Corporatism

Nader Backs Laws Aimed at Ending ‘Corporate Carnage’

April 17, 2014 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Create! Corporatism

"We owe it to all the mothers and fathers of those killed in product safety disasters to say, 'Never again.'" Consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced last week he is supporting two corporate accountability bills aimed at warning the public about dangerous and deadly products and tracking corporate crimes. Introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the bills come in the wake of revelations of GM's deadly ignition switch defect, which the company kept from the public for years. “Corporate crime has long swept our nation, draining people's hard-earned savings and severely harming the health and safety of millions of people," said Nader. "The executive and corporate perpetrators of this crime wave, far more often than not, [are] getting away scot-free and sometimes promoted." The Dangerous Products Warning Act would force companies to be transparent about any dangers their products or services pose to the public and hold product supervisors criminally liable for cover-ups. It would also outlaw retaliation for whistle-blowing on such dangers.

Offshore Tax Havens Cost Average Taxpayer $1,259 A Year

April 17, 2014 Dan Smith, www.uspirg.org Educate! Corporatism, Taxes

As hardworking Americans file their taxes today, it’s a good time to be reminded that ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for special interest loopholes in our tax laws. A new U.S. PIRG report released today revealed that the average American taxpayer in 2013 would have to shoulder an extra $1,259 in state and federal taxes to make up for the revenue lost due to the use of offshore tax havens by corporations and wealthy individuals. “Average taxpayers and small business owners foot the bill for offshore tax dodging. Every dollar in taxes companies avoid by booking profits to shell companies in tax havens must be balanced by cuts to public programs, higher taxes for the rest of us, or more debt,” said Dan Smith, Tax and Budget Advocate for U.S. PIRG and report co-author. Every year, corporations and wealthy individuals avoid paying an estimated $184 billion in state and federal income taxes by using complicated accounting tricks to shift their profits to offshore tax havens. Of that $184 billion, $110 billion is avoided specifically by corporations.

Simply Calling The US An Oligarchy Is Not Enough

April 17, 2014 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism

A new study has found that the US is ruled by an oligarchic elite. But by ignoring the C-word — capitalism — it ends up missing the bigger picture. It’s not every day that an academic article in the arcane world of American political science makes headlines around the world, but then again, these aren’t normal days either. On Wednesday, various mainstream media outlets — including even the conservative British daily The Telegraph — ran a series of articles with essentially the same title: “Study finds that US is an oligarchy.” Or, as the Washington Post summed up: “Rich people rule!” The paper, according to the review in the Post, “should reshape how we think about American democracy.” The conclusion sounds like it could have come straight out of a general assembly or drum circle at Zuccotti Park, but the authors of the paper in question — two Professors of Politics at Princeton and Northwestern University — aren’t quite of the radical dreadlocked variety. No, like Piketty’s book, this article is real “science”. It’s even got numbers in it! Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University took a dataset of 1,779 policy issues, ran a bunch of regressions, and basically found that the United States is not a democracy after all:

Study: US Is Not A Democracy

April 15, 2014 Eric Zuesse, www.commondreams.org Educate! Corporatism, Money As Speech

A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is: "Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America].

Study: Charter Schools No Better Than Public Schools

April 13, 2014 Valerie Strauss, www.commondreams.org Educate! Corporatism, Education

An examination of every score that Chicago students earned on state-mandated standardized tests last year reveals that charter schools — which Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has been promoting — don’t perform any better than traditional public schools.The analysis, conducted by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Medill Data Project at Northwestern University, reviewed the 2013 scores of nearly 173,000 students in the traditional school district as well as more than 23,000 students in charter schools and a very small group enrolled at contract schools. (Contract schools are run by private organizations under a contract with the Chicago Public Schools system, while charter schools are considered public schools that are run by private entities under a contract with a school district.)

