Corporations

Attacking Monopoly Power Can Be Stunningly Good Politics, Survey Finds

December 14, 2018 David Dayen, Theintercept.com Strategize! Corporations, Monopoly, Regulation

ON MONDAY, THE Open Markets Institute released new evidence of increased corporate concentration in 32 different industries, from cellphone providers (where four firms control 98 percent of the market) to peanut butter (four firms control 92 percent). The data, which has gone uncollected by the federal government since President Ronald Reagan’s Federal Trade Commission stopped the practice in 1981, came from a private industry analyst called IBISWorld. Open Markets intended to publicize the data to show the enormity of America’s monopoly problem. But never-before-seen polling obtained by The Intercept suggests that the public already knows about, and is gravely concerned by, the concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer hands.

More Than Half Of The Coalition That Lobbied For The Corporate Tax Cut Have Laid Off Employees

December 8, 2018 Alexandra Jacobo, Nationofchange.org Educate! Corporate tax, Corporations

More than half of the coalition of companies that fought for slashing the corporate tax rate have made layoffs since the GOP tax bill's enactment. A new review by ThinkProgress has found that about half of companies comprising the Reforming America’s Taxes Equitably (RATE) Coalition have made layoffs since the tax law’s enactment. The RATE Coalition was formed in the lead-up to the Tax Cut and Jobs Act so that big business could band together to fight for lowering the corporate tax rate. The dozens of companies and trade groups that joined the coalition all claimed that lowering the corporate tax rate would inevitably lead to more jobs.

Schools Broke? Corporate Subsidies Cost Schools at Least $1.8 Billion Last Year

December 6, 2018 Staff, Good Jobs First Educate! Corporations, Education, Schools, Subsidies

School districts in ten states, led by South Carolina, New York and Louisiana, collectively lost $1.6 billion. If this money were instead reinvested in hiring new teachers and reducing class size, these ten states alone could add more than 28,000 teachers. Nearly 250 school districts lost at least $1 million each, and in four districts, tax abatements reduced classroom resources by more than $50 million. Hillsboro, Oregon schools lost $96.7 million as a result of extremely generous tax breaks to Intel. The report, entitled The New Math on School Finance, was enabled by a new accounting standard adopted by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the body that sets accounting rules followed by all states and most localities.

Orangutang Heads To Oreo Headquarters

November 28, 2018 Brendan Montague, Theecologist.org Resist! Corporations, Palm Oil, Protests, United Kingdom (UK)

Thirty Greenpeace UK volunteers and a lifelike animatronic orangutan recreated a rainforest at the main entrance to the corporate headquarters of Mondelez, makers of Oreo cookies near Uxbridge. Five climbers scaled the outside of the building to hang a banner that reads ‘Oreo, drop dirty palm oil’, and volunteers are decorating the building with giant Oreo-shaped stickers. They are also handing out information to staff about the impacts of Oreo’s links to palm oil producers that destroy rainforest. As staff arrived, they heard sounds of the rainforest along with recorded messages expressing customers' disappointment at the company’s link to forest destroyers.

Rescuing Our Schools From The Corporate Goliaths: Lessons From Indianapolis

November 23, 2018 John Thompson, Livingindialogue.com Strategize! Corporations, Education, Reform, Schools

The theme of my previous post on the 2018 Network for Public Education conference was: How Was I Wrong? Let Me Count Some Ways. As I explained, the 2014 NPE conference in Austin hit a nice balance in terms of messaging and research that allowed us Davids to defeat the corporate reform Goliath. I was slow in facing hard facts about privatizers and mostly focused on civil ways to confront opponents in the search for truth. Previously, I overestimated how much of Goliath’s failure was due to the arrogance of power. Today’s Silicon Valley Robber Barons’ hubris can match that of their 19th century counterparts, but their control of data makes them uniquely dangerous.

Corporations That Fail To Reduce Carbon Will Face Stock Depreciation & Devaluation

November 16, 2018 Staff, Sciencedaily.com Educate! Corporations, emission, Profit

The researchers further determined that the failure of companies within the emission-intensive sector to take carbon reduction actions could start negatively impacting the general stock market in as little as 10 years' time. "Over the long-term, companies from the carbon-intensive sectors that fail to take proper recognizable emission abatements may be expected to experience fundamental devaluations in their stocks when the climate change risk gets priced correctly by the market," said lead author Mingyu Fang, a PhD candidate in Waterloo's Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science. "More specifically for the traditional energy sector, such devaluation will likely start from their oil reserves being stranded by stricter environmental regulations as part of a sustainable, global effort to mitigate the effects caused by climate change.

Investigations Point To Energy Corporation’s Negligence In California Wildfire

November 15, 2018 E.P. Milligan, Wsws.org Educate! California, Corporations, Energy, Investigation, Wildfires

An investigation is now underway that will assess the culpability of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in starting the Camp Fire, now the deadliest wildfire in the history of California. The company acknowledged Tuesday that it had submitted an “electric incident report” to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on November 8, moments before the wildfire broke out. The report detailed a power failure on a transmission line in Butte County at 6:15 a.m., 15 minutes before the fire was reported as starting in the same area. More than 100 people are still listed as missing by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office after the fire destroyed the town of Paradise, California Thursday morning.

