Corporatism

How Much Do Corporations Get For Political Spending?

November 24, 2014 Bill Allison and Sarah Harkins, www.sunlightfoundation.com Educate! Campaign Finance, Corporatism, Law, Lobbying

Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. A year-long analysis by the Sunlight Foundation suggests, however, that what they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support. That figure, more than the $4.3 trillion the federal government paid the nation’s 50 million Social Security recipients over the same period, is the result of an unprecedented effort to quantify the less-examined side of the campaign finance equation: Do political donors get something in return for what they give?

TPP Talks Come To DC: Time To Release The Text!

November 22, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Corporatism, TPP, Transparency

We've just learned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators are coming to Washington, DC in early December so that the President can finalize the text. As you may well know, the parts of the TPP that we've seen show that this agreement will severely undermine our ability to protect our communities and the planet. The TPP extends way beyond a traditional trade agreement and puts in place laws that would not pass through Congress in the light of day. The TPP deregulates corporations and gives them enhanced power to sue from the local to the national level if laws interfere with their expected profits. And the court that would be used operates outside of our legal system and can't be challenged. Imagine life if the TPP passes: we would not be able to ban fracking or stop corporations from other toxic practices; we would not be able to give preference to local producers of goods and services; and we would lose more jobs to countries with lower wages and worker protections which would hasten the race to the bottom.

Blankenship Gag Order Silences Community

November 20, 2014 Corporate Crime Reporter, www.corporatecrimereporter.com Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism, Law, Regulation

The criminal indictment of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship for his role in the April 2010 Upper Big Branch explosion has been the top story in West Virginia since it was filed on November 13. But it is Judge Irene Berger’s gag order that is drawing fire from the West Virginia press. West Virginia Press Association executive director Don Smith told MetroNews Talkline that he and other news organizations are looking closely at possible legal avenues to challenge it. The gag order prohibits the parties and their lawyers from talking with reporters. But it also prohibits “actual and alleged victims, investigators, family members of actual and alleged victims” from making “any statements of any nature, in any form, or release any documents to the media or any other entity regarding the facts or substance of this case.”

Felony Trial For Greenpeace Protesters In Cincinnati Delayed

October 30, 2014 Barrett J. Brunsman, www.bizjournals.com Resist! Corporatism, Environment, Greenpeace, Law

The trial of Greenpeace activists who face charges of burglary and vandalism related to a protest at the Cincinnati headquarters of Procter & Gamble Co. has been delayed until next year. Eight of the nine activists were expected to stand trial Oct. 27 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, but the start of the jury trial has been rescheduled for Jan. 20. One of the activists, Tyler Wilkerson, 27, died Oct. 6 of an undisclosed cause. An Oct. 16 filing asked that the charges be dropped against Wilkerson, a former Marine who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and was working in California as an organic farmer. "There is no connection between the new trial date and Tyler's death," Greenpeace spokeswoman Kat Clark said today.

Verizon Launches Tech Blog, Bans Articles On Net Neutrality & Surveillance

October 30, 2014 Mike Masnick, www.beaconreader.com Educate! Corporatism, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Journalism, Media, Net Neutrality, Surveillance

Anyone writing for SugarString has to agree not to write about net neutrality or government surveillance, two of the biggest, most important tech topics these days. From our standpoint, I guess that takes away “competition” (though, amusingly, it does appear like at least one story on the site is a warmed over version of something that we wrote a week ago, but made more clickbaity with a “list”) on two of the main stories we cover, but it really does raise questions about why anyone would ever trust the site in the first place, when, from the very outset, Verizon has made it clear that its editorial control will be focused on staying away from any stories that Verizon doesn’t like.

The Myth Of The Free Press

October 28, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism, Free Press, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Journalism, Media

The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy—even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia.

Groups Oppose World Bank’s Doing Business Rankings

October 28, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Corporatism, Environment, Taxes, Worker's Rights, World Bank

Tomorrow, October 29 2014, the World Bank will release its 2015 Doing Business report and ranking of some 189 countries, including our nation. The report helps business push countries in a race to the bottom with laws that do not protest workers, the environment, consumers or control the abuses of transnational corporation. Popular Resistance sees these rankings as a great disservice to the world that empowers corporations and weakens governments and the people. Since 2002, through this annual publication, the World Bank has been benchmarking and ranking countries according to “the ease of doing business.” The Doing Business is based on the principles of privatization, deregulation, low taxation for corporations, and ‘free market’ fundamentalism. It rewards the lowering of social and environmental safeguards, therefore allowing the exploitation of natural resources and human capital by foreign corporations and local elites.

Occupy Democracy Not Considered Newsworthy, It Should Be

October 28, 2014 David Graeber, www.theguardian.com Resist! Corporatism, Democracy, Journalism, London, Media, Occupy

You can tell a lot about the moral quality of a society by what is, and is not, considered news. Occupy Democracy, a new incarnation of Occupy London, has attempted to use the space for an experiment in democratic organising. The idea was to turn Parliament Square back to the purposes to which it was, by most accounts, originally created: a place for public meetings and discussions, with an eye to bringing all the issues ignored by politicians in Westminster back into public debate. Seminars and assemblies were planned, colourful bamboo towers and sound systems put in place, to be followed by a temporary library, kitchen and toilets. One could speak of many things here: the obvious embarrassment of the police, compared with the perseverance and cheerful good humour of the occupiers, who continually grew in numbers and spirit as the repression increased. But what I really want to talk about is the reaction of the media.

