Corporatism

Obamacare Is Not A Step Toward Single-Payer

January 14, 2014 Gary Lapon, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Corporatism, Health Care, Human Rights

"The ACA isn't a bridge to universal health care. It is a cul-de-sac, structured above all else to maintain the central role of the health care industry in general, and private insurance companies in particular. Achieving universal health coverage and access to care will require dismantling the core of the ACA and replacing it with something else entirely. Making a defense of the ACA in the way the Nation does--as a step in the direction of a single-payer system--cedes ground to the right and is counterproductive to the goal of winning health care as a human right."

Large-Scale Farming Is Iowa’s ‘Breaking Bad’

January 13, 2014 Kamyar Enshayan, www.desmoinesregister.com Educate! Corporatism, Food and Agriculture

As Nick Reading put it in “Methland,” “all drug epidemics are only in part about the drug. Meth is indeed uniquely suited to Middle America, though this is only tangentially related to the idea that it can be made in the sink. Meth’s basic components lie equally in the action of government lobbyists, long-term trends in agricultural and pharmaceutical industries, and the effects of globalization and free trade.” During a conversation over coffee, I asked several friends what enterprise in Iowa would parallel the tragedy portrayed in “Breaking Bad”? To my surprise, without missing a beat, several people independently nominated commodity agriculture and the vast network of global corporations behind it.

Big Data + Big Pharma = Big Money

January 12, 2014 Charles Ornstein, www.propublica.org Educate! Corporatism, Health Care

IMS Health Holdings Inc. says it pulled in nearly $2 billion in the first nine months of 2013, much of it from sweeping up data from pharmacies and selling it to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The firm's revenues in 2012 reached $2.4 billion, about 60 percent of it from selling such information. The numbers became public because IMS, currently in private hands, recently filed to make a public stock offering. Thecompany's prospectus gives fresh insight into the huge dollars – and huge volumes of data – flowing through a little-watched industry. IMS and its competitors are known as prescription drug information intermediaries. Drug company sales representatives, using data these companies supply, can know before entering a doctor's office if he or she favors their products or those of a competitor.

Obama’s Corporate Plantations

January 11, 2014 Mike Whitney, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy

Combatting poverty’ has nothing to do with it. Obama plans to shower the nation’s biggest corporations–which recorded record profits in the last year and are presently sitting on more than $1.3 trillion in cash–with more lavish subsidies and tax breaks while providing an endless source of cheap slave labor to boost future earnings. The president believes that the wealth generated in these profit zones, er, promise zones will trickle down to the area’s residents, even though–as the Christian Science Monitor notes–”it can be hard to tell whether a program’s benefits reach the poorest people, rather than flowing largely into the hands of the business owners who get the tax credits.”

D.C. Coffee Shops Issue ‘Disloyalty Card’ To Take Down Starbucks

January 11, 2014 Arin Greenwood, www.huffingtonpost.org Organize! Coffee, Corporatism

There's an attack on big business in Washington! A half-dozen independent coffee shops in the nation's capital have banded together to lure consumers away from that French-roasted behemoth known as Starbucks. D.C. Disloyalty Card" holders will get a stamp when they visit Peregrine Espresso, Filter, The Coffee Bar, Chinatown Coffee Company, La Mano and the Blind Dog Cafe. Once six stamps are collected, the disloyal card-holder can enjoy a free drink from one of the participating shops. "The card is a fun way to get baristas and customers talking with each other," Dawn Shanks, a Peregrine Espresso barista who helped create the card, told the Washington Post. "It also reflects the connection all the individual shops have with one another -- the coffee community is a supportive and close-knit group."

Plunder Road: CANAMEX And Impact Of NAFTA And TPP

January 11, 2014 Chaparral, www.chaparralrespectsnoborders Resist! CANAMEX, Climate Change, Corporatism, TPP

Opposition to the CANAMEX Corridor is necessary not only because it is a major piece of the physical infrastructure needed to facilitate this trade. Its function in international trade is also used to justify the damage brought by its imposition locally, throughout the corridor. CANAMEX, designated as a High Priority Corridor shortly after NAFTA was implemented, already exists in the form of highways, but requires improvement and expansion to effectively facilitate trade. The trade corridors of North America, CANAMEX being one of them, are extensions of NAFTA. They function as the infrastructure, such as roads, rail, ports, etc., that perpetuates the harms caused by so-called free trade. Among the effects of NAFTA since its implementation have been dramatic unemployment and displacement in Mexico due to subsidized US agricultural products such as corn, and a shift in privatization/ownership of Mexican land by private interests.

World Bank’s Lending Arm Linked To Deadly Honduras Conflict

January 11, 2014 Kate Woodsome, www.huufingtonpost.com Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, World Bank

The World Bank's private lending arm failed to apply its own ethical standards in disbursing millions of dollars to a palm oil company accused of turning a region of Honduras into a war zone, according to an internal bank investigation. The audit, released Friday by the World Bank’s Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, says IFC staff underestimated the social and environmental risks related to the security and land conflict associated with its investment in palm oil giant Corporacion Dinant. The audit and the bank’s response to it are a major test of World Bank President Jim Kim’s pledge to learn from mistakes made in the multi-billion dollar business of providing loans and risk guarantees for IFC private sector projects.

Nafta Failures A Warning To Treat TPP With Caution

January 11, 2014 Peter Huck, www.nzherald.co.nz Educate! Corporatism, TPP

A key step towards the globalised economic system, now the world norm, the pact foreshadowed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), being negotiated by the US with 11 other nations, including New Zealand. Unlike past deals, focused on Adam Smith-style free trade that involved slashing tariffs or barriers, Nafta, like the TPP, was more insidious. Essentially, it opened the door for multinationals to create global supply chains that exploited cheap labour. Furthermore, corporates could use World Bank or UN tribunals to circumvent domestic courts and laws if public interest policies, such as health or environmental laws, threatened profits. The tribunals could order unlimited sums to be paid to compensate litigants. It was a giant step in reducing national sovereignty to facilitate business.

Year-Long Fast Launched For Justice For Bhopal Survivors

January 11, 2014 Reena Shadaan, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Bhopal, Corporatism

One month after Harvard students and community organizations launched a year-long fast in support of the survivors of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, support for their cause is growing.Over 50 people fasted for a day in December and organizers expect hundreds more to join in coming months. “The outpouring of spontaneous support for the fast in the first month has been heart-warming and we hope to build on it as we enter the 30th anniversary year of the disaster”, said Shashank Shukla, a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and one of the organizers of the campaign. On December 3rd, 1984 in Bhopal, India, a lethal explosion at a Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical) pesticide plant in the middle of the city killed 8,000 people instantly and poisoned thousands. 347 tons of hazardous waste still lie at the site, and widespread soil and groundwater contamination has led to high incidence of cancers and birth defects.

NJ Teachers And Students Come Together In Collective Roar

January 9, 2014 DC Media Group, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Corporatism, Education

Local education throughout the US is being decimated by the need to comply with the mandates (and whims) emanating from Washington, DC. The obvious profit-driven shift from independent control to the test/curriculum-based No Child Left Behind (and now Common Core) serves private corporations at the expense of students. A percentage of school funding is now shifted to private profit rather than staying in the schools. The pushback against this shift started as a low rumble, but as the de-professionalization of teaching and commodification of students escalates, communities and teacher groups have come together as a collective roar. DC Media Group has been covering this issue. While it at first appears to be an outside of the beltway issue, there is a single point of protest for this system gone awry and that is the US Department of Education.