Neoliberalism And The Machinery Of Disposability

April 10, 2014 Henry A. Giroux, www.truth-out.org Educate! Corporatism, Surveillance

Under the regime of neoliberalism, especially in the United States, war has become an extension of politics as almost all aspects of society have been transformed into a combat zone. Americans now live in a society in which almost everyone is spied on, considered a potential terrorist, and subject to a mode of state and corporate lawlessness in which the arrogance of power knows no limits. The state of exception has become normalized. Moreover, as society becomes increasingly militarized and political concessions become relics of a long-abandoned welfare state hollowed out to serve the interest of global markets, the collective sense of ethical imagination and social responsibility toward those who are vulnerable or in need of care is now viewed as a scourge or pathology. What has emerged in this new historical conjuncture is an intensification of the practice of disposability in which more and more individuals and groups are now considered excess, consigned to zones of abandonment, surveillance and incarceration.

Global Ranking Shows US In Rapid Decline

April 9, 2014 CJ Werleman, www.alternet.org Educate! Corporatism, Finance and Economy

If America needed a reminder that it is fast becoming a second-rate nation, and that every economic policy of the Republican Party is wrongheaded, it got one this week with the release of the Social Progress Index (SPI). Harvard business professor Michael E. Porter, who earlier developed the Global Competitiveness Report, designed the SPI. A new way to look at the success of countries, the SPI studies 132 nations and evaluates 54 social and environmental indicators for each country that matter to real people. Rather than measuring a country’s success by its per capita GDP, the index is based on an array of data reflecting suicide, ecosystem sustainability, property rights, access to healthcare and education, gender equality, attitudes toward immigrants and minorities, religious freedom, nutrition, infrastructure and more.

Will ‘Organic’ Mean ‘Organic’

April 5, 2014 Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins , www.organicconsumers.org Educate! Corporatism, Food and Agriculture

The Organic Consumers Association has a long history of defending the integrity of organic standards. Last September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), under pressure from corporate interests represented by the Organic Trade Association, made our job harder. They also made it more important than ever for consumers to do their homework, even when buying USDA certified organic products. Without any input from the public, the USDA changed the way the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) decides which non-organic materials are allowed in certified organic. The change all but guarantees that when the NOSB meets every six months, the list of non-organic and synthetic materials allowed in organic will get longer and longer. The USDA’s new rule plays to the cabal of the self-appointed organic elite who want to degrade organic standards and undermine organic integrity.

More Spin, No Substance On TPP From US Trade Representative

April 4, 2014 Anne Meador, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Corporatism, fast track, TPP

U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman needs a fast track bill to get some important free trade agreements to the President’s desk for signature. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it after he testified about the administration’s trade policy agenda at a House Committee hearing on Thursday. “Our focus is on the substance of the agreements,” he said. “I want to get a TPA built that has broad bipartisan support.” (TPA is Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast track–a bill which empowers the executive to negotiate a trade agreement and limit Congress to an up-or-down vote without amendments.) Thus Froman put the spin on his political strategy: to pretend he’s not avidly pursuing fast track while Republicans do the heavy lifting. Public opposition killed TPA earlier this year, and the U.S. Trade Rep will have to address numerous complaints about the trade agreements before fast track can get back on track.

Tell Obama: ACA’s A Scam. Medicare For All

March 28, 2014 Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Corporatism, Health Care

I have been an outspoken advocate for a Medicare for all health system. During the health reform process, I did all that I could to push for single payer, including being arrested three times for civil disobedience. I was one of fifty doctors who filed a brief in the Supreme Court which expressed opposition to forcing people to buy private health insurance, a defective product. It pains me to see that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) siphons billions of public dollars to create more bureaucracy and transfers hundreds of billions of public dollars directly to the private insurance industry when I know that those dollars should be paying for the health care that so many in our country desperately need. I am currently uninsured, so I have to make a choice. I don’t qualify for Medicaid and I’m too young for Medicare. By law, I am required to buy private insurance or pay a penalty. But I find myself in the position of not being able to do either.