Meet Ten Corporate Giants Helping Israel Massacre Gaza Protesters

November 15, 2018 By Joe Catron, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Corporations, Gaza, Israel, Massacres, Nationalism, Protests

NEW YORK — As Israeli soldiers gun down unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in the Great March of Return, their lethal operations depend on an array of contractors and suppliers, many of them companies based outside Israel. “The Israeli military relies on a network of international companies, supplying everything from sniper rifles to tear gas, to carry out its massacres of protesters in Gaza,” Tom Anderson, a researcher for Corporate Occupation, told MintPress News. “These companies are knowingly supporting war crimes, and are complicit in state-orchestrated murder.” Since the mobilization began on March 30, Israeli forces have killed 205 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip...

NAFTA 2.0 Will Help Corporations More Than Farmers

October 22, 2018 By Anthony Pahnke and Jim Goodman, Counterpunch.org Educate! Corporations, Farmers, NAFTA, Trade Deal, USMCA

President Trump touts NAFTA 2.0, otherwise known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as a boon for farmers. In theory, opening Canadian markets to more U.S. exports will help farmers by increasing demand and farm income, especially for dairy. The reality is not so simple: Increasing demand promotes overproduction and lower prices that actually benefit the corporate processors and retailers of agricultural commodities. In comments after USMCA negotiations with Canada, Trump emphasized, “dairy was a deal breaker.” The president continued, saying, “the deal includes a substantial increase in our farmers’ opportunities to export American wheat, poultry, eggs, and dairy — including milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, to name a few.”

69 Of The Richest 100 Entities On The Planet Are Corporations, Not Governments

October 18, 2018 Staff, Globaljustice.org.uk Educate! Capitalism, Corporations, Ruling Class

Top corporations continue to accrue revenues far in excess of most governments, figures compiled by Global Justice Now show. Comparing 2017 revenues, 69 of the top 100 economic entities are corporations rather than governments. The top 10 corporations – a list which includes Walmart, Toyota and Shell as well as several Chinese corporations – raked in over $3 trillion last year. When it comes to the top 200 entities, the gap between corporations and governments gets even more pronounced: 157 are corporations. Walmart, Apple and Shell all accrued more wealth than even fairly rich countries like Russia, Belgium, Sweden.

New Supreme Court Ruling Could Make It Easier To Hold Corporations Liable For Things Like Climate Change

October 17, 2018 Alexandra Jacobo, Nationofchange.org Educate! Climate Change, Corporations, Supreme Court

A new ruling from the Supreme Court in two cases, ConAgra Grocery Products v. California and Sherwin-Williams v. California has the potential to open the door for the public to hold corporations accountable for knowingly endangering public health or the planet. On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from paint manufacturers, Sherwin-Williams, ConAgra, and NL Industries, on a ruling that requires them to pay over $400 million for lead paint inspections and removals in California homes and for their role in promoting lead paint over several decades. The cases were brought against paint manufacturers by ten California governments, including Los Angeles County, in the form of a product-liability suit back in 2000.

Rockwool Fails To Report Sinkhole, Cited For Permit Violations

October 13, 2018 By Anne Meador, Dcmediagroup.us Educate! Corporations, Environment, West Virginia

The West Virginia Department of Environment Protection (WVDEP) cited Danish stone wool manufacturer Rockwool for failing to report the formation of a sinkhole and other problems at a construction site in Ranson, W.Va. Rockwool’s failure to alert WVDEP of “noncompliance” with the conditions of its stormwater permit “may have endangered health or the environment,” according to the Notice of Violation from the state agency. Rockwool intends to construct a 460,000-sq. ft. factory on a 130-acre site to manufacture MMVF—often called stone wool or mineral wool—for use in insulation products and fire-resistant ceiling tiles.

Nicaragua – Truth, US Funding And Corporate Shills

October 11, 2018 Stephen Sefton, Tortillaconsal.com Educate! Corporations, Nicaragua, US Imperialism

In a recent activity of the right wing Inter-American Dialogue organization in Washington the moderator Michael Shifter asked guest speaker, Nicaraguan Vice Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke, how he explained the consensus among various foreign news reporters that the attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government resulted from popular protest rather than a coup attempt. Jaentschke explained that foreign, mainly US, funding of opposition aligned NGOs facilitated a fake news version of events. That fake news subsequently fed into meretricious reports by the human rights bodies of the Organization of American States and the United Nations.

Vermont Puts Prisoners Out For Bid To Slave Labor Corporations

September 17, 2018 William Boardman, Readersupportednews.org Educate! Corporations, Labor, Prisoner rights, Slave labor, Vermont

Since the budget summary was written, Vermont has removed all its prisoners from the Michigan facility. In its place, Vermont used the Pennsylvania state facility at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where four Vermonters have died, one from untreated cancer with no palliative care. Now Vermont negotiators have reportedly agreed to a contract to send Vermont prisoners to Tallahatchie, Mississippi, to be housed in a 2,672-bed facility run by CoreCivic, Inc. (formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America), the largest private prison company in the US (2018 second-quarter profit $42 million on revenue of $449 million). The Vermont contract is currently secret. The ACLU opposes the contract sight unseen. State and corporate officials have refused to discuss it in any detail, but promise it will be made public once the necessary parties have signed it to make it binding.

Webinar: Stop Corporate Surveillance In Schools

September 15, 2018 Staff, Classroomsnotcomputers.org Resist! Corporations, Schools, Surveillance

Our goal in this webinar is twofold. First, we will provide an overview of the campaign webpage resources and actions, as well as invite you all to share actions you are taking against corporate surveillance in your school/community. We hope by the end of the discussion, each of you will have an idea for an action you can take, or a connection with others you have made that can help you organize in your area. Second, following this discussion we have saved time to invite Alison McDowell to hold a 15 min Q and A about her latest powerful video called “Life on the Ledger.”

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