The Tasks Of The People-Powered Movement For 2014

January 5, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Strategize! Chelsea Manning, Climate Change, Corporatism, Democracy, Edward Snowden, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Fracking, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Health Care, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, NSA, Occupy, Solidarity, Wars and Militarism, Worker Rights and Jobs

In this stage of movement development, which can take many years, the primary task of the people-powered social movement is to build national consensus through broad and deep grassroots organizing. The power holders are currently in a crisis management mode. They continue to defend their policies while shifting positions and taking countermeasures to undermine people power. During this stage public opinion is shifting, majorities oppose the current situation and are beginning to see that new alternative solutions must be put in place. People-powered activists are in a battle with the power holders for the hearts and minds of super-majorities of the people. We ended our last article with a key point that we need to highlight here: our goal is to build a mass movement, which has the support of super-majorities of Americans and has mobilized up to 3.5% of the population. Therefore, the target of our protests is not the government or a corporation, the target is the people: to educate and mobilize them. We want to show that there is an effective movement speaking to the people’s concerns and putting forth views that they support. We protest the power holders to expose their actions but do not expect them to be capable of addressing our concerns adequately in this stage.

Four Tips To Follow The Money In Your State

January 5, 2014 Andy Kroll, www.truthout.org Educate! Corporatism, Government

Not since the Gilded Age has money dominated American politics as it does today. Untold millions move through political action committees and their steroidal siblings, super PACs, through opaque nonprofit groups run out of PO boxes, much of it intended to keep average voters in the dark about who is influencing their elections. And as the 2014 election year begins, with control of the House of Representatives, the US Senate and 38 governorships at stake, you can expect ever more of this campaign cash — secret and not — flooding into local, state and federal races. As the “dark money” reporter for Mother Jones, it’s my job to shine as much light on this cash bonanza as I can. I do this using every tool and trick at my disposal: databases, experts, plugged-in sources and good old-fashioned door knocking. Here are four easy-to-use tips for following the money in your state — and throwing some sunlight on the mega-donors trying to sway your elections.

Seven Amazing Overpass Light Brigade Videos

January 5, 2014 Overpass Light Brigade, www.buzzfeed.com Resist! Climate Change, Corporatism

One of the coolest sights on a nighttime highway is a Light Brigade message. And the only thing better than stumbling across one of the guerilla grassroots network’s “bridge actions” is seeing it unfold in time-lapse video. Here are seven of our favorites by Dusan Harminc, who has spent some quality time documenting the actions of the Milwaukee-based Overpass Light Brigade (OLB).

UK Protests Grow To Tax To Fund Free Education

January 4, 2014 Steve Rushton, www.occupy.com Resist! Corporatism, Education

“Free education disrupts elitist values within the current state, creating a radical independent space to formulate new questions that critically assess this system,” Katherine Stanley tells me. “But with tuition fees and the increasing privatization of the institution, the government is creating a learning environment where students see studying as a means to future earnings only, [and] in this way the government is reaffirming the current system.” Stanley was a co-organizer of Tent City University, a free and open educational space initiated at Occupy London in the fall of 2011. Now she is a visiting lecturer at a London university. “Corporate funding, together with the institution's growing managerial tier erodes the very idea of free thinking," she continues, and "generationally, over time, this is a disaster for an education that complements a criticality within society. Unless education is made free, innovation and creativity in society as a whole are threatened."

Leaked Email Exposes Bank Of America’s Social Media Spies

January 2, 2014 Mikael Thalen, www.storyleak.com Educate! Corporatism, Surveillance

Published by Washington state activist Andrew Hendricks, the email, dated September 23, 2013, details a conversation between Bank of American’s Global Corporate Security Vice President Kim Triplett-Kolerich, the Washington State Patrol (WSP) and one redacted recipient. Discussing the then upcoming Anonymous “Million Mask March” at the state’s capitol, Kolerich, who previously spent over 25 years in the Washington State Patrol, details the bank’s superior ability to track political groups. “If you find any intel on Anarchists or Occupy Protesters please let me know – I will most likely find it first as Social Media trolling is not what the WSP does best,” Kolerich says. “Bank of America has a team of 20 people and that’s all they do all day and then pass it to us around the country!!”

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