notice. "We had a sense of mission," Finegan said to journalists. "And we did not want to ignore the tremendous devastation that the product has caused. The number had to match that. It had to be significant." Lesson No. 4: The importance of punitive damages is their very uncertainty -- they make it harder for corporations to calculate their liability and engage in "rational" decisions to harm the public. The jury thought the size of the verdict "would put the companies on notice -- not just the tobacco companies, all companies -- concerning fraud or misrepresentation of the American public," Finegan said. These basic lessons have been obscured by a nimble public relations effort by Big Tobacco, and its proxies, to spin media coverage and public interpretation of the verdict. The jury's award would throw the industry into bankruptcy, the tobacco lawyers tell the media. But a tobacco firm memorandum that we obtained candidly acknowledges that the verdict will not bankrupt the industry, and that Florida law requires the judge to lower the award if necessary to avoid such an outcome. The leading independent expert on tobacco pricing, MIT's Jeffrey Harris, points out that with substantial increases in price, Big Tobacco can increase its revenues by tens of billions of dollars a year. The industry is reluctant to raise cigarette prices to revenue-maximizing levels because it knows this will deter future smokers and diminish the overall number of smokers -- and thereby the industry's political influence. The decision is certain to be overturned, say the tobacco industry analysts on Wall Street, who have managed to convince investors not to abandon tobacco stocks. Anything is possible on appeal, of course, but the Florida Supreme Court has already declined to hear a challenge to the industry's central bone of contention (that Florida smokers should not be joined in a class, and instead should bring their cases on an individual basis). And why is it that the media turns to tobacco industry analysts -- who are heavily invested in tobacco stocks and have recently evolved into industry spokespeople -- for litigation predictions? Most dangerous is the line, subtly supported by the tobacco industry, that public policy should be made in Congress, not in the courts. Public policy is, and should be, made both in the legislative and judicial branches. In the case of tobacco, the nicotine-money-addicted Congress has failed for decades to do its job. We should celebrate that the Engle jury has done its job. Higher prices from the large award will cut smoking rates dramatically, and over the years save hundreds of thousands of lives. And the threat of future verdicts will prod the industry to engage in less severe misconduct. That is not to say that regulation isn't important. But just as litigation is no substitute for regulation, regulation is no substitute for litigation. In the coming months, the industry and its allies will almost surely propose a new legislative deal to trade regulatory concessions for litigation protections and immunities. The rejection of such an offer in 1997-1998 made possible the Engle verdict, and the offer should be dismissed again, this time out of hand. That is another of the civic lessons to be drawn from the Engle jury. As the tobacco control movement looks ahead, blocking another tobacco industry immunity proposal and focusing on the international operations of Big Tobacco will be two of the primary challenges ahead. 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, a corporate accountability group. 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, 25 Jul 2000 18:21:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:21:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Taken for a Ride Taken for a Ride By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The automobile companies are criminal outlaws. That's one conclusion you can easily come to after reading Jack Doyle's new book -- Taken for a Ride: Detroit's Big Three and the Politics of Pollution (Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 2000). Given the spectacular advances in clean automobile technology over the century, there is just no reason -- other than pure criminality -- why we have been forced to live and die today with gas-guzzling, polluting automobiles. In the late 1960s, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles had the same take and opened a grand jury investigation into the automobile industry for conspiring to defeat clean automobile technology. Rising out of the smog capital of the world, Justice Department attorneys wanted to indict the auto companies and their executives, for conspiring to ensure that the internal combustion engine would reign supreme over cleaner air devices -- and that thousands of Americans would be poisoned as a result. The auto industry knew that the case would be won in Washington, D.C., not Los Angeles, and hired Lloyd Cutler, who then was an aspiring corporate fix-it man. With Cutler's help, the grand jurors were dismissed, replaced by a spineless civil consent decree that had little impact -- as you can clearly see -- on our pollution and global warming woes. Clean air advocates, including Los Angeles City Attorney Kenneth Hahn, protested, to no avail. "The presidents of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler should be brought to trial right here in Los Angeles," Hahn wrote in 1968. "The big manufacturers all conspired. If one wouldn't put the devices on, the others wouldn't either. This case is the most important legal battle in the history of the air pollution fight." The foreman of the grand jury, Martin Walsbren, was quite angry over the Justice Department's sell-out to Cutler's gang. He told the Los Angeles Times that there was much more to the case than the consent decree suggested, but there wasn't much he could say "unless I wish to risk going to jail." Then California Congressman Phil Burton got a hold of the original Justice Department criminal memo in the case. The memo shows an auto industry conspiring to defeat pollution control equipment even while lying to public officials about how they were going all out to develop those technologies. This wasn't the industry's first run-in with criminal prosecutors. In the late 1940s, General Motors and a number of oil, chemical and tire companies were convicted for going around to the major cities and replacing clean, efficient inner city electric trolley systems with polluting diesel buses. This was perhaps the most egregious corporate crime in history. General Motors and the other convicted companies were fined $5,000. The executives were fined $1 each. There have been attempts to outlaw the internal combustion engine -- again to no avail, showing once again how corporate criminals have the ability to define the laws under which they live. Take the case of Nicholas Petris. Petris was a California state Senator. In 1969, Petris introduced legislation, SB 778, a bill that would prohibit the sale of all diesel- and gasoline-powered internal combustion engines in California by January 1, 1975. The auto industry thought Petris' bill was a joke. They all laughed at it. But the laughter stopped in July 1969, when the California Senate approved Petris' bill by a vote of 26-5 and sent it to the California Assembly. "People are demanding that we move rapidly to reverse this trend of polluting our air and water in the whole environment," said Petris upon passage of the bill. The auto industry straightened up and got serious. With future President and then California Governor Ronald Reagan threatening a veto, the industry laid down the law, and the bill died in the California assembly. Even before Nick Petris launched his attempt to ban the internal combustion engine, there was one Congressional attempt that came at the issue by way of public health. In 1957, Paul Schenck, R-Ohio, introduced a bill that would prohibit the sale of vehicles discharging hydrocarbons in levels found dangerous by the Surgeon General. "Here is a Republican from the Midwest introducing a bill that calls the Surgeon General to play a public health role," Doyle told us recently. "If this technology was found to be a threat to public health, then the Surgeon General would be empowered to prohibit the sale of the internal combustion engine." The bill never made it through Congress in that form. Still, it was a powerful statement at the time about the growing national concern over auto pollution. In 1959, President Eisenhower signed a modified Schenck Act. That law directed the Surgeon General to study the relationship between auto pollution and public health. California law now requires that 10 percent of a car company's fleet be zero emission vehicles by 2003. The inside betting is that, instead of meeting the challenge, the auto industry will work its will in Sacramento and defeat that 2003 standard. There are some, like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who believe that the automobile industry can be persuaded to mass produce a hyper car that can make it across our country on one tank of gas. Lovins was in Washington, D.C. recently, the guest of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, invited to make his pitch. But in his book, Doyle argues that for 50 years the companies have had the business opportunity to produce a clean car and they've blown it. "The automakers' own internal cost accounting, recall record and warranty repairs will show that they squandered billions while trying to convince Congress that clean air and better fuel economy were too expensive," Doyle says. Perhaps Lovins can persuade the stick in the mud auto executives to change their ways. But even Bill Ford, who has espoused an environmental vision for his family's auto company, was seen recently in Washington, D.C. lobbying against repeal of the loophole in fuel economy standards that lets Ford make millions on his Explorer, a beast of a sports utility vehicle with single digit gas mileage. What Doyle's book makes clear is that when it comes to Detroit, the carrot just doesn't work. Isn't it time to try a little stick? 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, 1 Aug 2000 15:21:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 15:21:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Killing Africa With Kindness Killing Africa with Kindness By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman With the announcement of a billion-dollar-a-year U.S. government loan program for African countries to buy AIDS drugs, the fight to deliver affordable drugs to people with HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world has entered its third phase. If the drug companies' current kill-them-with-kindness scheme fails, many of the more than 20 million people with HIV/AIDS in Africa may finally receive access to the treatments that could save their lives. In phase one of the dispute (Deny, Deny, Deny), the world's leading drug companies, through their pricing policies, simply refused treatment to people with HIV/AIDS in Africa. With per capita incomes in many developing countries at less than a dollar a day, people with HIV/AIDS were simply unable to pay the $12,000 a year or so required for the AIDS drugs cocktails that enable many or most people with HIV/AIDS in the United States to survive. If any developing country made noises about finding ways to provide the drugs more cheaply, the U.S. government -- operating at the behest of the big drug makers -- threatened trade sanctions and forced them to back down. In phase two (Who Me?), the U.S. government resigned from its bullying role. AIDS activists forced the Clinton administration to reformulate its policy, culminating in an announcement that the U.S. government would not challenge African countries' efforts to make generic AIDS drugs available to their people, so long as the countries complied with World Trade Organization rules. Now, in phase three, the industry and the Clinton administration are conspiring to kill Africans with kindness. Through the United Nations, the industry has offered to provide discounted AIDS drugs to Africa -- but at prices that remain wildly inflated over the cost of production, and far too high to be affordable by most Africans. Although no one seems to know exactly what those rates will be, many published reports suggest discounts will be in the 80 percent range. Such price levels almost surely will enable the pharmaceutical companies to continue to profiteer from drug sales. Then, last month -- in a move immediately denounced by a wide range of organizations working on drug access and debt issues, including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and the Health GAP coalition -- the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government agency, announced it would loan a billion dollars annually to African countries for the purchase of HIV/AIDS drugs. The high-interest Ex-Im loans would pile new debt obligations on African nations at a time when existing debt burdens are undermining the countries' ability to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, and when the AIDS epidemic is itself already undermining their economic capacity to make interest payments on foreign loans. The African countries' pain will be the drug manufacturers' gain. The Ex-Im loans are be used to buy drugs made by U.S. companies, apparently at the highly profitable "discount" level provided to the UN. Organizations like Doctors Without Borders believe that efficient procurement of generic drugs could drop the cost of HIV/AIDS medicines an additional 90 percent from the estimated drug industry "discounts." That would put the cost of combination HIV/AIDS drug therapies at approximately $200 per person per year. The most insidious aspect of the Ex-Im proposal is how it will work to preempt efforts by African and other developing nations to lower costs through purchases of generic versions of AIDS drugs As the New York Times reported, "It seems unlikely that Brazil, India or other nations that produce such drugs for home consumption would have the export financing available to help African nations buy the goods. The American loans, along with a recent commitment by the World Bank to provide at least $500 million to help African nations set up anti-AIDS initiatives, give added incentive to African nations to treat many of their AIDS cases with Western medicine." ("Western" medicine means expensive, brand-name drugs, as opposed to lower-cost generics.) But the momentum for African countries to buy generic versions of the drugs, or to acquire the technology to make their own generics, may be too great for the industry's killer-kindness ploy to succeed. Already, South Africa and Namibia have reportedly indicated their refusal to accept the Ex-Im loans, a welcome sign that African nations may be ready to take serious measures -- irrespective of the drug industry's or the U.S. government's desires -- to provide treatment to the horrifyingly large population with HIV/AIDS. 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, a corporate accountability group that is part of the Health GAP coalition. 