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Corporatism

Fracking Company Made It Rain Toxic Water Upon New Mexico

September 4, 2020 Dahr Jamail, Truthout. , , ,
Penny Aucoin, her husband Carl Dee George, their son Gideon and their daughter Skyler have had their lives devastated by the fracking industry. There was no oil and gas infrastructure where they lived when they moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico. But six years ago, during a massive expansion of drilling across the Permian Basin that spans West Texas and southeastern New Mexico — one of the most prolific oil and gas basins in the United States — the drilling began. It was so loud they had to provide hearing protection for Skyler. Then when the flaring commenced, dead birds began literally falling out of the sky right next to their home, and one of their chickens died.

How Big Corporations Are Draining The Life Out Of A Sick America

September 2, 2020 By Paul Buchheit, Commondreams. , , ,
Our richest corporations are much to blame for the free-market "winner take all" philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to survive without adequate health care and life savings. With the 2017 corporate tax cuts came the lofty assurances that money would be freed up for new investment in jobs and R&D. So what happened? Hypocrisy happened. In the following year, S&P 500 companies set a new record for buying back their stock to artificially boost stock prices for management and investors—a practice that was illegal until the Reagan years. While about a third of S&P companies are now curtailing stock buybacks in response to the pandemic, others have depleted so much of their funds that they have turned to the pandemic-inspired CARES Act for relief to "distressed industries."

Scheer Intelligence: The Revolt Of The Black Athlete

August 28, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN.com and appears regularly on the sports network and NPR. His most recent book “The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism” is about the responsibility often placed upon professional black athletes from Jackie Robinson to LeBron James to be role models for social justice. In their conversation, Bryant tells host Robert Scheer that black athletes often come up against the conflict between their corporate sponsors and their desire for social justice and action.

Scheer Intelligence: Something’s Rotten In The Corporate States Of America

August 21, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Beginning with the slave trade and leading all the way up to the climate crisis, author Barbara Freese’s “Industrial Strength Denial” examines eight of private industries’ most egregious crimes against humanity. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the author and former assistant attorney general of Minnesota joins Robert Scheer to discuss what the host calls “heinous behavior” on the part of the corporations involved in each case, and, most importantly, how the corporatization of the United States has allowed unfettered greed to cause irreversible harm and an astounding loss of life. 

The Infinite Greed, Power And Controls Of Giant Corporations

August 9, 2020 Ralph Nader. , , ,
The combination of greed and power often spin out of control and challenge the enforceable rule of law and the countervailing force of the organized civic community. When greed and power are exercised by giant multinational corporations that escape the discipline of the nation-state, the potential for evil becomes infinite in nature. Enough is never enough. Global giant companies, aided and abetted by their corporate attorneys and accountants, can literally decide how little taxes they are going to pay by shifting profits and expenses among different tax haven countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg, and Panama.

For Egalitarians, A Sudden Sense Of Possibility

August 4, 2020 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. , , ,
Something seems to be in the air these days — besides coronavirus. A hopefulness. A boldness. A conviction that we now have a real opportunity for blunting the corporate power that’s done so much to make the United States the world’s most unequal wealthy nation. How can we seize that opportunity? New reports from two veteran national advocacy groups — Public Citizen and Oxfam America — are offering up a gameplan. Public Citizen released its “blueprint for reform” last week on the tenth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 legislation that tried to clean out the corporate and financial rot that birthed the Great Recession.

How The Fossil Fuel Industry Funds The Police

July 28, 2020 Alexander C. Kaufman, Huff Post. , , ,
Black Americans are one and a half times more likely than white Americans to breathe air polluted by burning fossil fuels, three times more likely to die from the lung and heart diseases that such pollutants cause, and six times more likely to be killed by police.  Those figures have more in common than just the victims. Oil and gas companies, fossil fuel-burning utilities and the banks that fund drilling donate heavily to police departments’ charity foundations, according to a new report published Monday by the anti-corruption watchdog Public Accountability Initiative and the nonprofit research database LittleSis.

How Big Telecom Smothers City-Run Broadband

July 21, 2020 Allan Holmes, The Center for Public Integrity. , , ,
Janice Bowling, a 67-year-old grandmother and Republican state senator from rural Tennessee, thought it only made sense that the city of Tullahoma be able to offer its local high-speed Internet service to areas beyond the city limits. After all, many of her rural constituents had slow service or did not have access to commercial providers, like AT&T Inc. and Charter Communications Inc. But a 1999 Tennessee law prohibits cities that operate their own Internet networks from providing access outside the boundaries where they provide electrical service. Bowling wanted to change that and introduced a bill in February to allow them to expand. She viewed the network, which offers speeds about 80 times faster than AT&T and 10 times faster than Charter in Tullahoma according to advertised services, as a utility, like electricity, that all Tennesseans need.

