Category Archives: Corporations

Supreme Injustice.

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The Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon et al v Federal Election Commission is the next step in our march from democracy to plutocracy allowing the rich to dominate our political system even more than they already have. In a series of 5-4 decisions with “conservatives” in the majority, the Court has ruled that money equals free speech; that corporations are people (at least with regard to political contributions); and that there can be no limits on the amount of money the ruling class can spend on elections.

For many years, wealthy individuals and large corporations have enjoyed greater influence and access to elected representatives than ordinary citizens. With this ruling, the wealthy will be able to literally buy them. The Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelman are already spending billions through a complex network of Political Action Committees and Super PACs in order to sway our elections. Now they and other billionaires will be unleashed to spend monumental sums to elect candidates that will allow them to control Congress.

It’s fitting that this Supreme Court ruling comes on the heels of the death of Charles Keating, Jr. A financier and developer who was a friend of Ronald Reagan, Keating was indicted in the savings and loan scandal that cost the federal government billions. Prior to the failure of his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, he contributed $1.3 million to the election campaigns of five US Senators in order to buy their influence to help fend off federal regulators. After Lincoln eventually failed, Keating was charged and convicted of 73 counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. Although his conviction was later overturned, he eventually admitted to four counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud.

Given this latest Supreme Court ruling, there are likely to be many more Charles Keatings – those who will use their money to control tax laws; to fend off federal regulators; to eliminate regulations altogether; to scam the government and ordinary people; and to buy their way out of any legal challenges.

It has often been said that elections have consequences. It’s true. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that our democracy is now suffering the consequences of a Supreme Court majority hell-bent on unraveling our Constitution and placing us at the mercy of a government run by a privileged few…a majority given lifetime appointments by Republican presidents.

Do Religious Beliefs Trump Scientific Facts And The Common Good?

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Can a for-profit corporation have religious beliefs? If so, who defines the corporation’s beliefs? Is it the CEO? The Board of Directors? The shareholders? Do the corporation’s religious beliefs out-weigh those of its employees? If so, are there any limits on those beliefs? May the corporation cite those beliefs in denying service to customers? What constitutes a religion? What constitutes a sincerely held religious belief?

These are just a few of the questions at stake in the case now being considered by the Supreme Court of the United States.

As you most certainly know, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood have filed suit claiming that their religious beliefs should exempt them from complying with the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employer-provided insurance policies provide access to contraceptives. Both corporations claim that, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, IUDs, Plan B and several other types of female contraceptives are not mere preventatives. They consider them forms of abortion, which is forbidden by their religions.

The purpose of government – any government – is to solve conflicts of individual rights. When these rights are in conflict, it is left to the government and its courts to decide where one’s rights stop and another’s begin. For example, I enjoy the peace and quiet of the forest. You enjoy driving your loud ATV in the forest. We both have a right to our happiness, so whose rights prevail? It is precisely because of such conflicts that we have laws and regulations.

But, what if, instead of conflicting rights, we have conflicting beliefs? For example, I believe that science can prove our world and all its creatures are the products of evolution taking place over millions of years. Others believe that God created the world in six days. We can each hold to our beliefs without causing harm to the other. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, in this case, your beliefs neither break my arm nor pick my pocket.

But in the Hobby Lobby case, the female employees can legitimately claim damages if the corporation refuses to include contraceptives as part of the health insurance plan. The women’s health needs will be treated differently than other employees’. They will have to pay out of pocket to purchase contraceptives, even if those pharmaceuticals are needed for medical purposes, not pregnancy prevention. Does the application of the drug and the need factor into the religious beliefs of the corporation? If so, does the corporation get to decide when it will and won’t pay for the pharmaceuticals? Can the corporation demand a review of its employees’ medical records?

And what if a corporation founded by Christian Scientists decides that none of its employees should have health care at all…that they should simply pray, instead? What if that corporation considers the resulting tax is an infringement on its beliefs? What if a corporation cites religious beliefs in order to deny employment or service to women, gays, Jews, African-Americans, Latinos, tall people, short people, or fat people? What if a hospital or clinic decides to subject patients to a religious test before acting to save their lives? It has taken centuries for our nation to extend the rights guaranteed by our Founders in the Constitution to all of our citizens, and there are still many inequities.

If the Court allows people and corporations to treat others differently based on mere beliefs, the disparities and conflicts will never end.

We Can’t Afford That Anymore.

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Whenever someone proposes rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, improving schools, funding research for chronic diseases, helping the unemployed, treating the mentally ill, paying pension obligations to public employees, etc., our politicians are quick to say that we can’t afford those things anymore.

Say what? The richest nation on Earth can’t afford to meet the needs of its own citizens?

In reality, it’s not that the US lacks the money to do these things. The federal budget for FY 2014 is $6.3 trillion and, for most Americans, our tax rates as a percentage of income are near all-time lows! So it’s not a lack of money. It’s a matter of priorities. We always seem to have money for military hardware and military interventions around the globe. It’s estimated that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost $6 trillion. It costs us $2.1 million per year to maintain just one soldier in Afghanistan, and current plans call for leaving up to 20,000 troops in Afghanistan after our “withdrawal.” Yet, some of the biggest budget hawks in Congress are calling for a larger presence in Afghanistan, military intervention in Syria, as well as confrontation in Crimea and the Ukraine. Some even hint at war with Iran.

Is it any wonder that we can’t afford to maintain our own nation?

These same budget hawks voted to dramatically expand funding for the F-35 jet fighter which is years behind schedule and hopelessly over budget. They even added funding to build more Abrams tanks, despite the fact that neither the Army nor the Marine Corps want them. As a result of such decisions, we will spend $820.2 billion on defense in FY 2014, not including Homeland Security. This money is not needed to defend our nation. It’s needed to maintain the American corporate empire; to maintain US control of resources in remote corners of the world; to maintain US access to Middle Eastern oil deposits; to maintain corporate access to global markets and to open new ones; to maintain massive profits and executive compensation.

Yet studies show that most Americans would rather bring our troops home. They would rather rebuild our own nation than one we bombed into submission. So why don’t our Congressional representatives listen? Why do so many continue to vote against the will of the people?

The answer, in a word, is money.

Large corporate interests take money from ordinary, hard-working people through various forms of scams and corporate subsidies. (You’ll find a great example detailed in a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi linked here.) This leads to increased profits. The corporations then give a portion of that money to the election campaigns of politicians in order to buy access and influence. In return, those politicians pass laws to benefit the corporations. And the cycle starts all over again.

On the rare occasions when the politicians take their hands out of the pockets of their corporate sponsors, they pass laws to deregulate industries; to render the EPA and other regulatory agencies impotent; to increase welfare for large corporations while cutting their taxes; to privatize prisons, schools and public pension funds; to cut funding for parks, mental health facilities, public universities and public schools; to redirect taxpayer money to Wall Street hedge funds. All the while, they blame the nation’s resulting economic problems on labor unions, the unemployed and the working poor. To distract the public from their crimes, these fraudster politicians tell us that their actions are necessary to cut debt and create jobs.

What they don’t say is that the only jobs they’re concerned with are their own.

Illusion Of Justice.

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Since the founding of our nation, Americans have always taken pride in our rule of law.  In civics class we learned that this was what distinguished our country from others; that it provided protection from unreasonable search and seizures; that it guaranteed us a quick and fair hearing before a jury of our peers; that it protected individuals from power grabs by government; and that it gave our citizens a non-violent way of settling conflicts. As our nation expanded westward, communities took pride in instituting the rule of law by hiring marshalls, creating courts, ending vigilantism and restricting the carrying of guns. Such things were considered the necessities of polite society.

Now we seem determined to return to the lawless days of the Wild West.

The National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers it represents have written and pushed laws to encourage the carrying and the use of guns. It is now legal to carry guns in virtually every state. They have pushed for and passed the so-called Stand Your Ground laws that allowed George Zimmerman to go free after shooting a black teenager who was “armed” with a bag of Skittles and an angry white guy to get away with murder because he didn’t like a teen’s music. Most recently, a retired cop has invoked the Stand Your Ground defense after shooting a fellow movie-goer following an argument in which he claimed threatened after a bag of popcorn was thrown at him.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), aided by GOP legislators have written and passed laws requiring states to privatize prisons despite their increased costs. Our state legislators have passed laws requiring lengthy sentences for non-violent crimes. At the same time, our government continues to wage a war on drugs that has sentenced drug users to lengthy prison terms. The result is to turn prisoners into profits, proving that crime pays – for corporations.

