Corruption

From Appalachia To Germany: Anti-Capitalist Trees, People Power & Systemic Corruption

October 11, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Appalachia, Capitalism, Corruption, Germany

On the front lines of the fight against dirty energy – worldwide. First up, some great news from West Virginia and Virginia – taking time to celebrate these victories while taking a look at the corrupted agencies playing into the hands of big oil and gas. Next, a powerful weekend in the Hambach Forest of Germany – where the fight against the world's dirtiest fossil fuel continues on a large and creative scale.

Trump And The Dynasty Defense Industry

October 6, 2018 By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org Educate! Corruption, New Economy, Ruling Class, Trump Administration

There is little that’s shocking in the latest New York Times expose, which revealed Donald Trump and his family were handed hundred million dollar inheritances as they schemed to avoid taxes. Despite Trump’s boast to being a self-made billionaire, he was “born on third base,” inheriting a real estate empire from his father along with connections and other forms of social capital. We can speculate as to how much of this self-made myth is self-deception, brand-building, or amnesia. Previous research shows that Trump benefited from loans and financial connections to his father’s real estate empire.

The Wealth Hiding In Your Neighborhood

September 13, 2018 By Chuck Collins, Otherwords.org Educate! Corruption, Money, Ruling Class, Uneven Development

You’ve probably heard about their offshore bank accounts, shell corporations, and fancy trusts. But this wealth isn’t all sitting in the Cayman Islands or Panama. Much of it’s hiding in plain view: maybe even in your town. America’s big cities are increasingly dotted with luxury skyscrapers and mansions. These multi-million dollar condos are wealth storage lockers, with the ownership often obscured by shell companies. In Boston, where I live, there’s a luxury building boom. According to a study I just co-authored, out of 1,805 luxury units — with an average price of over $3 million — more than two-thirds are owned by people who don’t live here. One-third are owned by shell companies and trusts that mask their ownership. And of these units, 40 percent are limited liability companies (LLCs) organized in Delaware.

Taxpayers Are Footing The Bill For Sky-High CEO Salaries

September 4, 2018 By Sam Pizzigati, Otherwords.org Educate! CEO, Corporations, Corruption, Taxes

Politicians often gab about the “private sector” and the “public sector,” as if these two categories of economic activity operated as two completely separate worlds. In reality, these two sectors have always been deeply intertwined. How deeply? Every year, the federal government spends about half a trillion dollars buying goods and services from the private sector. State and local government contracts with private-sector enterprises add hundreds of billions more. And private-sector companies don’t just receive contracts from our governmental entities. They receive all sorts of subsidies — billions upon billions of dollars in “corporate welfare.” Where do all these dollars come from? They come from us, America’s taxpayers. Without the tax dollars we provide, almost every major corporation in the United States would flounder.

How SLAPP Lawsuits Are Letting Corporations Steal The Truth

September 1, 2018 Matt Stannard, Occupy.com Resist! Class Struggle, Corporations, Corruption, Lawsuit

All his life, Pete Kolbenschlag has been fighting for the Commons against wealthy people and corporations who want to own and destructively exploit nature. “Change happens all the time,” he told me, “and will long after you have shed the mortal coil. Shape what you can now in a positive direction.” Pete was my best friend's housemate when I first met him 20-ish years ago in Salt Lake City. He was already a troublemaker, heading up major environmental actions in Utah and networking with activists and organizations around the West. He lives in Colorado now, and runs Mountain West Strategies, providing support to groups struggling to protect land and natural resources in Rocky Mountain states. He’s still a troublemaker.