How Corporations Bankroll US Police Foundations

June 20, 2020 Gin Armstrong and Derek Seidman, Eyes on the Ties. , , ,
As calls to defund the police gain traction, bloated police budgets are coming under scrutiny for siphoning public resources away from black and brown communities. While police budgets are typically public documents that must be approved by elected officials, there are other institutions in place with the sole purpose of funneling even more resources toward law enforcement.  Police foundations across the country are partnering with corporations to raise money to supplement police budgets by funding programs and purchasing tech and weaponry for law enforcement with little public oversight. Annual fundraising events and parties like the St. Paul Police Foundation’s “Blue Nite Gala” and the Chicago Police Foundation’s “True Blue” event are huge moneymakers.

Covid-19 Profiteers Are Making A Killing

May 26, 2020 By Amber Colón Núñez, In These Times. , , ,
It’s clear that the 1% are playing by an entirely different set of rules. Profiteering on Covid began almost as soon as the crisis hit. In March, third-party sellers on Amazon began jacking up the prices on hand sanitizer. Sniffing out the opportunity for a windfall, profiteers bought out scarce supplies at grocery stores and resold them at exorbitant rates. It wasn’t long before Amazon curtailed the practice by banning new listings for masks and sanitizer. But Amazon happily continued to turn its own profit: The company’s earnings increased by $33 million every hour of the first quarter, even as its warehouses suffered coronavirus outbreaks and workers walked out over unsafe conditions. Bezos, the world’s richest man, has accumulated an additional $25 billion since the beginning of this year, putting him on track to become the first-ever trillionaire.

EPA’s ‘Secret Science’ Rule Meets With An Outpouring Of Protest

May 20, 2020 Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News. , , ,
As the deadline approached for public comment on a controversial "transparency" rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, 39 top scientific organizations and academic institutions joined together on Monday to warn that if finalized, the regulation would greatly diminish the role of science in decisions affecting the environment and the health of Americans. In a letter submitted to the EPA, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society, and a wide array of other professional groups and universities, strongly opposed the rule, which they said is "not about strengthening science, but about undermining the ability of the EPA to use the best available science in setting policies and regulations." 

Private Prison Sues State For Not Having Enough Prisoners

May 13, 2020 Es Fein, Wondergressive. , , ,
A private prison in Arizona recently sued the state for having a lack of prisoners. For the sake of saving over $16 million in back pay, the state settled by paying the private prison $3 million.  Arizona essentially payed a company $3 million because not enough people are committing crimes. To be fair, it’s a bit more complex than that. In July, 2010 three violent inmates escaped from an Arizona private prison, which prompted officials to stop sending new inmates to the facility. I say good job to the officials for demanding better performance from Management & Training Corp., the company that runs the prison. Unfortunately, a line in the company’s contract with the state guarantees that the prison is at least 97% full at all times.  They sued on grounds that the breach of contract caused a dramatic loss in revenue.

The White Lobby: When The U.S. Was Sanctions-Buster Extraordinaire

May 7, 2020 Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.), Popular Resistance. , , , ,
The bullet holes were what stuck with me.  I visited the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina during the summer of 2016, at the head of the West Point civil rights history staff ride - a two week trip across the American South for select cadets in my classes.  It had only been a year since the young white supremacist Dylan Roof had murdered nine people at the famed historically black church.  So it was eery to attend the very same evening prayer session that he’d shot up and glimpse the persistent pocked marked evidence on the walls.  Much was later made of Roof’s web posts, particularly his ubiquitous photos with Confederate iconography.  These set off a welcome national debate on the display of the secessionist battle flag and other southern civil war symbols. 

Rich Peasants, Poor Peasants And ‘Mom-and-Pop Landlords’

May 4, 2020 David Rovics. , , ,
In the course of the evolving patchwork of rent strikes happening right now across the US, there is suddenly a lot of talk in the press about how much the landlords are hurting. The landlords, of course, own the press, control the federal government, run all fifty states, and have a stranglehold on most of the city councils, so this shouldn't come as a surprise. My landlord, an investment company called the Randall Group that owns hundreds of residential and commercial properties up and down the west coast, reacted to the rise of a pandemic and the lockdown of the country by raising our rent, as they do every year, bringing it now to exactly 150% what it was when we moved in, in 2007. Back when I made much more money, as a touring musician in the era when people still bought CDs, when we moved in here, the rent was $500 a month.

Corona Capitalism In Honduras

April 27, 2020 By Karen Spring and Judy Ancel, Labor Notes. , , ,
Residents of Choloma, an industrial town in northern Honduras, blocked the main highway connecting the city of San Pedro Sula to the Port of Cortes on April 10. Choloma and nearby towns are the center of sweatshop production for U.S. brands in factories called maquilas. They are also the epicenter of COVID-19 in Honduras. The workers blocking the road that morning burned tires, put up barricades, and demanded the government give them the food they had been promised. A worker demonstrating in Choluteca in southern Honduras told the Honduran media outlet UNE-TV, “They told us they’d be here at seven this morning with food, but no one came. We’re hungry. There are 70 villages waiting for food.” Since mid-March hundreds of thousands of workers in these towns have been laid off as clothing manufacturers Hanes, Gildan, and Fruit of the Loom and auto parts maker Empire Electronics, among others, announced two- to four-month shutdowns.
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