ALEC and its GOP servants have passed anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 requiring local law enforcement to check papers in order to fill the private prison facilities with immigrants whose only crime was to cross an invisible border in search of work to support their families. Now the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is pushing to defund the department that defends immigrants from detention or deportation to further pack corporate-owned prisons.

Misinformed conservative voters elect people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio despite his many instances of using his position to racially profile individuals, to prioritize the arrest of hard-working immigrants while ignoring cases of violent crimes, and to use his office to harrass, intimidate, bully and incarcerate those who disagree with him. And Sheriff Joe is not alone. Each year, there are hundreds of cases from across the country in which law enforcement officers have abused their power. Unfortunately, most of these cases are never pursued because the victims are minorities and lack the video evidence and money to pursue justice.

In the US today, money is often the key predictor of sentencing. White color crimes, such as those committed by the mortgage lenders and hedge fund managers who crashed our economy in 2008, are seldom prosecuted. (Not a single person has been tried and convicted from one of the biggest thefts in world history.) When they are prosecuted, teams of high-priced lawyers are often able to get their clients acquitted. But poor people, especially minorities, can’t afford such representation. Usually, they’re appointed a public defender and offered a plea bargain. Is it any wonder, then, that minorities represent 60 percent of our prisoners, while accounting for only 30 percent of our population? And, according to a survey requested by Frontline, in the 20 states that have Stand Your Ground laws, whites are 354 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person.

With such statistics, it has become increasingly apparent that justice is becoming more of an illusion in the US than reality.

The Costs Of Deregulation.

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For nearly 40 years, those politicians who represent big business have been pushing an agenda of deregulation. They want to “get the government out of the way of business.” And they have been amazingly successful.

Since the push for deregulation began, we have deregulated airlines resulting in lost service, rising airfares for many, the demise of regional airlines and the mergers of the few remaining large airlines. We have deregulated commodities resulting in the run-up of costs for everything from electricity and precious metals to oil and grains. We have deregulated banking resulting in predatory loans by banks that are considered too big to fail.

Even for those industries that have not yet been deregulated, we have seen a series of coal ash spills, chemical spills, oil spills, manure spills, fertilizer explosions and mining disasters. We have seen Medicaid and Medicare fraud, abuse in private prisons, tax fraud, commodities fraud, and, of course, the worst economic disaster since 1929…the collapse of our banking system.

Our corporations have imported flammable clothing made in sweatshops overseas. They have imported toys colored with lead paints that are poisonous to children. We have seen the poisoning of our food system by corporations that cruelly confine animals in small cages then pump them full of antibiotics to offset the inevitable danger of diseases. We have seen thousands of consumers poisoned with carelessly handled meats, fish, fruits and vegetables. We have even seen our pets poisoned with pet foods containing uninspected ingredients from overseas.

Despite a growing trend of corporate negligence, fraud and abuse, we hear the constant drumbeat of Teapublicans screaming “over-regulation!” They claim that government oversight and litigation is costing American jobs. They want to give corporations access to the world’s most environmentally sensitive areas in order to extract oil and minerals while leaving behind a toxic wasteland of poisons and destruction. They want to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic Ocean and along our entire coasts. They want to permit a foreign-owned mining company to extract uranium from the Grand Canyon. They want to permit a foreign-owned oil company to transport the world’s most toxic oil across the length of our nation. They want…they just want.

Even as this is being written, the corporate tools otherwise known as the Republican Party have a case before the United States Supreme Court that would emasculate the Environmental Protection Agency…an agency that is underfunded and overburdened by the callous actions of greedy corporations. If the Republican Party and its Tea Party Parasites have their way, they will not only render the EPA mute. They will further weaken the USDA by allowing meatpackers as well as fruit and vegetable packers to self-inspect their produce. They are already in the process of passing laws forbidding unauthorized recordings of the mistreatment of animals and the mishandling of produce.

There is nothing inherently evil about corporations. Many are socially-aware and contribute a great deal to our society besides jobs. But far too many are only concerned with their bottom lines and will trade long-term consequences for short-term profits. Further reducing or eliminating our watchdog agencies will benefit no one except corporate shareholders.

Illusion Of Democracy.

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The passage of SB 1062 by the Arizona legislature and subsequent veto by Governor Brewer drew national attention. But there’s one aspect of the incident that has gone largely overlooked…the fact that the legislation was not written by an Arizona legislator. It was written by a national stink tank, Alliance Defending Freedom and pushed by the ultra-right wing Center for Arizona Policy. In fact, most state legislation is no longer authored by legislators. The bills are written by lawyers working for the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, lobbyists for large corporations, the National Rifle Association and other conservative stink tanks.