Engineers Say “No Thanks” To Silicon Valley Recruiters, Citing Ethical Concerns

August 29, 2018 By Jeremy Hsu, Spectrum.ieee.org Resist! Corporations, Corruption, Silicon Valley, Technology

Anna Geiduschek usually has no time to respond to recruitment emails that arrive in her inbox each week. But Geiduschek, a software engineer at Dropbox, recently made a point of turning down an Amazon Web Services recruiter by citing her personal opposition to Amazon’s role in hosting another tech company’s service used by U.S. government agents to target illegal immigrants for detention and deportation. "I'm sure you're working on some very exciting technical problems over there at AWS [Amazon Web Services], however, I would never consider working for Amazon until you drop your AWS contract with Palantir," Geiduschek wrote in her email response, which she shared on Twitter. Tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have faced growing internal unrest from employees who raise ethical concerns about how the companies deploy their high-tech services and products.

Monsanto’s Loss Is Our Gain—Let’s Make The Most Of It

August 15, 2018 Katherine Paul, Organicconsumers.org Organize! Cancer, Corruption, Courts, Monsanto

Thank you to the 12 jurors who listened attentively and critically, during long days of testimony, then deliberated with care, and ultimately did the right thing. Thank you to the lawyers who invested countless hours in investigative work and trial preparation, and who argued rationally and intelligently on behalf of the plaintiff, science and ethics. Thank you to those media outlets and advocacy organizations who covered the case, pored over the “Monsanto Papers” and took seriously their obligation to inform the public. But most of all, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, the plaintiff in the Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto case. For his persistence in getting to the bottom of what caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Lawsuit Confronts Extortion Of Prisoners By Electronic Monitoring Firm

August 8, 2018 By Emmett Sanders and James Kilgore, Truthout.org Educate! Corruption, Courts, Lawsuit, Prison Industrial Complex

Robert Jackson was four days into a 120-day sentence in an Alameda County, California, jail when his wife passed away unexpectedly, leaving their three young children without a parent in the home. He was compassionately released with the caveat that he submit to electronic monitoring by the for-profit Leaders in Community Alternatives (LCA) company. Though his weekly paycheck was $400-$500, his weekly monitoring fees to LCA came to $250 per week — 50-65 percent of his total income. He ultimately paid around $4,500 for 113 days of monitoring, while being repeatedly threatened with violation and jail if he didn’t pay — something that would have left his children without a parent and at the mercy of the state. Jackson was forced to sell his car and eventually had to give up his apartment — leaving him homeless — just so he could pay off LCA.

Monsanto Pays Harvard Wizard $100k To Perform Statistical Magic Show For Jury

August 8, 2018 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Kevin Baum, Organicconsumers.org Educate! Corruption, Courts, Harvard, Monsanto

Despite its impressive name, the HSPH has earned an unsavory reputation for taking rich contributions from polluters in exchange for producing scientific “research” that fortifies corporate profit-taking. Big Tobacco, the chemical industry, Detroit automakers, corporate food processors, and industrial meat and grain barons have all turned to HSPH for corporate-friendly science anointed with the imprimatur of the Harvard name. HSPH’s iconic founder, Fredrick Stare, proudly bore the sobriquet “Mr. Sugar” for his adamant defense of a sugar-only diet. Stare’s sweet tooth garnered HSPH millions of dollars in research grants from Kellogg’s, General Mills and Coca-Cola. In exchange for soda industry lucre, Stare obligingly provided the scientific conclusion that a cold Coke was “a healthy between-meals snack.”

Stop Warehousing Wealth In Charity Funds

August 3, 2018 By Chuck Collins and Helen Flannery, Inequality.org Educate! Corruption, Crime, Greed, Ruling Class, Wealth

Over the years, the IPS Program on Inequality and the Common Good has examined the ways that extreme inequality effects philanthropy. In 2016, IPS published the report Gilded Giving: Top Heavy Philanthropy in an Age of Extreme Inequality, which looked at the rise of mega-donors and the decline of small-dollar donors, and the risks of both for a democratic society. In that report, IPS briefly examined the rise of donor-advised funds (DAFs) as a mechanism for holding funds for later donations. At that time, in 2015, the largest recipient of charitable donations in the U.S. was the United Way, an enormous public charity that had traded that top spot back and forth with the American Red Cross for decades.

EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Encouraged Oil Executives To Apply For Top Agency Jobs

June 27, 2018 By Zahra Hirji, Buzzfeed.com Educate! Corruption, EPA, Oil

At Pruitt’s prompting, a ConocoPhillips official sent the EPA résumés of two people to be considered for regional directors of the agency. A month after starting as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt made a recruiting “plea” to top executives at the American Petroleum Institute, a major oil and gas trade group, according to internal emails obtained by BuzzFeed News. “I understand that Administrator Pruitt met with the API executives last week and he made a plea for candidates to fill some of the regional director positions within the agency,” Kevin Avery, manager of federal government affairs at oil company ConocoPhillips, wrote in a March 27, 2017, email to Samantha Dravis, then a top EPA aide. “One of our employees has expressed interest. He is polishing up his resume. Where does he need to send it?”

California Lawmakers Accused Of ‘Corruption’ After Gutting Net Neutrality Bill

June 22, 2018 Dell Cameron, Gizmodo.com Resist! California, Corruption, Electoral Politics, Legislation, Net Neutrality

The effort to pass a strong open internet law in California was killed off Wednesday morning by a handful of state legislators in a process described by many net neutrality advocates as corrupt and undemocratic. Members of California’s Communications and Conveyance Committee, led by Democratic Chairman Miguel Santiago, eviscerated the text of SB 822, a bill that digital rights advocates had once labeled the “gold standard” for state-level net neutrality laws. Gutting amendments to the bill were disclosed by the committee after 10pm last night and were voted on moments after Wednesday’s hearing began with no debate.

Feds Cherry-Pick Data To Force Pipelines Through Poor Communities

June 13, 2018 Sophie Yeo, Psmag.com Educate! Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Corruption, Data, EPA, FERC, Pipelines

The government's energy regulator is facing allegations of cherry-picking data to approve pipeline projects that would disproportionately harm communities of color. According to academics, attorneys, and non-governmental organizations, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission used unreliable statistical methods in its analysis of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, masking its high cost to African-American and Native-American communities. While the Commission concluded that the pipeline poses no environmental justice concerns, these minority groups say that their environment, health, and culture will be disproportionately imperiled if the development goes ahead as planned. FERC faced similar accusations over the Sabal Trail pipeline in 2016, indicating a pattern in how the federal government manages to force unwelcome energy infrastructure through vulnerable communities.

How The Fossil Fuel Industry Creates A Fake Grassroots

June 1, 2018 By Greta Jochem, Grist.org Educate! Corruption, Fossil Fuels

Over the past several months, scores of people showed up to public meetings in New Orleans in support of building a natural-gas power plant. It turns out that as many as 100 of them were paid to be there. The Lens, an investigative news site, recently reported that people were paid $60 to attend and $200 to speak. Entergy, the company behind the power plant, said that it hadn’t authorized the payments, but it did take some responsibility. After an internal investigation, the company said that it had contracted with a public affairs firm, the Hawthorn Group, which then subcontracted another group, Crowds on Demand, to hire the supporters. Grist called and emailed Entergy for a comment and has yet to get a response.

Call To Disband Baltimore Police Department In Wake Of Abuses

May 20, 2018 Lawrence Brown, Baltimore Beat. Create! Baltimore, Corruption, Police Abolition, Police abuse

After the DOJ report, the Baltimore Police Department did not fundamentally change. They continued to have a “War Room” and were found to have engaged in secret aerial surveillance, facial scanning, and using Geofeedia and Zerofox to track activists on social media. They have secretly deployed a device called Stingray to capture all cell phone signals in an area effectively criminalizing entire communities, especially disinvested, redlined Black neighborhoods. Hence, the Baltimore Police Department is fundamentally a white supremacist organization that hurts Black Lives.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources