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Corporations

50 Corporations Hide 1.4 Trillion Off-Shore, Avoid $100 Billion In Taxes

By Staff of By Oxfam - Oxfam's recently released "Broken at the Top" report outlines how the top 50 US companies use offshore tax havens and other aggressive and secretive schemes to stash profits and dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States. The companies, which made nearly $4 trillion in profits globally between 2008 and 2014, paid an average effective tax rate of just 26.5 percent— well below the statutory tax rate of 35 percent in the US and also well below the tax rate of an average US worker of 31.5 percent.

World’s Largest Coal Company Files For Bankruptcy

By Tracy Rucinski for Reuters - Leading global coal producer Peabody Energy Corp (BTU.N) filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after a sharp drop in coal prices left it unable to service debt of $10.1 billion, much of it incurred for an expansion into Australia. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing ranks among the largest in the commodities sector since energy and metal prices began to fall in mid-2014 as once fast-growing markets including China and Brazil started to slow.

Beyond Panama: What World Really Needs Is #DelawarePapers

By Nika Knight for Common Dreams - Panama saw populist protests on Wednesday in response to Panama Papers revelations that the nation's lax tax laws are providing a haven for the world's wealthiest to stash their cash. But in the United States, where observers note that corporate greed is surely not lacking, the leak has yet to produce such a grassroots display of outrage. This may be because U.S. one-percenters have largely escaped the leak unscathed...

Blankenship Gets Maximum Sentence: One Year In Prison, $250K

By Ken Ward Jr. for Charleston Gazette-Mail - Former Massey Energy Co. CEO Don Blankenship, who rose from humble beginnings in Mingo County to become the wealthy and powerful chief executive of one of the region’s largest coal producers, will serve one year in prison and pay a $250,000 fine for a mine safety criminal conspiracy, a judge decided Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Irene Berger sentenced Blankenship to the maximum penalty allowed for his conviction for conspiring to violate federal safety and health laws at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 workers died in an April 2010 explosion.

Food Companies Plan Labeling GMOs—But Is There More To Story?

By Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins for Organic Consumers Association - The world’s largest food corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars (some of it illegally) to avoid being required to label the genetically engineered ingredients in their products. But with the July 1 deadline for complying with Vermont’s GMO labeling law on the horizon, a handful of the largest multinational food corporations have announced they will now label GMOs—not solely because they will be forced to, but because as General Mills claims, they believe “you should know what’s in your food and how we make ours.”

Who Is Corporate Philanthropy for? It’s Not Who You Think

By Rick Cohen for NPQ - Although many people admire Arundhati Roy for her Booker Prize-winning novelThe God of Small Things, those of us who have followed her career know that for the past two decades, she hasn’t been writing novels. Her life is devoted to anti-capitalist and anti-corporate political activism; it’s worth reading her latest book,Walking with the Comrades, for an example of her trenchant analysis, whether you agree with her perspective or not. In a recent long-form posting on ZNet, Roy takes on wealth disparities in India and the role of capitalism in creating and perpetuating them.

Corporate Buy Out: Our Cities Are Not Our Own

By Laura Flanders for The F Word and Alternet - Think you can tell the difference between a city and a business park? It may not be so clear. A corporate buying boom since the financial crash is gobbling up city property and leaving us with places that are literally not our town. Purchasing took off after 2008, when foreclosure rates were high, bank loans were drying up, and record levels of commercial properties were standing vacant. Last year, major acquisitions by corporations topped a $1 trillion in 100 large cities and by major we do mean major — in New York, that’s only counting property-buys of worth $5m or more.

The State Of Broadband Is Hurting Vulnerable Communities

By Joseph Torres and Steven Renderos for Free Press - The broadband marketplace isn’t just broken; it’s harming millions of our society’s most vulnerable members, who are unable to afford at-home broadband service. This comes at a time when having Internet access is essential to filling out a job application, completing homework or applying for government services. A recent Pew Research Center report found that U.S. broadband-adoption rates among adults dropped from 70 percent in 2013 to 67 percent in 2015. The numbers are even more dismal among communities of color: Adoption plummeted from 62 percent to 54 percent for Black households and from 56 percent to 50 percent for Latino homes.

Rainforest Activists Win Against One Of Pepsi’s Closest Business Partners

By Reynard Loki for AlterNet - The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has divested from a major snack food company due to its failure to implement ethical palm oil policies. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which is valued at around $880 billion, divested from First Pacific Group Ltd (HK: 0142), the parent company of Indonesia-based Indofood, which has controlling interests in one of the biggest plantation companies in Indonesia tied to conflict palm oil.

Dollar General Store South Of Berkeley Springs Put On Hold

By Staff of Morgan County USA - The proposed Dollar General store has drawn strong opposition — with more than 400 residents signing a petition opposed to the proposed location — across the street from a church and from Cacapon State Park. Local resident Paul Stern said the group opposing the Dollar General “was encouraged to hear the news that Dollar General is putting off its decision until December 2016.” “We hope that Dollar General is reconsidering at least in part because of the strong opposition to this store by the community,” Stern said.

Fortune Warns CEOs: Protests Coming Your Way

By Adia Harvey Wingfield for Fortune - As the #BlackLivesMatter campus protests have swept across some 60 colleges nationwide, American students, especially the most liberal ones, are being criticized for their intolerance of free speech. Recent data showthat 43% of incoming freshmen in 2015 thought it should be a college’s right to ban extreme speakers; 71% supported prohibitions against racist and sexist speech. Pundits and comics on the left and right have derided rampant “political correctness” on campuses, and some ridiculed University of Missouri demonstrators who tried to block media coverage and Yale students who shouted down a lecturer.

Champion Laws Shifting Costs Of Poverty Wages To Corporations

By Liz Ryan Murray for Other Worlds - Imagine if a corporation set up shop in your community and immediately dumped toxic sludge in your local waterways and buried radioactive waste next to your biggest playground. You and your neighbors, I bet, would demand full compensation from that corporation to pay for the clean-up and public health costs. You’d have a strong case. What about corporations that pollute communities not with chemicals, but with poverty wages? The impact can be every bit as toxic, and yet companies that pay low wages get off scot-free. In fact, their CEOs usually get bonuses.

The Predators Behind The TransPacific Partnership

By Karel Van Wolferen for The Japan Times - Misnomers that hide what the strong and rich control — and aspire to control — help promote our world’s numerous political ills. “Spreading democracy” in the Middle East and Africa has been used to excuse much slaughter, ruin and higher risks of wider war for purposes not remotely connected with democracy. The designation “trade” used by politicians and the media when talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact and the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TPIP) agreement is another perfect example of a misnomer thanks to which a new shadow will be cast over the generally more fortunate parts of the world.

Egypt Five Years Later; US Radiating Half The Country

By Eleanor Goldfield for Occupy - This week we passed the five-year anniversary of Tahrir Square but do we even know – or care – what's happening there now, and do we see the parallels with what's going on right here? Occupy.com speaks with an Egyptian activist who sets the record straight on the past and the present. Next up, it's the week to stand strong on the frontlines against corporate takeover. And finally, this low life scum is not something you can see, taste or have probably even heard of – but it's poisoning more than half our country and here's what you can do about it. But first, allow me to not be polite, but poetic.

Corporate Media Dominating Web-Based Media

By Erik Sass for Media Post - A relatively small group of publishers dominate Americans’ online news consumption, according to a new study by research outfit SimilarWeb, which compiled figures for the top news publishers covering both mobile and desktop audiences in 2015. Overall, the top 10 publishers -- together owning around 60 news sites -- account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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