Is it any wonder, then, that our Congress and our legislatures don’t seem to represent the will of the people?

The system of state legislators and congressmen sponsoring bills written by outsiders gives the illusion of representation. But the bills are written for the benefit of a few and to push a narrow ideology. They seldom benefit the majority. For example, the Iowa House recently passed a bill to legalize silencers for guns. How many Iowans will that benefit? The Ohio legislature passed a bill limiting voting hours. How many voters will that benefit? Other states have passed strict voter ID laws despite a lack of in-person voter fraud. The result will be to prevent many of the poor and the elderly from voting. Who will that benefit?

As a result of gerrymandering, issues with voter registration and the dark money used for campaign finance, a study by the non-partisan Electoral Integrity Project as reported by The Washington Post now ranks the US 26th in the world for electoral integrity and worst of all Western nations. And the situation will only get worse if Republicans and their stink tanks continue to push bills intended to rig elections.

How do we stop this blatant takeover of our democracy? Here’s an idea: Let’s ask candidates to reject any bills written by outsiders. Let’s demand that they solve problems for the majority of their constituents. Let’s treat all bills designed to limit civil rights with the same outrage as that for SB 1062. Let’s threaten to boycott states that pass such laws. Let’s refuse to do business with corporations that have co-opted our democracy.

Let’s make our votes count while we still have them.

Five Times The Distance. Five Times The Spills?

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The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline is puzzling on many fronts. We hear that the pipeline will create jobs (although the number has been greatly exaggerated); that it’s safer than transporting oil by train; that it will lessen US dependency on foreign oil. Disregarding the fact that oil from the Alberta tar sands is foreign oil and the fact that most of the oil will be shipped to foreign markets, I have yet to hear anyone address the most obvious issue. The Alberta tar sands are located roughly 2,300 miles from the pipeline’s ultimate destination on the Gulf Coast. Yet the tar sands are just over 400 miles from the Pacific Ocean near Vancouver.

That’s more than five times as far, offering five times the opportunity for oil spills.

Even more puzzling is the fact that there is already a pipeline from the tar sands to Vancouver. If it doesn’t have the capacity to carry as much oil as Trans-Canada would like, why not increase its size? To equal the distance of the Keystone XL pipeline, they could increase the capacity of their Trans Mountain pipeline five-fold and eliminate the political conflict with their neighbor to the south. Instead, the Canadian company is asking US citizens to assume the risks of oil spills on our own pristine lands with few benefits to offset the risk.

This oil is even worse than the gooey, toxic stuff that has already despoiled our Gulf Coast. It’s even more toxic. Moreover, no one yet knows how to clean up the stuff. We’ve already experienced two spills of tar sands oil in US rivers and the so-called oil experts have no advice to offer other than to let it sink to the bottom. Worse yet, when the stuff is refined, one of the by-products is a fine, toxic dust that pollutes the entire surrounding area.

Seriously, Canada, I admire your country. I love your scenic beauty. I love your cosmopolitan cities. I love your people. But if you want to develop your tar sands deposits, you will reap the rewards. You should also reap the consequences.

Arizona Receives A Jolt Of Reality.

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In a rare moment of clarity, Governor Jan Brewer vetoed Arizona’s anti-gay legislation disguised as a “religious freedom” bill. But don’t get the idea that Brewer had an epiphany of tolerance and inclusiveness. What she had was the commercial equivalent of electro-shock therapy. Not only had some of Arizona’s largest corporations – American Airlines, Intel and PetSmart, urged her to veto the bill. So did Apple, which recently agreed to open a plant in the state.

But the group that delivered the biggest jolt was the NFL Super Bowl committee which told her that they were exploring options to move next year’s Super Bowl from the Cardinal’s stadium in Glendale.

I’m guessing that our bleached blonde finger-wagger couldn’t reach for her veto pen fast enough!

So now it will be up to another deep red state to carry forward the Alliance Defending Religion hate bill known as SB 1062. But lest you think that this experience will be enough to bring the Arizona legislature to its senses, I encourage you to look at the steaming pile of bills still stinking up the statehouse. There are enough anti-federal government, anti-abortion, anti-environment, anti-wildlife, anti-voting rights, anti-civil rights, anti-education, anti-science, pro-Christian, and pro-gun bills to give the most ideological right winger an orgasm.

Arizona is a state of great natural beauty and warm weather. But the best part of visiting the state as a tourist is knowing that you don’t have to stay.

Unreasonable Trade-Offs.

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After seeing a headline by David Suzuki “Trading Water for Fuel is Fracking Crazy,” I started thinking about all of the trade-offs we’re being asked to make.  Yes, as Suzuki points out, we are being asked to trade the purity of fresh water in our aquifers that took hundreds and thousands of years to accumulate for the profits of gas and oil companies through the use of toxic chemicals for fracking.

And that’s only one of the trade-offs we’re being asked to make in order to benefit big business.

We’re being asked to trade the beauty of the Appalachians and the area’s pristine waters for the profits of the coal industry through the use of mountaintop removal mining. We’re asked to trade the natural taste and nutrition of fresh fruits and vegetables for the profits of Monsanto, Walmart and large agribusiness companies by allowing the increased use of herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) seeds. We’re asked to trade the effectiveness of life-saving antibiotics by allowing large cattle feeders, hog growers and poultry growers to increase profits by adding antibiotics to animal feeds.

In order to increase profits for manufacturers, we’re asked to purchase products made overseas that could be made by workers in the US. So that large corporations can pay employees less than a liveable wage, we are asked to help their employees with food stamps, child care and other safety net programs. In order to increase the profits of corporations, we are asked to lower their income taxes and increase ours.  In order to help billionaires avoid paying income taxes, we are asked to give them a large array of tax breaks, including greatly reduced capital gains taxes.

And, in what is probably the most questionable trade-off of all, we are asked to ignore the very real long-term consequences of climate change for the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

All of these trade-offs and their consequences are avoidable. We simply need the will to change the way we allow corporations to operate. We should demand that they pay for all of the costs of their actions. And that the cost of government subsidies, including the costs to our environment and our health, be included in corporate expenses.

In other words, if corporations truly are people as the US Supreme Court has ruled, we should hold them accountable for their actions.

The Real Cost Of Fossil Fuels.

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The chemical spill in West Virginia that polluted the drinking water of more than 300,000 people should remind everyone of the real cost of fossil fuels. As you know, conservatives are fond of saying that subsidies for research and the expansion of alternative energy are unfair; that they disguise the true cost of solar, wind and other forms of clean, renewable energy. Of course, they never mention the massive direct subsidies our government gives to the coal, oil and gas industries (estimated at $14 billion to $51 billion per year) or the indirect subsidies (the cost of damage to our environment; the cost of health problems that result from breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water; the cost of clean ups of spills; the cost of regulation).

If all of the indirect costs were added, the total subsidies for the fossil fuel industries are almost incalcuable and they’re certain to grow as we deal with the damages caused by climate change.

By comparison, the indirect costs of renewable energy are almost negligible. Wind generators require materials for manufacture and fossil fuels to transport them to their eventual sites. They also reportedly cause the deaths of some birds. But those deaths are dwarfed by the number of birds killed and endangered by oil spills and from drinking chemical pollutants. Solar panels also require manufacture and transportation. But that’s it.

Once in operation, neither add CO2 to the atmosphere. Neither can cause toxic spills. Wind and solar generation is decentralized so there’s less chance of widespread power outages. Both eliminate the need for daily trainloads of fuels. They require no pipelines. There is no need to remove entire mountaintops. No need to pump toxic chemicals into the earth in order to extract wind or sun. And there is no need for waste disposal. When the wind generators and solar panels become obsolete, most of their materials can be recycled.

Best of all, they create jobs in the US, and they would create a lot more if Congress would provide manufacturers with the incentives and protections needed to fend off state-sponsored manufacturers in China. They also reduce the need for fossil fuels, which should make our reserves of oil and gas last well into the future.

So why do Congressional Republicans continue to rubber stamp subsidies for oil, gas and coal while denying much smaller subsidies for alternative energy? The answer, as always, is money.

The majority of fossil fuels are extracted from red states, such as Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. Most refineries are also located in red states – Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Oil, gas and coal companies have very deep pockets from decades of favored political status and profiteering. They have one of the largest lobbying groups in Washington. The companies and their billionaire owners are willing to spend whatever it takes to retain their monopolies. Moreover, the Citizens United ruling by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court made it possible for corporations to offer large donations to political campaigns. And politicians are more than willing to accept them.