Prophet Of Urban Renewal Or Big Oil’s Reverend For Rent?

October 25, 2014 Steve Early, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Corporatism, nonprofit industrial complex, Oil and Gas

On Nov. 4, Richmond voters face a stark choice between mayoral candidates who have conflicting ideas about how to sustain their own city’s much-publicized renaissance. The two contenders to replace Gayle McLaughlin, who is termed out, even disagree on whether Richmond is better off eight years after the largest city in the country with a Green mayor first elected her. Both of McLaughlin’s would-be successors—city councilor Nat Bates, who is black, and Tom Butt, who is white—came together, like 1960s civil rights movement allies, to hear Reverend Young’s purely non-partisan reflections on creating “a global community of peace, prosperity, and inclusion.” As the city’s largest and, for nearly a century, most dominant employer, Chevron was clearly the senior partner in this joint venture. When For Richmond was launched, all of its $500,000 in start up money came from the energy giant, plus $100, 000 for grants distributed locally in 2013. As of a year ago, Chevron was still For Richmond’s only donor.

IRS Whistleblowers: Corporations Allowed To Not Pay Billions In Taxes

October 24, 2014 Nafeez Ahmed, www.truth-out.org Educate! Corporatism, IRS, Taxes

A 10-year veteran Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attorney has demanded a congressional audit of the IRS to investigate the agency's alleged role in allowing US corporations to illegally avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes even as it cracks down on individuals and small businesses. In a letter to Treasury secretary Jacob Lew, IRS commissioner John A. Koskinen and IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, Jane J. Kim, an attorney in the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel in New York, accused IRS executives of "deliberately" facilitating multibillion-dollar tax giveaways. The letter, dated October 19, will add further pressure on the agency, which is under fire for allegedly targeting conservative and Tea Party groups.

Blackwater Founder Free, Former Employees Go Down On Murder Charges

October 23, 2014 Jeremy Scahill, www.firstlook.org Educate! Blackwater, Corporatism, FBI, Iraq, Wars and Militarism

A federal jury in Washington, D.C., returned guilty verdicts against four Blackwater operatives charged with killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians and wounding scores of others in Baghdad in 2007. The jury found one guard, Nicholas Slatten, guilty of first-degree murder, while three other guards were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter: Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard. The jury is still deliberating on additional charges against the operatives, who faced a combined 33 counts,according to the Associated Press. A fifth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges and cooperated with prosecutors in the case against his former colleagues. The trial lasted ten weeks and the jury has been in deliberations for 28 days.

How The Soda Industry Is Influencing Medical Organizations

October 22, 2014 Richard Bruno and Kevin Burns, www.ucsusa.org Organize! Coca Cola, Corporatism, Medicine

With increasing scrutiny over the dire health consequences of sugar-sweetened beverages, soda manufacturers have turned to obscuring the science, confusing the consumer, and sponsoring medical organizations whose recommendations influence both providers and patients. Unfortunately these corporate partnerships are conflicts of interest that undermine the credibility of the organizations and stymie reform. Most notably, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has had acorporate partnership with The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) since 2009, which has resulted in educational materials and underwriting of their patient information website FamilyDoctor.org.

Revolt: The Path To Ending Inverted Totalitarianism

October 21, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Corporatism, Democracy, Economic Democracy

This devolution of the economic system has been accompanied by corporations’ seizure of nearly all forms of political and social power. The corporate elite, through a puppet political class and compliant intellectuals, pundits and press, still employs the language of a capitalist democracy. But what has arisen is a new kind of control, inverted totalitarianism, which Wolin brilliantly dissects in his book “Democracy Incorporated.” Inverted totalitarianism does not replicate past totalitarian structures, such as fascism and communism. It is therefore harder to immediately identify and understand. There is no blustering demagogue. There is no triumphant revolutionary party. There are no ideologically drenched and emotional mass political rallies. The old symbols, the old iconography and the old language of democracy are held up as virtuous.

Confronting Teach For America

October 19, 2014 Valerie Strauss, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Corporatism, Education, Teach for America

One of my students was contacted by a Teach For America recruiting representative, and asked if she was interested in getting involved with the organization. She sent me the note, and I replied that TFA was not welcome in my teacher preparation classes (á la Mark Naison!). I received a reply asking for a meeting, to discuss my “problems with TFA.” And so I met with the two TFA recruiters, both of whom had taught for three years as TFA corps members and then moved into leadership/management roles with the organization. The discussion went just about as well as I thought it would. They asked how they could work more effectively with traditional teacher education programs, and I asked them how they justified sending out recruits with five weeks of “training” into some of the more challenging classrooms in our state.

Mass Protests Slam TAFTA As ‘Corporate Power Grab’

October 12, 2014 Staff, www.infiniteunknown.net Resist! Corporatism, Democracy, TAFTA, TTIP

Tens of thousands of people are flooding the streets of cities all over Europe on Saturday in mass rallies against a controversial trade agreement between the US and the EU. Talks on the pact, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), started last February and, having been mostly held behind closed doors, have raised widespread concerns in the European Union and beyond. Social networks have been mobilized for a mass campaign that has been calling on Europeans and Americans to take action against “the biggest corporate power grab in a decade.” Protests were planned in 22 countries across Europe – marches, rallies and other public events – in over 1,000 locations in UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic and Scandinavian countries.

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