Radical New UN Report On The Right To Food

March 21, 2014 Sonali Kolhatkar, www.truthdig.com Create! Corporatism, Food and Agriculture, Government

In calling for democratic control of our food, De Schutter and Patel are threatening the business interests of some of the world’s largest and wealthiest corporations. Given that De Schutter’s report has been submitted to the highest international representatives of civil society, it has the potential to effect change, but only if there is enough pressure from below. Patel told me the report is “only as good as the mobilization that is able to use it.” Although it provides “ammunition to groups like La Via Campesina in their ongoing fight to be able to democratize the food system,” he warned that there is much work to be done, saying, “we do need to keep organizing and to keep the pressure up and in fact to be dreaming much bigger than we’re allowed to be dreaming by the governments that purport to represent us.”

PHOTOS: Nationwide Protests Against McDonald’s Wage Theft

March 19, 2014 Staff, TheRealNews.com Resist! Corporatism, Poverty, Wage Theft, Worker Rights and Jobs

Fast food strikers in Detroit rally on Tuesday in support of a Michigan-based class action suit filed this week alleging systematic wage theft by McDonalds. The protest is part of a nationwide day of action raising awareness about the problem of wage theft. Community supporter at St. Louis rally. "I was living in my car in a McDonalds parking lot - the McDonalds where I work", said a disabled worker. "My two children were staying with my parents, but I could barely afford to keep them fed. And the whole time, I believe my boss was robbing me." Workers from NYC-based Fast Food Forward make a citizen's arrest of Ronald McDonald for alleged wage theft. In a 2013 poll, over 80 percent of New York City fast food workers reported being victims of wage theft.

Duke Energy Caught Dumping Toxic Waste Into Local Watershed

March 19, 2014 Staff, EarthFirstJournal.org Educate! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture

The revelation comes less than two months after the Dan River disaster, where at least 30,000 tons of coal ash spilled from another of Duke Energy’s toxic coal ash lagoons. The pumping also came just days before a federal grand jury convenes in Raleigh to hear evidence in a criminal investigation of Duke Energy, the North Carolina Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the handling of coal ash. In these revealing stories in Sunday’s New York Times and Monday’s Los Angeles Times, Duke Energy admitted its workers were pumping coal ash wastewater out of a toxic wastewater pond and into a canal which drains into the Cape Fear River. The Cape Fear River is a source of public drinking water for residents in Fayetteville, Sanford, Dunn, Harnett County, Fort Bragg and Wilmington.

It’s Payback Time for McDonald’s!

March 18, 2014 Thom Hartmann www.alternet.com Resist! Corporatism, Human Rights, Solidarity, Worker Rights and Jobs

This is crazy. Doing business in America isn't a right, it's a privilege. Companies get lots of benefits for that privilege, from limitations on their liability and risk, to the ability to pay their executives with options that face a maximum 20 percent tax rate. Their executives can even fly fancy corporate jets and eat $500 dinners and have it all tax-deductible, meaning they're subsidized by working-class taxpayers. To get these privileges, companies should at least conduct themselves to certain minimum standards — like paying their workers a living wage. Right now the only thing in the way of a minimum wage increase are Republicans, who consistently rationalize tax breaks for the rich along with low wages for the working poor by saying that raising the minimum wage will hurt the economy. That’s simply not the case...

Ukraine and the Pathology of the Liberal Worldview: An African American Perspective

March 10, 2014 Ajamu Baraka, www.greenshadowcabinet.us Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Government, Ukraine

... when it comes to crisis situations like extending unemployment benefits to the 1.3 million people who lost them in December or the forced bankruptcy of Detroit, a major city that happens to have an African American majority, or maintaining food assistance for the working class and poor in the form of the food stamp program, elite opinion in both parties has embraced the “common sense” position that significant reductions in public expenditures and services at every level of government are a reasonable and unavoidable necessity. The Times editorial further argued that since President Yanukovych left the Ukrainian treasury bare, the West should provide immediate assistance. But what about the people in Detroit, whose government coffers were left bare as result of the predatory looting by big banks that targeted African American families with sub-prime loans and floating interests rates that resulted in them losing their homes? Where is their relief? And when those same banks seized the properties of more than 100,000 families through foreclosure and then refused to pay property taxes to the city of Detroit—helping to create a fiscal crisis for the city—where was the Federal assistance to replenish the city’s coffers?

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