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, 8 Aug 2000 00:52:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 00:52:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Rats in the Grain Rats in the Grain By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman What is Attorney General Janet Reno trying to hide? A lot. In part, that's the nature of being in law enforcement. You don't want to tip off the criminal element, so you play things close to the vest. The less said the better. But in part, Reno is proficient at dodging legitimate questions that have nothing to do with ongoing criminal investigations. Yes, she has held a weekly press conference since she came into office. But despite hundreds of questions that she has fielded over the years at her weekly press briefing, she has given few substantive answers. It's either "can't talk about that -- it's under investigation" or "get back to me later," or one of a dozen or so other put offs that now come naturally to the Attorney General. She even smiles when she does this -- and what's a reporter to say? A couple of weeks ago, we attended Reno's press briefing to ask her about a new book -- Rats in the Grain: The Dirty Tricks and Trials of Archer Daniels Midland, The Supermarket to the World, by James Lieber (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 2000). Lieber, a Pittsburgh-based labor lawyer, documents the federal government's criminal case against ADM and some of its top executives for price-fixing. The criminal prosecution would never have been launched had it not been for Mark Whitacre, the former ADM vice president who agreed to become a mole for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and be wired. As a result of Whitacre's work, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes documenting executives from around the world fixing the price of lysine, a feed additive. In October 1996, ADM pled guilty to antitrust crimes and was fined $100 million. Senior vice presidents Michael Andreas, the son of Chairman Dwayne, and Terrence Wilson were convicted of antitrust crimes in 1999 after a trial in federal court in Chicago. They were sentenced to three years in prison each. Mark Whitacre was charged with accepting millions of dollars in off-the-books payments from ADM -- in effect, stealing from the company. Whitacre pled guilty and was packed off to prison for nine years. Lieber details the investigation and prosecution of the corporate criminals and their executives in what is perhaps the best documented corporate crime in recent memory. But he also points out that the FBI had much information indicating that ADM Chairman Dwayne Andreas and President James Randall knew about shenanigans going on throughout the company. Yet, the FBI was not allowed to question them -- ADM's highest ranking executives. Attorney General Reno, shall we go to page 306? There, Lieber points out that in 1996, Dwayne told the Washington Post that he had known about Whitacre's off-the-books compensation for three years. Whitacre was only fired after ADM learned that he had been working as a mole for the FBI. If he knew about it for three years, why didn't he fire Whitacre immediately? Or how about page 326, where Lieber points out that ADM board member Howard Buffett, son of Omaha multibillion Warren Buffett, told the FBI that in July 1995, during the height of the FBI investigation, he saw a "tub of shredded documents" outside of Dwayne's office. Yet Dwayne was never called to testify about these shredded documents. For an attorney general who claims to make decisions based on justice, not politics, the failure to interview a big Democratic Party contributor like Dwayne Andreas looks bad. FBI agent Anthony D'Angelo told Lieber that ADM's law firm, Williams and Connolly, was effectively in charge of the investigation from its inception. "Williams & Connolly held a lot of power," D'Angelo said. "They basically ran the show." So, we go to see Reno at her offices at the Justice Department, where her weekly briefing takes place. And we ask about the troubling allegations raised by Lieber. "I have not read the book, so I couldn't comment." Okay, let's put aside the book. You were in charge of the investigation -- why didn't you have your people call Dwayne Andreas and James Randall in for questioning? "I won't comment in the context of the book, since you are asking questions in the context of the book. I've discovered when questions are asked in a specific context, they are often taken out of context." We leave the press briefing befuddled, but anxious to get an answer. We call the Justice Department's spokesperson on all matters criminal, John Russell. John, we ask, why didn't the Justice Department at least bring Dwayne in for questioning? "Williams & Connolly wouldn't let us question him," Russell says dryly. What about a subpoena, forcing him to testify? "We got the information otherwise," Russell said. >From where? "No comment," he says, as the conversation ends. We returned to see Attorney General Reno last week, and asked her if she had read Lieber's book yet. "I still haven't had time to read it," she said. We offered our copy of Rats in the Grain to the Attorney General. She refused. "No, I have other matters to attend to," she said. But doesn't it trouble you that Randall and Dwayne get a free pass from even being questioned on this matter? "I have reviewed it and I can't comment," she said. It's not easy criminally prosecuting a major American corporation. Hard questions have to be answered and deals have to be struck. But this apparent deal gave absolute protection to ADM's top two officers, when they should at least have been hauled in for some tough questions about what they knew and when they knew it. The case needs to be reopened -- now. 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). From rob@essential.org Wed, 16 Aug 2000 19:39:21 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 19:39:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] The Billionaire Mindset and Wealth Inequality The Billionaire Mindset and Wealth Inequality By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Surely one of the most amusing developments of the 2000 presidential election campaign is the emergence of Billionaires for Bush (or Gore). With chants and slogans like "Vote for Bush (or Gore) Because Inequality is Not Growing Fast Enough" and "Who needs day care, hire an au pair!" the Billionaires have highlighted not only the big money corruption of politics, but problems of growing income and wealth inequality in the United States. (For more on the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore), a project of the Boston-based activist group United for a Fair Economy, see www.billionairesforbushorgore.com) Far less entertaining, but somewhat more surprising is a recent report from the Conference Board that also highlights how the current economic boom times have left low-wage workers behind. The Conference Board's answers the question in its report title, "Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats?" with a telling subtitle: "America's Full-Time Working Poor Reap Limited Gains in the New Economy." The report is important for two reasons. First, it shows that distribution of the gains from the information economy have been extremely skewed, with benefits heavily concentrated among the wealthy and not shared among the bottom of the income and distribution curve. "Poverty has risen in both the number and share of those employed full-time and year-round since 1973," the report finds. While the number of full-time workers making poverty wages declined dramatically in the 1960s and early 1970s (from just under 5 percent in 1966 to 2 percent in 1973), there have been no gains since then. In fact, the proportion of full-time workers making poverty wages rose to 2.9 percent in 1998, the most recent year for which such data is available. The number of full-time workers earning poverty wages does not indicate the number of people in poverty, because it does not register the poverty rate among those without full-time work, nor does it take into account the effects of taxes, tax credits (including the important Earned Income Tax Credit) or government assistance for poor people. But by focusing on wages rather than ancillary government support and taxation programs, the Conference Board offers a unique insight into the failure of the current wage distribution to enable families to escape from poverty. (The numbers would appear far worse had the analysis focused on a living wage level, which is significantly above the artificially low poverty level.) The second reason the Conference Board report is important is because of what the Conference Board is. The New York-based organization is a business-backed research enterprise best known for its monthly Leading Economic Indicators and Consumer Confidence Index. It is viewed as a dispassionate research agency, not a front group for the corporations that fund it. Its trustees and officers represent a segment of the enlightened corporate class, those who are aiming to protect corporations' long-term interests. Among those corporations represented: Bestfoods, Phillips Petroleum, J.C. Penney, Excel, Texaco, Martha Stewart Living, Fidelity Management and Research, Goldman Sachs, British Airways, Unisys -- and yes, we know many of these may not seem "enlightened." But the point is that in their concern to head off social unrest before it develops, they may be willing to make significant concessions in an attempt to quiet social movements. In a description of its historical origins, the Conference Board says it "was born out of a crisis of industry in 1916" when "declining public confidence in business and rising labor unrest had become severe threats to economic growth and stability." The decision to focus a report on the failure of the new economy to provide above-poverty wages to millions of full-time workers suggests that there may be, perhaps, an emerging concern with income and wealth inequality among foresighted business leaders. "For too long, we've only counted our money, but today we stand up and count ourselves. Billionaires, stand up and be counted!" proclaimed Phil T. Rich at the Million Billionaires March outside the Republican convention in Philadelphia on July 30. The Conference Board may not be ready to join such mocking efforts, but these and other stirrings of discontent do seem to be worrying the Conference Board's corporate members. Are the Conference Board members ready to support unionization and living wage regulations, among the obvious solutions to the problems highlighted in the organization's recent report? Without a bit more of the "unrest" which led to the Conference Board's founding, probably not. But the publication of the report, the emergence of the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) and aggressive union organizing of low-wage workers by some U.S. unions may in different ways signal that such unrest is now, slowly but finally, growing. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Sat, 19 Aug 2000 21:48:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 21:48:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Toast Toast By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman About six years ago, a friend gave us a toaster. It was a present. The friend bought the toaster from Williams-Sonoma, the San Francisco-based kitchen store, with outlets in upscale malls throughout the United States. It was a modern toaster, which means first, that it was made primarily out of plastic instead of stainless steel, second, it had all kinds of gizmos on it, and third, if something goes wrong with it, in all likelihood, because of the modern electronic devices embedded in it, you won't be able to fix it. On these new modern toasters, you can calibrate the shade of the toast -- you can set the toaster for lighter or darker toast. Our first plastic toaster lasted about two years before it stopped toasting. Luckily, Williams-Sonoma will replace any item if you are "not satisfied with your purchase for any reason." We took it back to the store here in Washington, D.C. and told the sales clerk that we received the toaster as a present purchased from Williams-Sonoma and that the toaster wasn't working. The sales clerk said -- no problem, here's a new one. And she handed over a brand new Kenwood Four Slice plastic toaster, which lasted a little longer than a year, before it stopped toasting. So, we took the Kenwood back and told the clerk at the store what happened and the clerk said -- no problem, and she handed over a new toaster -- different make, this one was a Toastronic Ultra. The following year, same problem. And same solution. We turned in the Toastronic Ultra and return it for a Kitchen Aid Toaster. Last week, the Kitchen Aid Toaster stopped toasting on one side. We took it in to the Williams-Sonoma, and the clerk handed over a Cuisinart plastic toaster. The Cuisinart toaster has all kinds of features, including a Bagel button, a defrost button, a reheat button, the now traditional lighter and darker buttons, a cancel reset button, and most annoyingly, a "shade control" panel, which in bright red lights (just what you don't want to see in the morning) tells you where exactly on a scale of very light toast to very dark toast you have calibrated your new toaster for this morning. We have a friend who is a super cautious person, but who believes that toasters should last a lifetime. (Forgive him -- he is from a different era.) So anyway, he gets one of these new plastic toasters, and the plastic lever falls off. Now everytime he wants toast, he throws caution to the wind and sticks a butter knife into the toaster's lever slot to hold down the lever until it clicks in. Annoyed at this repeated failure of modern technology, we called Williams-Sonoma's customer service line. The sales person answered and we told her our story about returning the plastic toasters periodically to her store. She said she didn't think she could do anything about the complaint. We asked -- why not just sell a toaster that lasts? And she said -- we do. It's stainless steel Dualit Combi Toaster and it sells for $319.00. The plastic Cuisinart that we just received sells for $99.95. "You can buy the Dualit and it will toast for you well into your 90s," she said with a snicker. In San Francisco, Williams-Sonoma spokesperson Tracy Brown told us that her store tries to sell the "newest and greatest" products. She said she checked with a buyer, and complaints about toasters breaking down "are not common." Brown then called back to report that "we identified reliability problems with the Kitchen Aid and that's why we got rid of it." "We really believe that the Cuisinart toaster will last," she said. Now, of course, we remember our parents' toasters -- the aluminum Toastmasters that they toasted with -- toasters that lasted a lifetime. These classic toasters had no bagel button, no defrost button, no reheat button, and definitely no shade control panel. You simply stuck the slices of bread into the slot, pushed down the lever, and waited for the toast to pop up. So, with all the wonders of modern technology, why can't the companies make a reasonably priced toaster that lasts? We put this question to Holly Smith-Berry, marketing director at the Columbia, Missouri based Toastmaster, the company that sold the first pop up toaster in 1926 (Model 1A-1) for $12.50. "We get letters from our customers, wanting to send us their old Toastmaster toasters, telling us they love the triple loop design on the side of the toaster, and they are amazed at how long they have lasted -- 50 or 60 years, in some cases," Smith-Berry said. "But if you took our 1940 steel toaster and costed it out for inflation, it would cost $170 today." She said that Toastmaster toasters today range from $10 to $30 and they are tested to last for 12 or so years. "We've seen toasters selling in Wal-Mart for $7.96," she said. "So, if you don't want to clean the crumbs out of your toaster, you can just get rid of it and buy a new one." "Unfortunately, we live in a more disposable society," she says. Toastmaster makes a heavy duty toaster, but it's built in Germany by Bosch Siemens, it's designed by Porsche, and it sells for $225. The decline of the reliable, reasonably priced toaster is symbolic of what's gone wrong with modern society -- shoddy products, disposable society, planned obsolescence, high-tech but no respect. Shade control in, quality out. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Mon, 4 Sep 2000 16:11:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 16:11:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Bobo Paradise and its Discontents Boby Paradise and its Discontents By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Real changes are taking place in the U.S. ruling class, and conservative David Brooks is one of the first to grapple with the transformation in his new book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon and Schuster). It is by now cliche to note that the jeans and no-tie look of new money Silicon Valley represents a visible shift from the more formal attire of old money manufacturing and finance circles. But in his provocative and humorous book, Brooks suggest something more far-reaching is afoot. The information age elite, he says, "are highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of ambition and worldly success. The members of the new information age elite are bourgeois bohemians. Or, to take the first two letters of each word, they are Bobos." They mingle "1960s rebellion with 1980s achievement," making it "impossible to tell an espresso-sipping artist from a cappuccino-gulping banker." Brooks categorizes his method as "comic sociology," and he pokes fun as he describes the ethic of the Bobos (among whom he counts himself). The old elite announced marriages on the pages of the New York Times, listing "pedigree and connections" -- the groom's social clubs, the bride's debutante history, the couple's illustrious ancestry. Today's elite uses the same forum, but with a new focus on resume and achievement. "An amazing number of them seem to have first met while recovering from marathons or searching for the remnants of Pleistocene man while on archeological digs in Eritrea." Returning to his upper crust hometown of Wayne, Pennsylvania, Brooks reports the takeover of the Preppy Establishment with "a new culture [that] has swept into town and overlaid itself onto the Paisley Shop, the Neighborhood League Shop, and the other traditional Main Line establishments." Noting the proliferation of gourmet coffee shops, he writes, "there probably still aren't a lot of artists and intellectuals in Wayne, but suddenly there are a lot of people who want to drink coffee like one." A new set of values pervades the new elite, Brooks writes. In the Code of Financial Correctness, Rule 1 is "Only vulgarians spend lavish amounts of money on luxuries. Cultivated people restrict their lavish spending to necessities." In practice, that means "you can spend as much as you want on anything that can be classified as a tool, such as a $65,000 Range Rover with plenty of storage space, but it would be vulgar to spend money on things that cannot be seen as tools, such as a $60,000 vintage Corvette." And, he argues, countercultural values have infused the business world -- the one sphere of life in the United States where people still talk about fomenting "revolution" and are taken seriously. Although he sometimes overstates and exaggerates, and though some of his jibes cut deep, Brooks is mostly an enthusiast for the Bobo ascendency. Bobos believe in tolerance, moderation, community, meritocracy, decentralization, what Brooks calls the bonds of intimate authority (family and community control, not power to centralized bureaucracies). They stand against confrontation and extremism. They have made homes less formal and more comfortable, and communities tighter knit. Brooks offers some cautionary notes -- about disengagement from politics, an undemanding spiritual life, a loss of the blue blood notion of service -- but he is by and large optimistic about the Bobo-led future. The primary limit in Brooks' enjoyable book is what he does not discuss. The Bobos represent a reconciling of different cultural strands, brought together by the growing power of a new class fragment or fragments. But this reconciliation does not eradicate real class conflict. The majority of the U.S. population that remains working class (estimated at 62 percent of the population in another interesting new book, Michael Zweig's The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (Ithaca: ILR Press)) are missing from Brooks' story. It is not really fair to criticize Brooks for this -- after all, he is self-consciously describing changes in the ruling class. But it is fair to note that there is a dangerous tendency toward universalization among Bobos -- a sense that "We are the World" -- even though most people in the United States (let alone the world) in fact do not share their expanding wealth and may have markedly different view on important issues, including concepts of "deservedness," fairness, government regulation and equitable distribution of wealth. For this majority of the population, more confrontation, not less, could be just what is in order. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 12 Sep 2000 19:45:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 19:45:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Ford/Firestone: Homicide? Ford/Firestone: Homicide? By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman In 1998, in Corpus Christi, Texas, 17-year-old Matthew Hendricks was on his way to pick up his girlfriend. He was driving a Ford Explorer. The tread ripped off one of the Ford's Firestone's tires, causing him to lose control. He was thrown from the vehicle and killed. "When I was told that my son died, I felt like someone had reached in and ripped my heart out," Vicki Hendricks, Matthew's mom, said last week. Matthew Hendricks is one of more than 150 deaths around the world linked to Firestone tread separations. The families and friends of those killed in these accidents want to know -- what did Ford and Firestone know about these tires and when did they know it? Journalists, members of Congress, and trial lawyers are seeking to provide answers. Reporters have informed us that Ford and Firestone knew that they had a problem, but failed to notify federal regulators. Many months ago, Ford and Firestone were ordering the recall of problem tires in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Asia -- but not in the United States. Ford and Firestone knew of at least 35 deaths and 130 injuries before the federal government launched its probe earlier this year. They knew about these cases, because they were being sued by the families of the victims. (The parents of Matthew Hendricks settled their case against Firestone earlier this year.) And as a condition of these settlements, Ford and Firestone were demanding that the lawyers who bring these cases not speak to anyone about what they found out during discovery. With Congressional hearings ablazing in an election year, klieg light fever has overcome our elected officials, and the keepers of the corporate flame, like Billy Tauzin (R-Louisiana), Thomas Bliley (R-Virginia) and John Dingell (D-Michigan), have been transformed overnight into clones of Ralph Nader. There is much talk in Washington about expanding the authority of federal enforcement officials, of increasing penalties, of requiring auto companies to report overseas recalls to federal authorities here in the United States. But these reforms are being pushed by the liberal corporate elite to put out a very hot fire that threatens not the reputations of not just Ford and Firestone, but that also may plant the seed of doubt in the American mind (in an election year, nonetheless) about the ethical foundation of corporate America. (Or as Business Week asked in its cover story this week, "Too Much Corporate Power?") The families of the victims not only want the truth, and reform, but they also are demanding justice. And justice begins and ends with the criminal law. Last week, Attorney General Janet Reno said she was looking into whether any criminal case can be brought. But when the auto safety law was first passed in 1966, the auto companies prevented criminal penalties from becoming law. And they have blocked criminal penalties ever since. So why is Janet Reno blowing smoke? Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) took the floor of the Senate last week and introduced legislation that would establish criminal sanctions for executives who knowingly market a defective product that kills or maims. Auto safety activists want criminal penalties for any knowing or willful violation of the federal auto safety law. But that doesn't help bring justice here and now to the families and victims of Ford and Firestone's act of violence. Michael Cosentino knows what this game is about. Cosentino is the Republican prosecuting attorney for Elkhart, County Indiana. Twenty-two years ago, Cosentino brought a homicide charge against Ford Motor Co. for the deaths of three teenaged girls. The girls were riding in their Ford Pinto when it was rear-ended. The doors on the Pinto slammed shut, the gas tank split open, gas leaked out, caught fire and the girls were incinerated. Cosentino had been reading about a 1973 memo that Ford executives had written about the Pinto gas tank problem. In the memo, Ford put a price on a human life ($200,000) and a burn injury ($67,000) and calculated that the cost of saving lives and prohibiting burn injuries by recalling the Pinto's and fixing the fuel tank ($11 per auto) would be prohibitive. Faced with a murder charge, Ford brought in its best legal guns, and hired the judge's best friend as its local counsel. The judge in turn ruled that much of Cosentino's evidence (including the smoking gun cost/benefit memo) could not get to the jury, and the jury found Ford not guilty. We called up Cosentino last week and asked him if he would consider criminally prosecuting either Ford or Firestone today. He said the situation has yet to present itself. E. Michael McCann, the district attorney in Milwaukee County knows that he will launch a criminal homicide investigation if the situation presents itself. He has called on the county medical examiner to search whether any recent death in Milwaukee County has been linked to a Firestone tire tread separation. McCann has a track record of criminally prosecuting corporations for reckless homicide. He currently has an investigation open into the deaths of three workers who died in a crane collapse during construction at the new Milwaukee Brewers ballpark. But the list of prosecutors with sufficient resources and courage to take on America's most powerful corporations is short. The families of victims need to approach their local prosecutors and demand they open criminal homicide investigations now. (If they need advice, they should give a call to McCann or Cosentino.) Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a long investigative article by Keith Bradsher. Bradsher concludes that the story of the Firestone tire debacle is one of "missed hints and lost opportunities." That it might have been. But it also might one of corporate crime and violence. And maybe even homicide. It's time we found out. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Tue, 19 Sep 2000 15:15:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 15:15:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] A Not So Academic Oversight A Not So Academic Oversight By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The American Political Science Association's annual convention recently came through town, filling up Washington, D.C. hotels with thousands of academics ready to present their latest research findings. Browsing through the convention's program, we hoped to learn of new findings on the role of corporations in the political process. Instead, we found that there appeared to be virtually no papers on or even referencing corporate power. That's a little strange, we thought. After all, it is hardly a controversial claim these days that corporations exert a major if not decisive influence over politics, in the United States and around the world. We decided to make sure our impression that corporations were absent from the convention papers was correct. The American Political Science Association has conveniently posted on its website approximately a thousand of the papers presented at the conference, and the site has a good search engine. We searched through these thousand abstracts for the word "corporation." Two hits. We tried again, this time using the word "corporate." This time we came up with 11 hits. We did another search, for the word "business." After eliminating abstracts that use the word "business" in a context where it means something other than corporations (i.e., a reference to Congressional business), we wound up with 23 hits. In total, three dozen abstracts even mention the words "corporation," "corporate," or "business" -- 3.6 percent of the roughly thousand abstracts we searched. This is only a rough approximation of the number that actually discuss corporate power. The vast majority of those we found refer to corporations, but don't have corporate power as their focus. On the other hand, our search undoubtedly missed some papers that implicitly discuss corporate power -- say, with a focus on labor relations -- but don't use any of our key words. Disturbed by the results of this survey, we asked some of those who had presented papers that discuss corporations to ruminate on our findings. Scott Pegg, an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, in Ankara, Turkey, shared some particularly interesting reactions. (Pegg's paper topic: "Corporate Armies for States and State Armies for Corporations: Addressing the Challenges of Globalization and Natural Resource Conflict.") First, he validated our sense that the findings of our survey constituted a remarkable oversight. "The three largest subfields of [U.S.] political science are American government/politics, comparative politics and international relations. The study of transnational corporations is relevant to all three of them," Pegg says. "In particular, in an election year, I find it stunning that the huge numbers of people working on the American electoral system and presidential politics would be neglecting the corporate role in bankrolling politicians to such a degree." Our sentiments exactly. Asked to account for the corporate studies vacuum, Pegg suggests several explanations. Corporations may fall through disciplinary cracks, he says -- they aren't the traditional political actors on which political scientists focus. Corporations are reluctant to share information that academics need to conduct their research, he points out, and information that is available tends to come from nongovernmental organizations with which many academics are not familiar. Academics tend to reward theoretical inquiries over empirical investigations. And, he says, "many academics are interested in securing outside funding for their research projects. Corporate funding is available for some projects, but probably not for those that critically assess corporate crimes or corporate human rights violations." To check that the results of our survey were not a fluke, we did a similar search on all U.S. dissertations published in the last two years. The results were similar. After we eliminated those that mentioned corporations in completely irrelevant contexts (e.g., thanking a nonprofit funder with corporation in its name, or mentioning that a corporation had invented a scientific process used in the dissertation) we found 75 dissertations that included the word "corporation" in their abstract. As a point of comparison, 43 dissertations used the word "baseball" in their abstract, and 1,008 included the word "war." We can't help but draw depressing conclusions from our surveys. One of the sources of corporate power is that corporations appear both everywhere and nowhere at the same time. With the commercialism explosion of recent years, there are fewer and fewer public spaces free from corporate logos. At the same time, the dominant political and social culture orients us away from assessing the many ways that corporations shape the contours of our politics, life opportunities, even our leisure time. We would hope that the academy might be a place where researchers would seek to break through corporate hegemony, and undertake empirical and theoretical investigations of the manifestations and consequences of concentrated corporate power. Of course, these hopes may someday be realized. If protests challenging corporate power continue their recent upsurge, academic inquiry will, eventually, follow. But for intellectual leadership, it appears we should look to the undergraduates in the streets, not the professoriate. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:03:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:03:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Withering Democracy Withering Democracy By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman For all but the ideologically committed or deluded few who believe corporations and their executives make contributions out of a sense of civic obligation, there can be little doubt that the U.S. campaign finance system is fundamentally corrupt, and corrupting. But it would be a mistake to make this observation and reach the obvious conclusion that the current system of private contributions must be replaced by a system of public financing, and then fail to dig further. Because the available campaign finance data provides a host of insights into the pattern of corporate investment in politics and politicians in the United States. Superb new data collections from the invaluable Center for Responsive Politics (CRP, data at www.opensecrets.org) detail the nature of major industrial sector contribution patterns over the last decade, compiling contributions from individuals affiliated with industries, political action committee (PAC) contributions and soft money donations (made to the political parties). Here is some of what their data shows: 1. Every single major industrial sector except for communications/ electronics now favors the Republican Party. The CRP industry groupings are: agribusiness; communications/electronics; construction; defense; energy/natural resources; finance/insurance/real estate; health; transportation; and a catch-all miscellaneous business category, including liquor, casinos, chemicals, food, advertising, steel production and textiles. The communications/electronics contributions lean slightly toward the Democrats, powered by contributions from Hollywood. The TV/movie/music sector, constituting about a third of overall donations from the communications/electronics sector, gives more than 60 percent of its contributions to Democrats. 2. Despite the overall tilt to the Republicans, every major industrial sector contributes large sums to the Democrats as well. Agribusiness and energy/natural resources, two of the most pro-Republican industries, gave the Democrats $69 million and $64 million, respectively, in the election cycles from 1990 to 2000. 3. The only reliably Democratic supporters are lawyers/lobbyists (reflecting trial lawyer contributions) and labor. Lawyers/lobbyists directed nearly 70 percent of their contributions to the Democrats. Labor sent more than 90 percent of its monies to the Dems. 4. The major shift to the Republicans followed the 1994 elections, in which the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress. Corporate contributions generally flow to the majority party, both because it has more incumbents and the companies seek to win influence with those in office, and because the majority party controls the legislative agenda. 5. Of the major industrial sectors, agribusiness, construction, energy/natural resources and transportation, plus the miscellaneous business category, appear firmly entrenched in the Republican camp. They favored the Republicans even when they were the minority in Congress, and now favor them by large margins. The health industries and finance/insurance/real estate both give about 60 percent of their contributions to the Republicans, while defense gives an even higher share to the GOP, but each of these sectors split their contributions relatively evenly when the Democrats controlled Congress. Communications/electronics companies now divide their contributions evenly, and favored the Democrats in the elections through 1994. 6. The broad sector totals may in some cases obscure differences within industry groupings. For example, in the energy sector, while oil and gas have always been staunchly Republican, now giving more than three-fourths of their contributions to the Party of Lincoln, electric utilities have tilted more Democratic. Although about two-thirds of utility money now goes to the Republicans, utilities favored the Democrats when they controlled Congress. In the finance sector, real estate firms and securities/investment banks have shaded more Democratic than insurance companies and commercial banks. The former now give about 43 percent of their monies to the Democrats, while insurance companies and commercial banks give only one-third to the minority party. In general, however, industrial sectors appear to act in concert. 7. Specific sector contributions spike at certain periods, correlating with Congressional consideration of major legislation of interest to particular industries. Agribusiness contributions rise prior to adoption of the periodic Farm Bill. Communications/electronic contributions nearly doubled from 1994 to 1996, prior to adoption of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Contributions from the finance sector skyrocketed as the financial deregulation bill was wending its way through Congress. 8. Over the past decade, the overarching trend in corporate campaign contributions has been rapidly upward. Corporate contributions in the 2000 elections are already about 50 percent higher than in the 1992 presidential election year -- and there's still plenty of time to go this year. 9. Labor is no counterbalance for the Democrats. Although unions direct more than 90 percent of their contributions to the Democrats, corporate contributors outspend them by more than 11 times. 10. George W. Bush is massively outdistancing Al Gore in corporate contributions. Bush leads in every corporate sector. In the most competitive sector, communications/electronics, Bush's contributions are 25 percent higher than Gore's. In the agribusiness, energy/natural resources and transportation sectors, Bush is pulling in nearly 10 times more money than Gore. This is no way to run a democracy. When both parties' financial lifeline are connected to corporate interests, the democratic credentials of the political system are called into question. The system formally remains one of one person, one vote, but is it the people or the corporations who rule? 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Thu, 5 Oct 2000 19:04:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 19:04:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Look Before You Leap Look Before You Leap By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman A friend of ours -- you might call him techno-challenged man -- recently met the guy who invented the E-book. That's the little hand-held computer that carries hundreds of books and that let's you read them on an easy reading screen. The inventor told our friend that in five years, his invention will carry one million books -- all easily accessible, all searchable, all without paper. "Even I was sold," said challenged man. "You won't even have to leave the house," we said. "Reading has always been a solitary endeavor," he said. "Yes, but at least you had to get out of the house, say hello to the librarian, or the bookseller," we replied. "What happens to them?" Now, don't get all excited, techies. Yes, we are writing this on a computer. Yes, we are sending this over the Internet. But beware! A backlash is brewing against computer mania. We have leaped before we looked. And some are now predicting a crash landing. Last month, the Alliance for Childhood (www.allianceforchildhood.net) a group of more than 75 educators, child-development and health authorities called for a time-out from the overwhelming pressure on educators and parents to computerize childhood. They released a report, "Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood." The group, which includes Harvard professor of psychiatry Alvin Poussaint, child and adolescent psychiatrist Marilyn Benoit, and Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, issued a statement calling for a moratorium on the further introduction of computers in early childhood and elementary education -- except for special cases of students with certain disabilities. We've always felt a little queasy when politicians like Al Gore and George Bush promised to put a computer in every classroom. But we didn't know why. Now we do. The signers of the call for a moratorium said that a time-out is necessary to "create a climate for a broad national discussion about the serious developmental risks" posed by computers in childhood. They noted that research does not support the current and proposed expenditures of billions of dollars on technology in primary schools, as the Clinton-Gore administration now advocates. Research shows that far better than sticking kids in front of computers is putting them with caring adults, engaging them in creative play, outdoor experiences with nature, the arts, and hands-on learning of all kinds. There they sit in front of their glaring screens, playing video games, sipping on sugar and water (Coke or Pepsi?) and eating junk food. Is it any wonder that this generation of children is the most sedentary in U.S. history? The Alliance is so concerned about the problem, that they called on the Surgeon General of the United States to prepare a comprehensive report on the physical, emotional, and other developmental hazards that computers pose to children. They warned of social isolation, obesity, eyestrain, and repetitive stress injuries. Margit Bleeker, a neurologist, said that repetitive stress injuries among the young "is probably a time bomb waiting to go off." The Alliance estimates that public elementary schools would have to spend about $8 billion per year to meet the technology goals promoted by Clinton/Gore. Those schools spent more than $4 billion in the 1999-2000 school year on computers and all of the costs related to them. "That money could be better spent on proven educational interventions for children at risk of school failure, including smaller classes and smaller schools, higher salaries to attract and retain good teachers, and early attention to nutrition, high-quality child care and health care, and safe housing," said Joan Almon, a former kindergarten teacher and the U.S. coordinator of the Alliance for Childhood. To make way in their budgets for the computer onslaught, many schools are choosing to cut back on field trips in nature, music, the arts, library books, and time for play or recess. But it is exactly these programs that most benefit at-risk children. "It is within the context of human relationships, play and interactions with nature that we socialize our children," said Dr. Benoit of Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C. "Premature relegation of learning to computer interaction will rob them of both that civilizing influence and of their innate creativity." Bailus Walker, Jr., a former president of the American Public Health Association, said that the money spent on computers could be better spent removing lead paint from housing in poor neighborhoods. When it comes to our children's readiness to learn, "being unleaded is a lot more urgent than being online," Walker said. Edward Miller, a co-author of the report and former editor of the Harvard Education Letter, said that children of wealth and privilege are enjoying advantages of smaller class size, individual and personal attention from caring adults and hands on experience with arts, science, and nature. "These experiences come with proven benefits," Miller said. "To spend precious resources on unproven computer technology when we know that millions of young children lack these bare essentials is educational malpractice." Walk into any public library these days and chances are that you will be confronted by a phalanx of computers. Children are immediately drawn to them, as we were drawn to television when we were kids. It is clear to us now that television has done more damage than good to our society. Unless we act now, computers may do the same to our children. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Thu, 12 Oct 2000 08:52:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 08:52:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] IMF/World Bank: Stupid, Cruel, Brutal IMF/World Bank: Stupid, Cruel, Brutal By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman There is no policy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that is more stupid, cruel and brutal than the insistence that poor countries charge fees for children to attend school and for people to access basic health services. The IMF and World Bank condition loans to impoverished countries on the adoption of Contract with America-style "structural adjustment" policies. User fees -- also known as community financing, cost sharing or cost recovery -- are often one part of the structural adjustment policy package. In passing an appropriations amendment in July that would stop future funding for the IMF and the World Bank if the two lending agencies do not stop imposing user fees for basic healthcare and education services, the U.S. House of Representatives has taken an important step toward ending this callous and wrongheaded policy. Unfortunately, the Treasury Department, anxious to avoid any appropriations limitations for its IMF and World Bank policy arms, is working to block inclusion of the amendment in the final foreign operations appropriations bill. As administration officials and members of Congress and their staffs negotiate the terms of a final foreign operations appropriations bill, the educational opportunity and health of millions of people in the world's poorest countries hang in the balance. The evidence accumulated from around the world over the last decade is quite clear. User fees for education lower school attendance rates, especially among young girls. User fees for primary health services deny access to care and preventative treatment for the poor, leading to the spread of unnecessary and preventable death and disease. And user fee "exemptions" for the poor, or sliding payment scales, routinely fail due to administrative problems, corruption, inadequate notice to the poor or other difficulties. * In Gambia, in primary health care program villages with insecticide provided free of charge, bednet impregnation -- for malaria prevention -- was five times higher than in villages where charges were introduced. Households consistently cited lack of money as the main reason they chose not to dip bednets. * Introduction of a 33 cent fee for visits to Kenyan outpatient health centers led to a 52 percent reduction in outpatient visits. After the fee was suspended, visits rose 41 percent. In Papua New Guinea, the introduction of user fees led to a 30 percent decline in outpatient visits. Studies in Niger have found that user fees extend the period that patients wait before seeking outpatient care. * UNICEF reports that in Malawi, the elimination of modest school fees and uniform requirements in 1994 caused primary enrollment to increase by about 50 percent virtually overnight -- from 1.9 million to 2.9 million. The main beneficiaries were girls. Malawi has been able to maintain near full enrollment since that time. * In India, reports Dr. Vineeta Gupta, general secretary of Insaaf International, a Punjab, India-based organization, a World Bank-inspired system which is supposed to exclude the poor from healthcare charges fails in practice due to corruption and administrative difficulties, denying the poorest Indians access to healthcare services. The purported logic of education and healthcare user fees is that payments from children's families and sick people will enable government service agencies to provide services to more people. But this is a twisted rationale, which should be rejected on both principled and practical grounds. As an issue of principle, access to primary education and healthcare is a right that should not be conditioned on ability to pay. In practical terms, the real-world record shows that user fees deny children educational opportunity and people of all ages access to basic health services. Charges typically generate little revenue in any case. So the ultimate result of user fees is service denial, not expansion. The IMF/Bank user fee rationalization presents a false choice: even poor country governments have multiple sources of potential revenue there are ways to increase funding for basic services without imposing charges. Most importantly, the real way to free up resources for education and healthcare is for the World Bank and IMF, without delay, to use their existing assets to cancel the debts owed them by poor countries. There are no significant corporate or monied interests served by the imposition of user fees in desperately poor countries. The IMF and World Bank continue to support them out of a dogmatic commitment to a marketized ideology that refuses to concede to empirical refutation. The Treasury Department is opposing corrective legislation so that it can preserve its control of the IMF and World Bank without Congressional interference. These are shameful counterweights to the humanitarian imperative of removing user fees. Whether the humanitarian claim prevails will depend, in significant part, on whether U.S. citizens act now to put an end to user fee nightmare. 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). From rob@milan.essential.org Mon, 16 Oct 2000 23:01:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 23:01:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Bud Bowl III Bud Bowl III By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Our families like it when we go off to cover a presidential debate. That's because when we come back from one, we bring back bags full of goodies. After the second debate, we drove home from Winston-Salem with a C-Span canvas bag that included Matchbox racing cars (paid for by 3Com), Budweiser beer mugs (from Anheuser Busch) and a handful of ATT pre-paid long distance phone cards ("proud technology sponsor of the Presidential Debates"). >From the Boston debate, we came back with t-shirts, baseball caps, a canvas bag, reporters notebooks, pens, key chains. The food and beer at the debates are being provided by Anheuser-Busch. Post-debates, the Starbucks coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts are on the house. (Why would any reporter in his or her right mind choose to walk a half a mile through police lines, horse manure and pepper spray to cover hundreds of young people protesting Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's exclusion from the debates and forgo watching the Yankees in the playoffs while sipping a cold Budweiser?) The Ford Motor Co. logo is emblazoned on the plastic press pass holder. In Boston, before slipping the Ford press pass over over our heads, we held a moment of silence for the hundreds of innocents killed while riding unstable Ford sports utility vehicles on frayed Firestone tires. We guessed Jim Lehrer wouldn't ask the corporate candidates on stage whether or not they favored a criminal homicide investigation of these two companies and the responsible executives for the deaths of these innocents. He didn't. Remarkably, the hundreds of reporters covering these debates think little of the corporate sponsorship of the debates. (Or if they are thinking about it at all, few choose to express their thoughts in print.) Thirteen years ago, the two major parties hijacked the presidential debates away from the League of Women Voters, after the League made the mistake of opening the debates to third party candidate John Anderson in 1980. To replace the League, the two parties set up a front called Commission on Presidential Debates (it is run out of a political consulting firm's office off of Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.) to set rules that would effectively exclude third party candidates. Big companies -- Anheuser-Busch, U.S. Airways and 3Com -- put up big money to sponsor the debates. Anheuser Busch, for example, paid $500,000 to be the "exclusive" sponsor for the debate in St. Louis. Not coincidentally, the only two candidates who seriously question the power of giant corporations over our political economy -- Nader and Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan -- have been banned from the conversation. The Commission says that there are more than 100 candidates for president this year and you can't fit them all onto the stage, and that's why they set the bar at 15 percent in the polls. Candidates polling less than 15 percent are excluded from all three of the Commission debates. But such a standard would have excluded Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler whose debate success catalyzed his victorious gubernatorial campaign, from the debates in Minnesota. A more reasonable standard would be five percent in the polls, which would cut the field to two, three or four. Or you could ask the public who they would like to see in the debates. (More than half want to see Buchanan and Nader in.) But far be it for us to complain. We say -- bring on Bud Bowl Three. Can't wait to see what we get in our canvas bags in St. Louis. 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@milan.essential.org Thu, 26 Oct 2000 18:33:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 18:33:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] National Breast Cancer Industry Month National Breast Cancer Industry Month By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman If Hallmark can make Mother's Day, Father's Day and National Secretary's Week into national holidays, why not other companies? Perhaps that was going through the mind of executives at AstraZeneca, the drug manufacturer, when they decided to invent National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This October has been the fifteenth annual National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the event is gaining an ever-higher profile. It garners abundant media attention, and is a growing favorite for corporate charitable work. Ms. PacMan, the first official spokesperson for the National Association of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO), is working to promote breast health throughout October. Georgette Klinger, a cosmetics company, is donating a portion of its October revenues to NABCO. Hickory Farms has produced a National Breast Cancer Awareness Month gift basket, the Gift of Hope, that includes breast cancer educational information. Loehmann's, the fashion retailer, hosted special shopping nights at its Manhattan and Beverly Hills stores, donating a portion of proceeds to NABCO. Bristol-Myers Squibb and the California-based Longs Drug Stores are donating a portion of their October sales of select products to NABCO. American Express is encouraging people to Shop for a Cure in September and October, when certain AmEx purchases will trigger a corporate donation to breast cancer research. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month's core message is the importance of early detection, with a special emphasis on regular mammography exams. So lots of organizations, media outlets and companies join together to deliver a health promotion message. Who could object? Barbara Brenner, for one. Brenner is executive director of Breast Cancer Action, a hard-hitting grassroots organization based in San Francisco. "Because of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, everybody thinks wearing a pink ribbon and racing for the cure will solve the problem," she says. The soft sell approach, combined with the exclusive focus on early detection, keeps people from understanding "what is really going on," she says. On the one hand, while women who detect breast cancer early are better off than those who detect it late, Brenner says, early detection is certainly no guarantee. On the other hand, the focus on detection comes at the expense of any critical questioning about causation and intelligent approaches to seeking a cure. A dramatically different approach is called for, Brenner says. First, cancer prevention efforts must embrace the precautionary principle -- the idea that when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken in the absence of scientific certainty. As part of the Bay Area Toxics Link Coalition, Breast Cancer Action is pushing a Stop Cancer Where It Starts initiative that has succeeded in getting San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley to incorporate the precautionary principle in local regulations. Second, Brenner says, the cancer research agenda should be restructured. Breast Cancer Action is calling for a national Rachel Carson Project to fund a half dozen multi-disciplinary cancer research centers that would focus on finding more effective and less toxic cancer treatments, and on researching cancer causes. A key element of the plan: products invented by the centers cannot be patented. This is not exactly the agenda of the cancer establishment, which is hostile to the idea that environmental causation is a significant part of the story of the rising incidence of breast cancer in the United States. And by now, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is both a creature of the entire cancer establishment and a reflection of its ideology. As Kathy Paranzino, program manager at AstraZeneca says, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month "has taken on a life of its own." Founded by Zeneca, then a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), a giant chemical firm, along with the American Academy of Family Physicians and Cancer Care Inc., National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is now governed by a 17 organization board that includes the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Cancer Institute and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. All funding for the official activities comes from the AstraZeneca Healthcare Foundation, though board members offer in-kind support and countless organizations conduct their own activities during the month. AstraZeneca, no longer connected to ICI, now has no direct corporate interest in turning attention away from potential links between pesticides, chemical pollution and breast cancer. But as maker of tamoxifen, the controversial drug that has been approved to reduce the risk of contracting cancer in women with a high risk of breast cancer, it remains highly desirable for the company to be associated in the public mind with efforts to address breast cancer. Other corporate members of the cancer establishment -- such as General Electric, the heavily advertised maker of mammography machines and also a major industrial polluter -- have a more direct interest in turning companies away from potential environmental causes of cancer. The prospect of companies from Bristol Myers Squibb to American Express rallying in support of Stop Cancer Where It Starts month seems slight. Instead, this effort will be carried forward by an energetic, grassroots environmental health movement. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Thu, 2 Nov 2000 10:35:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 10:35:12 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] It's No Accident It's No Accident By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Imagine this: You are a prosecutor. You indict a person for homicide. You type up a press release and plan to hold a press conference to announce the indictment. But before you say anything to the media about the indictment, you must first consult with the lawyer for the defendant. And under the law, the lawyer for the defendant has a right to veto anything you say in the press release, or at the press conference. And the lawyer for the defendant has the right to negotiate the wording of the press release. No prosecutor in his or her right mind would accept such an intrusion by a person accused of a crime. But a similar situation is being tolerated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the federal policing agency set up to enforce consumer protection laws, including those covering children's products made by companies such as Hasbro (Playskool), Mattel (Fisher-Price), Graco/Century Products, Evenflo, Cosco, Safety 1st and Kolcraft. Under the law that set up the CPSC, before the agency releases information to the public, it must notify the company of its intention. If the company disputes the accuracy or fairness of the information to be released, then the general counsel of the CPSC gets involved and the dispute over the press release could end up in federal court. But the CPSC is strapped for resources, and the result is, in most cases, the company gets its way. What's the consequence of such a policy? More than most, this policing agency has become subordinate to the industry it polices. And the result is that hundreds of innocent children are killed and thousands are injured by consumer products every year -- products that would have been pulled off the market by an independent agency not hamstrung by corporate interference. One such infant who died was Danny Keysar. In May 1998, 17-month old Danny was at a daycare home. His daycare provider put him down for a nap in a Playskool Travel-Lite portable crib. A short while later, when she went to check on him, she found that the crib had collapsed with Danny in it. His neck was caught in the rails. He wasn't breathing. He died. Marla Felcher, then a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, was a friend of Danny's parents. She attended Danny's funeral. At the funeral, Danny's mother urged Felcher to investigate why Danny died. Within a week of beginning her investigation, Felcher realized that Danny's death should never have happened. The crib that killed Danny had been recalled five years earlier. Danny was the fifth child to be killed by this particular Playskool portable crib model. Other companies manufactured cribs using the same design. And over 1.5 million units of other portable cribs had been recalled, and at least a dozen children have been killed in total. The whole idea of the portable crib is that it collapses easily. The top rails on these types of portable cribs have a hinge in the center. A child could stand up, grab onto the top rail, and collapse it. Danny's weight was strong enough to collapse the crib. When cribs of this sort collapse, the top rail bends at the center hinge, forms a "V" and the child is knocked down. His neck or chest can get caught in the grip of the V, and he is no longer able to breathe. The problem with the Playskool crib and others that were designed the same way is that it is possible for a caregiver to set up the crib and assume that it is locked into place, when it is not. "The coroners' reports on all these portable crib fatalities are shockingly similar -- the kid was found trapped in the 'V' of the folded crib rails," Felcher told us last week. The control that the consumer product industry has over the CPSC is truly mindboggling. For example, some products pose a serious risk of injury to children, while others present only a slight risk. But because the industry has a stranglehold over the information flow from CPSC to the public, reporters and consumer never find out whether the risk is serious or not. Thus while the CPSC rates how dangerous a product is -- A, B, C, D -- the rating is not made public. And because the CPSC is not aggressive in getting information out about product hazards, when it does recall a dangerous product, a very small percentage -- perhaps 10 to 30 percent -- of the product gets pulled off the market. One of those recalled products that failed to get pulled from the market was the crib that killed Danny Keysar. Felcher has written up the findings of her investigation in a book (It's No Accident: How the Infant Products Industry Compromises Baby Safety (Common Courage Press, February 2001)). And Danny's parents have set up a non-profit to help get dangerous children's products off the market (www.kidsindanger.org). But true progress won't be made until a new political culture sweeps Washington, one that values human life over the almighty dollar. Only then will the police be liberated from the death grip of the corporate elite. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Fri, 10 Nov 2000 18:01:23 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 18:01:23 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Busted: the Genentech/American Heart Association Connection Busted: the Genentech/American Heart Association Connection By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman For years, Genentech Inc.'s clotbuster drug tPA has been used to treat heart attacks. Last year, the American Heart Association published guidelines for physicians advising that tPA be used to treat strokes. Whether these new guidelines will help stroke patients or not is an open question. Whether it helps Genentech's bottom line is decided -- it will. Dr. Jerome Hoffman, professor of medicine at the UCLA Medical School, sat on the American Heart Association panel that hashed out the new guidelines. He was the only member of the panel who raised serious questions about recommending using tPA to treat strokes. Dr. Hoffman says there is clear-cut evidence that clotbusters are helpful in treating heart attack patients. But when it comes to treating stroke, there is a great deal of controversy. While clotbuster drugs do some good in treating stroke, they also can cause bleeding in the brain. "The Food and Drug Administration approved this drug to treat stroke on the basis of a single study by the National Institutes of Health, which I find worrisome," Dr. Hoffman said. "The study shows a marginal benefit in a very small number of stroke patients. Furthermore, I believe that study conflicts with evidence from some other studies that show increased risks with use of these drugs." In the previous version of its guidelines, the American Heart Association recommended using clotbusters for stroke. "But they gave it a guarded recommendation," Dr. Hoffman told us. "Last fall they were reconsidering it. And a proposal had been made to upgrade it to a class one recommendation -- slam dunk -- definitely use it." The American Heart Association calls itself "the largest voluntary health organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke." According to the group's 1999 annual report, it has received $1 million or more from some of the nation's largest pharmaceutical companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoechst Marion Roussel, Novartis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, SmithKline Beecham -- and Genentech. Curious to find out more details, we called on the Association acting science chief Dr. Rodman Starke. Dr. Starke said that over the past 10 years, Genentech had given more than $10 million to the American Heart Association, including $2 million to build the Association's conference center in Dallas, Texas, making it one of the group's top corporate donors. Did Genentech get anything in return for building the conference center? "We put up a plaque inside the conference center thanking Genentech for its contribution and have allowed the company to hold a meeting of its sales reps at the conference center," Dr. Starke said. We questioned whether Genentech's largesse created an environment conducive to the writing of guidelines calling on physicians to treat stroke with Genentech's tPA -- over the informed objections of one of the panelists -- Dr. Hoffman. "Poppycock," Dr. Starke says. "There is no influence of any corporate supporters of what the guidelines are going to say. The guidelines wouldn't be any good if people would point to them and say -- well these were bought." We asked Dr. Hoffman whether he believed that the Genentech money influenced the American Heart Association on tPA. "I don't have reason to believe that there is a quid pro quo with anyone in the American Heart Association," he said. "On the other hand, many of the volunteers on the panel have worked for drug companies, and while people who do research for drug companies often deny that this has any affect on their science, studies show it does have an effect -- results tend to be better for proprietary research than for non-proprietary research." Dr. Starke said he would get us the conflict information on the people who developed and wrote the guidelines for treating stroke. But then an American Heart Association spokesperson called us to say that the conflict reports were "confidential," and that we couldn't have them. Instead, he would set us up with a Mary Fran Hazinski, a co-editor of the guidelines. She would give us what we needed to know about possible conflicts. Hazinski said she wanted us to know that the guidelines went through 10 or 11 layers at the American Heart Association before being released. She said that she didn't have access to the conflict statements for all of the people involved in the process, but that she recalled that one or two of the panelists may have received a grant from Genentech. She wasn't sure, she said, whether the people involved in the process were required to disclose any and all money -- speaking fees, for example -- received from Genentech. She said she didn't even know about Genentech's $10 million in contributions to the American Heart Association -- until we told her -- and she was writing and editing the guidelines recommending tPA for stroke. "I think it is wonderful that I never knew about the Genentech funding," Hazinski said. "Clearly it could not have influenced me if I didn't know about it." Anyone who knows a young doctor knows that they are showered with gifts, and trips and speaking invitations from drug companies. Drug company largesse knows no bounds. Most doctors express astonishment that anyone would think that these gifts and trips would affect their behavior. But as Dr. Hoffman points out, there is a large literature documenting the many ways that it does in fact affect physician behavior. "Of course it affects physician behavior," he says. That's why he refuses to take anything -- a canvas bag, a notepad, a trip to the Bahamas, or a speaking fee -- from drug companies. And so should the American Heart Association, no matter how sweet the corporate candycane. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Sun, 19 Nov 2000 15:41:00 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 15:41:00 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@milan.essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] TABD: Corporate Conspiracy TABD: Corporate Conspiracy By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Corporate rule is not built on a conspiracy. But that does not mean that corporations never conspire. Sometimes corporate executives do gather in secret meetings and work to plot collective approaches to advance Big Business's broad interests. Case in point: the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD). The TABD is a grouping of top corporate executives from multinational corporations in the United States and Europe. TABD CEOs meet annually with top U.S. and European government officials, most recently this past week in Cincinnati. The TABD's mission is to boost trade and investment between the United States and Europe, as well as throughout the world. The CEOs in TABD are vigorously urging the launch of a new World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiating round (the project that was stifled in Seattle), and for other enlargements of the WTO. But the TABD's unique mission is to focus on the U.S.-EU relationship, and push forward a deregulatory agenda that it hopes to then impose on the entire world. The TABD is explicit that its concerns go way beyond traditional tariff issues. "Elected representatives agreed in the Uruguay Round [the last completed negotiating round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which led to the creation of the WTO] to largely remove traditional tariffs as inefficient restraints on economic liberty," proclaims the TABD's 2000 Mid-Year Report. "The new obstacles to trade are now domestic regulations." "Non-tariff barriers to operations should be tackled with the same zeal," as tariffs were reduced, the report insists. The TABD inventory of domestic regulations that constitute "obstacles to trade" is remarkably expansive. Among the areas where TABD has registered complaints: differential standards for review of chemical safety, the U.S. requirement that products be labeled with U.S. customary units (inch/pound) instead of the metric system, differing national standards for regulating electromagnetic fields (relevant to cell phone regulation), restrictions on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in the EU, and potential U.S. emissions regulations for diesel engines for recreational boats that may differ from the EU's. The TABD also argues that the U.S. product liability system is a "serious impediment to transatlantic trade and investment." A consistent theme of the TABD's list of complaints is inconsistency between countries' regulations. The TABD CEOs view diversity of regulatory approaches -- what should be viewed as among the blessings of democracy -- as itself a trade barrier. To achieve uniformity, TABD ardently supports regulatory "harmonization" -- formal international mechanisms to establish single global standards. A second choice is Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs), by which different regulatory regimes are declared equivalent, and products cleared in one country are given a free pass into another -- even if the first country's regulatory system is in fact inferior to the importing country's. For almost every regulatory complaint TABD lodges, the organization's proposed solution is either harmonization or an MRA. The effort has been enormously successful, with MRAs in place or in progress for everything from electrical safety to pharmaceutical safety, and harmonization in place or underway for areas ranging from road safety to aircraft noise. TABD-style uniformity virtually always involves the use of the weaker standard, meaning consumer, environmental and worker well-being is put at risk. Even more worrisome is how TABD uniformity would block regulatory evolution. Once standard-setting is placed at the international level, it is largely removed from the reach of citizen movements, making it far, far harder to protest and lobby for strengthened biotech regulations, for example. The MRAs also thwart regulatory enhancement, by enabling domestic manufacturers to say that stiffer standards will unfairly disadvantage them against importers who get a free pass under other countries' weaker rules. To ensure that its anti-democratic demands are attended to by the purportedly democratic governments of the United States and the EU, TABD issues yearly scorecards on the trading partners' compliance with TABD recommendations. And now it has established an "early warning system," so that Big Business can force items onto the U.S.-EU negotiating agenda. Among the top U.S. side concerns: Italian restrictions on genetically modified foods and a European environmental regulation requiring electronics manufacturers to provide for the recycling of discarded products. Unfortunately, these series of recommendations are not just corporate wish lists. When the TABD speaks, the governments listen (in fact, top public officials are in the room with the CEOs at their annual gatherings). "It is difficult to overstate the effect the TABD has had on trade liberalization," Undersecretary of Commerce Timothy Hauser told a Congressional committee in 1997. "Virtually every market-opening move undertaken by the United States and the EU in the last couple years has been suggested by the TABD." But now, with help from groups like Corporate Europe Observatory (www.xs4all.nl/~ceo) and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (www.tradewatch.org) which have been tracking the TABD for years, the growing movement against corporate globalization is learning of TABD's scheming. With hundreds of informed and militant protesters shining a spotlight on TABD last week in Cincinnati, the CEOs in TABD have at least been deprived of the power that comes from being able to hatch their deregulatory plots in secret. How effectively TABD will be able to function in the light of day remains to be seen. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Tue Nov 28 17:13:55 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 12:13:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] Special offer for Focus on the Corporation Readers Message-ID: ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR FOCUS ON THE CORPORATION READERS ** Multinational Monitor, a magazine edited by Robert Weissman, is offering one-year subscriptions to new subscribers, or for gifts, for $15 -- a $10 discount from the normal one-year subscription rate. Multinational Monitor appears 10 times a year (monthly, with two double issues). Founded by Ralph Nader, it is the leading source of critical reporting on the activities of multinational corporations. If you want to get a sense of the magazine, older issues are archived at http://www.essential.org/monitor. You can rush right now and take advantage of this offer by clicking on http://www.essential.org/monitor/subscribe.html and ordering on-line through our secure server. Or, send a check or credit card information to: Multinational Monitor PO Box 19405 Washington, DC 20036 USA If you are paying by credit card through regular mail, make sure to indicate whether you are paying by Visa or Mastercard, the card number and its expiration date. Also, for those subscribing through regular mail, please provide us with your address. Or, if you are giving the Monitor as a gift, provide us with the address of the recipient(s). Finally, please note in your correspondence that you are responding to the special Focus on the Corporation offer. This offer is available only for U.S. residents. A comparable discount is available for Canadian and Mexican residents. We regret that we cannot extend the offer for those living in other countries. The offer expires December 31, 2000. From rob@milan.essential.org Wed Nov 29 19:05:29 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 14:05:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] Business Power and Mobility Message-ID: Business Power and Mobility By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The election season makes it patently clear how Big Business is able to transform its financial resources into political power via campaign contributions. But an even more fundamental source of business power is corporations' control over investment decisions, and the tax, trade and investment rules which enhance capital mobility. The ability to shift production to different locations, or threaten to shift production, gives corporations enormous leverage over the political process and over workers. Want to adopt serious environmental standards to stem the corporate poisoning of the air, water and land? Get ready to face the threat of plant closures and job shifting. Want to force companies to bear a reasonable share of the tax burden? Be prepared to face company moves to lower tax havens. Want to mandate payment of a living wage to all workers? Plan to hear how business will be forced to move to Mexico or China. Nowhere is the raw power connected to corporate mobility more apparent than in labor management relations, as Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, makes clear in a new paper, "Uneasy Terrain" (see http://www.ustdrc.gov/research/bronfenbrenner.pdf). When faced with union organizing campaigns, employers routinely threaten to close their plant and move elsewhere. Understandably, these threats intimidate workers -- a union won't do you any good if you don't have a job -- and they are tremendously successful at defeating union organizing drives. In the most comprehensive survey ever of U.S. union organizing campaigns, Bronfenbrenner found that "the majority of employers consistently, pervasively and extremely effectively tell workers either directly or indirectly that if they ask for too much, or don't give concessions, or try to organize, strike or fight for good jobs with good benefits, the company will close, move out of state or move across the border, just as so many other plants have done before." In union organizing drives in the United States in 1998 and 1998, she found, more than half of all employers threatened to close all or part of the facility if workers voted to join a union. But the situation is even worse than that figure suggests, because for some types employers it is difficult to make credible threats to move -- hotels and hospitals, for example, are to a considerable extent tied to place. In mobile industries -- manufacturing and other companies that can credibly threaten to shift production -- the plant closing threat rate was 68 percent. In all manufacturing, it was 71 percent. In food processing, it was 71 percent. These numbers mark a worrisome upturn from a previous Bronfenbrenner survey, undertaken for the Labor Secretariat of the Commission for Labor Cooperation and published in 1997. Bronfenbrenner's data from 1993-1995 showed a threat rate of 64 percent among manufacturers, 21 percent among food processors. (That earlier study, prepared for a commission created by one of the NAFTA side agreements, was suppressed by the Clinton administration. Eventually liberated, it provided some of the key evidence leading to the defeat of fast track.) Employers deliver the threats directly (after posting pictures of shut down facilities, supervisors asked workers at a Mitsubishi plant in Tennessee, "Is your family ready to move to Mexico?") or more indirectly. For multinationals, Bronfenbrenner told us, there is a pervasive "silent threat. ... The map on the wall" showing the locations of a company around the world is an ongoing reminder that the company can easily do business elsewhere. Employers know the threats work, Bronfenbrenner says. Anti-union training materials emphasize that "fear is the most effective tool," she explains. And the evidence backs up the commonsense insight that threats to close effectively intimidate workers. "Union election win rates were significantly lower in units where plant closing threats occurred (38 percent) than in units without plant closing threats (51 percent)," Bronfenbrenner found. "Win rates were especially low (24 percent) in those campaigns where employers made specific threats to move to another country. Win rates were also significantly lower in mobile industries where the threat of closure was more credible." Unions can overcome plant-closing threats, Bronfenbrenner says, by running aggressive campaigns that involve rank-and-file union members as organizers and actively involve and energize the workers who are being organized. But the challenge is immense, especially given the array of other anti-union tactics, including firing of union supporters, that corporations regularly employ. Dealing with the problem of plant-closing threats, at least in the union organizing context, will require two major reforms, Bronfenbrenner concludes. First, labor law must more clearly delineate such threats as illegal, and impose big enough penalties to deter employers from making them. Second, trade, investment and tax policy must be changed to limit corporate mobility, and to block employers from shifting operations to avoid unionization. That's not just a pro-union agenda. It is a basic pro-democracy one. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Sat Dec 2 19:45:11 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 14:45:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] Enemies of the Future Message-ID: Enemies of the Future By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman And you thought populism meant the movement of citizens to control, through democratic means, their economy, their government, and their lives? Clearly, you have not been paying attention -- to editors of Fast Company, Forbes ASAP, and Wired magazine, the authors of The Millionaire Next Door and the Beardstown Ladies investment books, to George Gilder, Tom Peters, Lester Thurow and Thomas Friedman, to the Nike and Microsoft revolutionaries -- and the myriad other business hustlers who would have you believe that popular democracy is reflected not by unions, activist groups and communities of human beings -- but by avant garde, internet connected, tech-savvy corporations. Revolution is the air! Forget the fight against the WTO in Seattle. We're talking about fast companies leading the way to a new marketplace -- fast companies that express the will of the e-trading people, who are buying and selling their way into millionaire status, and upending the hierarchical corporate order. The incessant bombardment of this drivel drove cultural critic Thomas Frank up and over the wall. He landed on the other side with One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (Doubleday, 2000). Frank, a social critic and editor of the Chicago-based Baffler magazine (www.thebaffler.com), has had it with the idea of "market populism" -- the notion that markets are identifiable with the "will of the people" -- one dollar, one vote. He's had it with the corporate hucksters who continue to paint this rosy picture of the 1990s: Corporate profits multiplied. The Internet liberated a new entrepreneurial spirit. A new generation of millionaires was minted overnight. Not just the rich -- but all Americans -- prospered, adapted easily to downsizing. Or as laissez faire energy specialist Daniel Yergin put it: Privatization plus deregulation plus globalization plus turbo-capitalism equals prosperity. "From Deadheads to Nobel-laureate economists, from paleoconservatives to New Democrats, American leaders in the nineties came to believe that markets were a popular system, a far more democratic form of organization than democratically elected governments," Frank writes. In molotov cocktail style, Frank rips into the hucksters of business hype, pointing out that democracy still means democratic institutions democratically controlled, including governments and unions, and that all the hype about the millionaire next door and fast company revolutionaries that allow workers to dress casual on Fridays and rip the boss on e-mail will not change some fundamentals about our current version of extreme capitalism -- the top 10 percent of Americans control 90 percent of the nation's wealth, CEO compensation skyrocketed, rising from 85 times as much as the average blue-collar wage in 1990 to some 475 times as much by 1999, most Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, union membership continues to crash, 15 percent of the population is without health insurance, thousands of American jobs have been exported overseas, Americans are running up record levels of debt, and with the coming downturn, trouble lurks. Yet, because Frank effectively contrasts the hype of the business magazines and corporate hucksters with the reality on the ground in this country, he is considered "an enemy of the future" by Reason magazine editor Virginia Postrel. Just practice democracy -- seek to exert people power over corporations -- and you too can become a card carrying enemy of the future. Frank points out that for years, corporations, fearing public control, have sought to mess with the collective mind of the citizenry. He says he owes a debt of gratitude to Roland Marchand's classic Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (University of California Press, 1998), in which Marchand points out that for all the legal legitimacy that the courts bestowed upon corporations at the turn of the century, corporations "conspicuously lacked a comparable social and moral legitimacy in the eyes of the public." So big corporations launched a 100-year public relations campaign to "create the corporate soul" -- to convince Americans that corporations had a moral purpose and were serving the public good. The public relations campaign continues today at warp speed. Many have been convinced that democracy and the free market are identical. But at what price? "Here at home the price was the destruction of the social contract, the middle class republic itself," Frank writes. "Our portfolios may have appreciated generously, but they did so only to the extent that we countenanced the reduction of millions to lives of casual employment without healthcare or the most elementary of workplace rights. We caught the tail end of the Qualcomm wave and pretended not to notice as sweatshops reappeared on our shores. We wondered like tots at the majesty of Cisco, at the generosity of Gates, and we stood by as the price of a good education for our kids ascended out of reach." Pick up this book, not just to help you screw your head back on straight and to clear your vision -- but also to help you start thinking about those to hold accountable for the outrage that has been perpetrated on the nation. Make the list. And check it twice. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Wed Dec 13 18:19:13 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 13:19:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] The Real Thing: Democracy as a Contact Sport Message-ID: The Real Thing: Democracy as a Contact Sport By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman A couple weeks ago, we received an invitation to attend an event at the Library of Congress. Coca-Cola was about to make an "historic contribution" to the Library of Congress, and the Library, and Coca-Cola, were inviting reporters to cover the event. We accepted the invitation. We learned from the morning papers that the "historic contribution" was a complete set of 20,000 television commercials pushing Coca-Cola into the American digestive system. Remember the one where the kid hands Pittsburgh Steeler Mean Joe Greene his bottle of Coke, and in return, Mean Joe tosses the kid his football jersey? Or what about on a hilltop in Italy where the folks start sing "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company"? The event was at the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building -- named after the Thomas Jefferson who, in 1816, wrote: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country." Anyway, we pull up at the appointed hour (7:15 p.m. on November 29, 2000) at the Thomas Jefferson building, and there's a traffic jam created by stretch limousines blocking the entrance. In addition to lowly reporters, the 400 or so guests included ambassadors, members of Congress, corporate chieftains and other dignitaries. Good thing we dressed up. The Main Hall is this absolutely stunning room, with marble staircases. A string quartet is playing. Waiters are serving Coke in classic bottles. The food is fabulous -- lamb chops, trout, Peking duck. We rub shoulders with the Ambassador from Burma. The "aristocracy of our monied corporations," as Jefferson put it, had taken over the place, and Coca-Cola wanted to make sure that everybody knew it. After all, Coke could have just donated the ads to the Library and left it at that. But this wasn't about Coke's largesse. It was about public relations -- whether the public would view the company as a racist company (Coke had just agreed to pay $192.5 million to settle allegations that it routinely discriminated against black employees in pay, promotions and performance evaluations) or a junk food pusher (consuming large quantities of sugared Coca-Cola has led to ours being one of the most overweight generations in history) -- or instead, a generous contributor to the Library of Congress. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was called on to deliver good things to Coke, and he did. He turned over the keys of the Main Hall to Coke, and Coke decked the place out with its logo, stitched in red beside the logo of the Library of Congress. Television sets were placed throughout the hall, the better for the Ambassadors and members of the Democratic Leadership Council to check out the commercials. Billington was selling the soul of the library to one of the world's most powerful corporations. In addition to the ads, Coke was establishing a fellowship at the Library for the study of "culture and communication" -- one fellow will receive $20,000 a year for the next five years. Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, was outside the event, protesting. "It is not the proper role of the taxpayer-financed Library of Congress to help promote junk food like Coca-Cola to a nation that is suffering skyrocketing levels of obesity," Ruskin said. "It is crass commercialism for James Billington to degrade Jefferson's library and founding ideals into a huckster's backdrop." But without shame, Billington introduced Doug Daft, the president of Coca-Cola, who said that "Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories." Nothing about profits. Nothing about overweight kids. Nothing about racism. After Daft spoke, the room went dark, and the ads ran on the television screens. Nostalgia swept the room. When the ads were finished, the lights went back on and the crowd cheered. About 80 high school students, dressed in Coca-Cola red sweaters, filled the marble staircases and sang -- "I want to buy the world a Coke." Again, the crowd cheered. Doug Daft, standing downstairs, came back to the microphone to continue his statement. We were upstairs at this point, and we looked down at him and asked, in a loud voice -- "Why are you using a public library to promote a junk food product?" The room went quiet. Library of Congress police charged up the marble staircase. Doug Daft put his hand to his ear and shouted back to us: "What did you say?" In a louder voice, we shouted back: "Why are you using a public institution to promote a junk food product?" The next thing we know, we are on the ground. The Library of Congress police had tackled us. Again, the crowd cheered -- not for our question, but for the tackle. We were dragged downstairs, past the Ambassador from Burma, and hauled outside, where police officers from the District of Columbia were waiting for us. Out of the Thomas Jefferson building came running a man from Coke. "This is a private event," the man from Coke told the police. "I'm from Coca-Cola." At first, the police wanted nothing to do with the man from Coke. But the man from Coke insisted. They huddled. Apparently, the man from Coke didn't want us arrested for asking an obvious question. Apparently, the man from Coke didn't want a public trial. The man from Coke was standing up for our First Amendment rights to ask his boss a question. The police said we were to leave the grounds. And we weren't to come back. Ever. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Fri Dec 15 18:34:27 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:34:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] Special Multinational Monitor offer Message-ID: ** SPECIAL MULTINATIONAL MONITOR OFFER ** - Please forward - Multinational Monitor, a magazine edited by Robert Weissman, is offering one-year subscriptions to new subscribers, or for gifts, for $15 -- a $10 discount from the normal one-year subscription rate. Multinational Monitor appears 10 times a year (monthly, with two double issues). Founded by Ralph Nader, it is the leading source of critical reporting on the activities of multinational corporations and the international globalizing institutions -- the IMF, World Bank and WTO. If you want to get a sense of the magazine, older issues are archived at http://www.essential.org/monitor. You can rush right now and take advantage of this offer by clicking on http://www.essential.org/monitor/subscribe.html and ordering on-line through our secure server. You can also call in credit card purchases. Contact Katie Auerbach at 202-387-8030. Or, send a check or credit card information to: Multinational Monitor PO Box 19405 Washington, DC 20036 USA If you are paying by credit card through regular mail, make sure to indicate whether you are paying by Visa or Mastercard, the card number and its expiration date. Also, for those subscribing through regular mail, please provide us with your address. Or, if you are giving the Monitor as a gift, provide us with the address of the recipient(s). This offer is available only for U.S. residents. A comparable discount is available for Canadian and Mexican residents. We regret that we cannot extend the offer for those living in other countries. The offer expires December 31, 2000. From rob@milan.essential.org Mon Dec 18 18:42:17 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 13:42:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] The People's Health Message-ID: The People's Health By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Savar, Bangladesh -- More than two decades ago, the nations of the world issued a call for "Health for all the people of the world by the year 2000," in the Alma Alta Declaration, the product of a World Health Organization-UNICEF conference. In 1978, at the time of the Declaration, that goal seemed achievable. There was serious talk of a New International Economic Order, to begin to remedy the wealth and technology gap between the global North and South. Primary healthcare was held "the key to attaining th[e] target" of health for all. Now, with 2000 upon us, it is evident that the world failed to turn the vision into reality. Earlier this month, approximately 1,500 public health activists from 93 countries gathered at the spirited and historic People's Health Assembly (PHA) in Bangladesh to assess this state of affairs, and to map the way forward so that health for all is in fact achieved. The emerging PHA diagnosis, which focused primarily on healthcare failures in developing countries, was multifaceted: Governments have failed to invest sufficient resources and empower localities to assure adequate nutrition, clean water, maternal and child health care and other components of primary health care. This governmental failure is rooted in many internal problems, but especially reflects the budgetary and policy squeeze imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and foreign debt repayments, as well as the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, multinational corporations are pushing a privatization agenda for healthcare which removes control of crucial health decisions and delivery systems from the public sphere, where it is subject to popular influence, and often removes access to healthcare altogether from poor people. The delegates had an opportunity to passionately denounce the institutions of corporate globalization when a World Bank representative attended a session labeled "The World Bank Faces the People." Led by the Indian delegation, PHA attendees hooted and booed the Bank, chanting "Down, Down, World Bank, Down Down." They spoke with raw emotion of Bank projects which have displaced people from longstanding communities, destabilizing both societies and public health, and of Bank lending programs that pushed national healthcare systems in the direction of a corporate-dominated model. Primary healthcare remains a top priority, the PHA concluded, but it was unlikely to be achieved broadly in the absence of fundamental transformations in the global political economy. A "People's Charter for Health" issued by the PHA (see http://www.pha2000.org/pch8Dec.htm) asserted that health is a human right and that "health and human rights should prevail over economic and political concerns," and it called for the provision of "universal and comprehensive primary health care, irrespective of people's ability to pay." But the Charter also called for the cancellation of the Third World debt, major changes at the IMF, World Bank and WTO, effective regulation to control the activities of multinational corporations and controls on speculative international capital flows. It also includes provisions on the environment, war and violence. The imperative of achieving macro-level transformations did not depress the delegates. There were more community health workers than professional policy advocates at the conference, and delegates from developing countries vastly outnumbered those from industrialized nations. These delegates were able to relate their own successes to illustrate what can be achieved, despite enormous obstacles, with determination and organization. A. Chintamani, a health worker from a low caste in India, explained how she learned to wear shoes to prevent hookworm -- despite an expectation that people in her caste would go barefooted -- and then became empowered to deliver care even to upper caste persons, who were forced to turn to her, because she offered the best available care. Delegates from Cuba related the island's stunning public health achievements -- with many national health indicators, such as infant mortality levels, comparable to those in the United States -- in the face of the U.S. trade embargo. The international audience cheered long and loud for the Cuban delegates -- in appreciation of Cuba's accomplishments and in solidarity for its resistance to U.S. aggression. Most heartening, perhaps, was the example provided by the PHA hosts. The meeting was held on the campus of Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK), a Bangladesh NGO that has constructed a hospital, university and generic drug factory. Putting the concept of primary healthcare into effect, GK has trained countless health workers -- mostly women -- to raise health standards in surrounding villages. It leads the way in supplying care in the wake of floods and other national emergencies in Bangladesh. GK pharmaceuticals, and its support for Bangladesh's progressive national drug program -- which has weathered relentless attacks from multinational drug firms -- have made essential medicines available to consumers throughout the country. What GK and other success stories conveyed at the PHA reveal is that it is not for lack of resources or knowledge that the world has failed to deliver on the promise of the Alma Alta declaration. What is lacking is political will, from the village to international level. "While governments have the primary responsibility for promoting a more equitable approach to health and human rights," the People's Health Charter concludes, it will require people's organizations to force them to meet this responsibility. 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@milan.essential.org Thu Dec 28 04:50:57 2000 From: rob@milan.essential.org (Robert Weissman) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 23:50:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: [corp-focus] New Century, Same as the Old Century: The Ten Worst Corporations of 2000 Message-ID: New Century, Same as the Old Century: The Ten Worst Corporations of 2000 By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Self-regulation is all the rage in Washington, D.C. these days. Responsible corporations, perhaps working in conjunction with government, can band together to devise standards of ethical conduct that will protect people and the planet, without unnecessary costs -- that's the line among a wide array of beltway players. And with Christine Todd Whitman anointed to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, it's going to become even more faddish. There's one problem with the self-regulation theory: it doesn't work. Every corporation regulates itself. It chooses whether to obey the law, or not. It chooses whether to permit its employees to unionize, or to fight organizing efforts, whether to bargain fairly with unions, or to try to bust them. It chooses whether to use clean production technologies, or to pollute. The self-regulation record is clear. Too often, corporations choose to despoil the natural environment, deny care to the sick, smash workers' unions, retaliate against whistleblowers who seek to cal attention egregious corporate abuses, endanger consumers, and more. Need evidence? That's why Multinational Monitor publishes its annual list of the Ten Worst Corporations of the Year. Appearing on this year's list: Aventis: Making Human Guinea Pigs The biotech company recklessly raced its genetically modified StarLink corn to market. Not approved for human consumption, Starlink soon found its way into the food supply (through Taco Bell shells and other food items), through cross-pollination with conventional corn crops, improper mixing in grain elevators or otherwise. Critics say StarLink corn poses serious allergenic risks, including fever, rashes and diarrhea. BAT: Smuggler of Death Industry documents uncovered in connection with the U.S. state litigation against the tobacco industry reveal that British American Tobacco for decades promoted and facilitated a worldwide cigarette smuggling scheme, with extensive efforts in Latin America and Asia. Cigarette smuggling evades excise taxes -- lowering cigarette prices and increasing smoking rates. BP/Amoco: Lawbreaker The oil giant which likes to portray itself as environmentally responsible paid major fines and entered settlements in 2000 for illegal disposal of hazardous waste, alleged Clean Air Act violations, and underpaying royalties for oil produced on federal and Native American lands. DoubleClick: Cookie Crook? DoubleClick is rubbing up against the edge of internet privacy protections, having acquired the ability to match consumer information from web usage and purchases -- mostly gained without consumer knowledge or informed consent -- with consumers' names and addresses. Ford/Firestone: Reckless Homicide? Ford and Firestone placed the lethal combination of Ford Explorers and Firestone tires on the road, leaving the deadly mix on the road even after they had overwhelming evidence of the consumer hazard. Glaxo Wellcome: Patents Over People With the HIV/AIDS crisis at least as severe as the Black Death which wracked Europe in medieval times, Glaxo Wellcome and other drug manufacturers persist in engaging in a variety of tactics to block African and other poor countries from making available cheap generic versions of lifesaving AIDS drugs. Lockheed Martin: Testing Its Pollutant on Humans The Los Angeles Times reported in November that on behalf of military contractor Lockheed Martin, Loma Linda University is conducting the first large-scale tests of a toxic drinking water contaminant -- a rocket fuel component -- on human subjects. Philipps Petroleum: Deadly Employer A massive explosion at a Phillips Petroleum plastics plant in Pasadena, Texas in March killed one person and injured 74. It was the third fatal accident at the sprawling petrochemical complex in the last 11 years, including a 1989 blast that killed 23 people and an explosion in June1999 that left two dead. Smithfield Foods: Pig Out To the detriment of family farmers, Smithfield Foods is rushing to consolidate control of the meatpacking industry, most recently with a proposed merger with IBP Inc. While wrecking havoc on the farm economy, the big hog companies are also destroying farm country. The rapid growth of factory farms and the resulting mountains of untreated livestock manure are fouling drinking water supplies and causing a public health risk throughout the United States. Titan International: Union Buster Approximately 1,000 United Steelworker of America (USWA) workers at two Titan facilities have struck the maker of agricultural, off-road and construction tires, wheels and assemblies since 1998. The viciously anti-union Titan CEO Morry Taylor responded to a National Labor Relations Board unfair labor practices complaint by reportedly telling the Natchez Democrat that "I figure in five years they'll get that to the first federal court. By that time they'll all be enjoying retirement pay." And that's about as good a refutation of the idea of self-regulation as any. (The full story, "The Ten Worst Corporation of the Year," is posted at http://www.essential.org/monitor/mm2000/00december/enemies.html.) 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). (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman