Category Archives: Corporations

Visit To The Border Exposes The Complexity Of Immigration.

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My wife and I recently traveled to the border town of Douglas, Arizona. Along the way, we passed dozens of Border Patrol pickup trucks and two checkpoints. Upon arriving in Douglas, we were greeted by an imposing wall stretching along the border and a town in visible decay.

You see, Douglas was once a shopping destination for Mexican families. Many drove for miles to purchase items that were difficult to find or too expensive in their own country. Many walked across the border to work. Families lived on both sides of the border. All of this is readily confirmed with a quick glance at many of the business signs, which are in Spanish. Not English. After all, this land was owned by Mexico long before it was transferred to the United States.

Unfortunately, much of that cross-border commerce seems to have come to an end. Many of the storefronts are empty and many buildings are boarded up. It is now much more difficult to cross the border and there are far too many incidents in which Mexican citizens have been detained or threatened. It appears that many Americans have also avoided the area.

These are just a few of the consequences of our failed immigration policy.

Other consequences include the blight of our modern day “Great Wall” or “Iron Curtain.” It’s nearly as expensive and no more successful. The wall has reduced the number of migrants crossing the border illegally. And it has blocked the traditional migratory patterns of wildlife, maybe speeding some desert animals on their way to extinction. But it hasn’t stopped the traffic of illegal drugs. It has simply funneled them into a concentrated area which has posed a danger to ranchers and other residents in the area on both sides of the border.

This is no way to deal with immigration.

If we’re to get a handle on the issue, we must pass legislation that creates work permits. We must create an effective national ID system. We must make it easy for businesses to verify workers before hiring them, and we must make it easy to prosecute businesses who hire undocumented workers. We must create a path to citizenship for those who are already here, especially the “dreamers” (those who were brought here at an early age by their parents). And we must stop our large agribusiness corporations from dumping subsidized corn into Mexico and Central America, making it impossible for small farmers to make a living and forcing them to seek employment elsewhere.

Perhaps, most important, we should decriminalize drugs and make them available with a prescription from pharmacies. That would take the profit out of the illegal drug trade and force the drug cartels to find a new occupation. It would depopulate many of our prisons, saving billions in taxes. It would also eliminate the need for “users” to deal with criminals and to commit crimes in order to purchase their drugs.

Well, I can dream, can’t I?

Organized Bank Crimes.

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After an ill-advised investment in grain futures in the late 80’s, I became more convinced than ever before that small investors are at the mercy of large investors. Not just in commodities, but in other markets as well. If your timing happens to coincide with that of the large corporations and the wealthy, you profit. If not, they take your money.

In other words, all markets are inherently rigged. Because large corporations and the wealthy gamble such large amounts of money, they control the price of commodities and securities.

We’ve seen this play out in a variety of ways since 1999. That was the year President Clinton caved to the big money lobby (reported to have spent $300 million over 25 years) and a Republican-controlled Congress by signing a bill that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. According to the likes of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Senator Phil Gramm and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, repealing the law would “free” Wall Street from onerous regulation so the banks could “innovate” and grow.

A year later, Clinton signed another such onerous bill, The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Ironically, that was also the year of the dot.com crash.

Our financial markets have taken us on a frightening roller coaster ride ever since.

In my opinion, these bills turned financial markets into international high stakes casinos with a variety of complex games that allow the house and the big players to constantly adjust the rules in order to skim more money from suckers like us.

We’ve seen the big players run up the price of commodities, such as gold and oil, at the expense of ordinary citizens. We’ve seen them pump up the real estate market with subprime mortgages designed to fail. When the inevitable happened, the institutions holding those mortgages were bailed out by taxpayers. They then stepped in and snapped up foreclosed homes at a fraction of their actual value. These events also resulted in the loss of trillions by pension plans and the holders of 401ks.

So, thanks to the gambling of financial institutions, millions of ordinary citizens lost their homes and their financial futures at the same time.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was designed to protect us from such risky and unethical behavior by financial institutions. Signed into law in 2010, Teapublicans have not allowed the act to be fully implemented. Even worse, they are working on behalf of their Wall Street benefactors to dismantle the bill. Even some freshmen Democrats seem to have fallen under the spell of Wall Street and the promise of campaign contributions. They recently voted for a bill written almost entirely by the banksters’ lobbyists that would water down Dodd-Frank.

For their part, financial institutions seem totally unphased by any regulations. In the past year, we learned that financial institutions manipulated LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) the benchmark interest rate that determines the international cost of borrowing. After stealing billions, a handful of the big banks involved in the scandal have paid fines that amount to a stern slap on the wrist. Of course, such penalties only encourage financial traders to continue their games.

Now we’re learning of yet another rigged game – the currency market (aka the Foreign Exchange market). According to a Bloomberg report, “traders at banks around the world have regularly worked together for ‘at least a decade’ to move a key benchmark currency rate in ways that profit them and hurt their clients.”

It seems the old adage that “it takes money to make money” has never been more appropriate.

“Private Eyes” Given A Whole New Meaning.

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Recent revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) snooping on phone records, emails and Internet history have been used by some politicians to attack President Obama. Really? He not only inherited these programs from Dubya. By most accounts, he placed new restrictions on them.

Whatever the case, government spying on American citizens should be openly debated by all Americans and our representatives. Only the American people should decide how much privacy we’re willing to sacrifice in exchange for the prevention of terror attacks.

But while the media and Washington have been focused on each new revelation of the NSA program, several aspects have been relatively ignored.

One is that those collecting the information are not government agents or employees. They’re private companies. Edward Snowden was an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, which is a publicly traded, for-profit corporation that has sucked up billions in revenue from government agencies such as the Department of Defense, all branches of the U.S. military, U.S. Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of the Treasury, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Security Agency.

As a result of the political right’s fascination with privatization, companies like Booz are now handling many of the tasks the government used to. The belief, although not proven, is that awarding government contracts to such companies will save money.

Apparently, it also makes information related to these tasks less secure.

Not satisfied with revealing aspects of the secret program, Edward Snowden has told the South China Morning Post that the US has been “hacking Hong Kong and China since 2009.” Great! So after turning many American citizens against their own government, Snowden is now attempting to turn other nations against it, too.

Another surprising aspect of the Snowden leak is that Booz Allen Hamilton was paying him a salary of $200,000! This is a 29-year-old who dropped out of high school, dropped out of the Army, and possesses a GED. According to his social media sites, his real expertise is playing video games.

Finally, after revealing classified information about what he considered to be US government abuses, Snowden moved to China, saying that he admired Hong Kong for its commitment to free speech! (Perhaps he should talk to a few of my Tibetan friends about China’s commitment to free speech. He can find many of them in Chinese prisons.)

Not surprisingly, all of this has made Snowden a “hero” to the tinfoil-hatted Glenn Beck. Upon reading an account of Snowden’s revelations and his flight to Hong Kong, Beck tweeted “I think I have just read about the man for which I have waited. Earmarks of a real hero.”

On the other hand, Richard “The Dick” Cheney scurried out of his hidey hole and pronounced Snowden a “traitor.”

For me, this poses a real dilemma. If Beck praises someone as a hero, I can usually count on that person being a lunatic. And if the black-hearted Cheney calls someone a traitor, I can usually count on that person to be the opposite.

So now what am I to believe?

Scandalrama!

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As the Teapublican House, led by witch-hunter-in-chief, Darrell Issa, looks under every rug and in every nook and cranny for dirt on Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Tea Party applications for non-profit status, the NSA, and anything else that can be used as a hammer against the Obama administration, the real work of Congress languishes.

The House still has not resolved the federal budget and the debt ceiling. It has not yet brought sanity to the nonsensical sequester cuts. It has not proposed a single bill to create jobs and lower unemployment. It has not proposed a bill to rebuild and modernize our infrastructure. It has not yet passed a bill to reduce or eliminate the waiting time for veterans’ benefits. It has not yet passed an immigration bill.

The House has not considered tax reform to eliminate loopholes that would prevent multinational corporations to stash cash in offshore tax havens. It has not passed a bill to end the senseless gun violence. It has not passed a bill to close loopholes in background checks or to control the straw buyers who provide guns to gangs and drug cartels. It hasn’t even proposed a solution for climate change caused by increasing CO2 emissions.

Teapublican congressional representatives have largely ignored all substantive issues. Instead, they have focused on trumped-up “scandals,” the repeal of “Obamacare” and a myriad of restrictive social issues all revolving around women’s vaginas. As always, they seem fascinated by the “evils” of sexual orientation and the rights of the unborn.

Meanwhile, they ignore the rights and the needs of the already living.

Big Oil And Its Worldwide Oiligarchy.

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If oligarchy is a power structure in which all political power effectively rests with a few people, Oiligarchy is the perfect term to describe what has become the most powerful industry on Earth. Since World War II, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others have gained increasing control over the US government, along with our foreign policy and our military.

Oiligarchy operatives and lobbyists are a virtual Who’s Who of American politics, including Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, as well as former Secretaries of State James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Condoleezza Rice, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator Bob Dole, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and many, many, many others.

Their connections to the oily empire are deep. Richard “The Dick” Cheney was previously CEO of oil giant Halliburton. Condoleezza Rice served on the board of Chevron and even had an oil supertanker named in her honor. And before Dubya failed as president, he experienced multiple failures in the oil business.

At times, these people have sided with Big Oil at the expense of national security, the environment and human rights. Indeed, the oil companies’ greed, along with our thirst for cheap gasoline has resulted in wars, dictatorships, genocides, toppled governments and a growing worldwide hatred of the US.

Following the Cheney-inspired Project for a New American Century, Bush, Cheney and their minions helped Big Oil elbow its way into the Caucasus and Caspian Sea regions in order to steal oil from Russia and keep it from Iran. In the process, we took the side of Chechen rebels who were led by Muslim extremists in their fight for secession from Russia.

The war in Afghanistan was preceded by US demands for an oil pipeline across that country. The war in Iraq was a cynical and clumsy attempt to control Iraqi oil. Even our unyielding support for Israel seems driven less by a desire to protect Israel from its Arab neighbors than by Big Oil’s desire to have a powerful ally near Middle East oil fields. And in an especially cynical move, US-backed Big Oil and Russia are in a race to lay claim to Arctic drilling as the polar ice cap melts. (Ironically, oil-caused global warming is creating an opportunity to capture and burn even more oil!)

Not content with its lethal impact on international politics, Big Oil has set its sights on further destroying our environment in its quest for ever larger profits. The Oiligarchy is demanding that the Obama administration approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which is intended to carry oil from the newly-fracked oil fields in North Dakota and the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast. The claim is that the pipeline will create “tens of thousands” of new jobs in the US, but a review by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute estimated that the pipeline would add only 506 to 1,387 new jobs.

In exchange for that meager number of jobs, Big Oil wants us to risk the inevitable spills of a substance the EPA says is virtually impossible to clean up. The US has already experienced at least two spills of the particularly dirty and gooey tar sands oil. In one of the spills, a pipeline belched 200,000 gallons of oil into a Michigan river. Nearly three years later, the oil has sunk to the bottom of the river and has not biodegraded. It likely never will.

Worse yet, the bituminous oil from tar sands is often referred to as “junk oil.” As a fuel source, it is terribly inefficient, creating an inordinate amount of pollution relative to the energy it provides. Once it flows (or more accurately, oozes) onto the market, it will dramatically increase greenhouse gases, leading environmental experts to state that it will be “game over” for our planet.

Big Oil doesn’t seem to care.

Spending billions in attempts to elect subservient politicians, to lobby Congress and to confuse voters, Big Oil owners like the Koch brothers deny the impact of fossil fuels on climate change. Ignoring the findings of almost every climate scientist in the world, they and their bought-and-paid-for politicians claim that climate change is “unsettled science,” a “sham,” the “greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people.”

If they’re wrong (and it’s almost certain they are), they won’t pay the price. But our planet and most of its inhabitants will.

Subsidizing Millionaires And Billionaires.

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For years, large corporations have whined that US corporate income taxes are “the highest in the world.” While it’s true that our maximum corporate tax RATE is the highest in the world, the EFFECTIVE tax rate paid by US-based multinational corporations is much, much lower.

In fact, as a percentage of GDP, US corporations pay the second lowest taxes in the developed world! And that doesn’t even include the many ways US taxpayers subsidize large corporations through the creation of specialized infrastructure, tax incentives, relocation incentives, government research grants and sweetheart rates on loans.

Those are just the direct subsidies. Indirect subsidies are often even more costly!

Consider the study recently released by Congressional Democrats which found that a single Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin could cost taxpayers up to $900,000 a year as a result of Walmart’s notoriously low wages and minimal benefits. According to the study, most of Walmart’s employees qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, low-income housing assistance, energy assistance, and other forms of public assistance.

The authors of the study summarize the findings this way, “When low wages leave Walmart workers unable to afford the necessities of life, taxpayers pick up the tab.”

Of course, Walmart responds by saying that its policies benefit all Americans through lower prices. But Costco, another big box chain that competes with Walmart, offers low prices. It also offers full benefits to its employees and pays them an average annual salary of $45,000. There are millions of Americans like myself who try to never set foot in a Walmart store. So why should we be forced to subsidize Walmart’s bad behavior? What is the benefit to us?

There are approximately 4,000 Walmart stores in the US. If each of those cost taxpayers $900,000 a year, Walmart is costing US taxpayers a total of more than $3.6 billion per year!

And that doesn’t include other indirect costs such as the company’s impact on the environment, the impact on independent small businesses that are forced to compete with Walmart, lost revenue in personal income taxes from those forced to accept Walmart’s low wages…the costs are many. There’s also a moral and ethical cost created by Walmart relying on sweatshops in undeveloped countries like Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, the Walton family that owns Walmart enjoys undeserved profits through taxpayer subsidies. For 2011, the company’s net income was $15.4 billion.

Walmart is not alone in unfairly profiting from subsidies and loopholes. A recent study found that 18 of America’s largest corporations, including Abbott, Apple, Citigroup, GE, Google, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Microsoft, Nike and Pfizer, have stashed profits in off-shore tax shelters in order to avoid paying $92 billion in US income taxes!

We should demand more of corporations. We should demand that they pay all of the costs associated with doing business. We should stop the subsidies. We should require that they pay employees a living wage. And we should require them to pay their fair share of taxes.

Do You Believe In Magic?

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported from war zones and written a number of powerful books about our culture. I was fascinated by his recent interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, during which he addressed some of the cultural idiocy that exists in the US.

Hedges decried the media’s tendency to cover sensational stories over substance. He also discussed unfettered capitalism, domination of US media by a half dozen corporations, and the Christian right’s use of the despair created by the Great Recession and lasting unemployment in order to drive Americans into a non-reality-based belief system.

“I think we have powerful proto-fascist movements in this country,” said Hedges, “and I look at the Tea Party, the militia and the Christian right, where they celebrate the language of violence, they celebrate the gun culture, and they channel what I would describe as a very legitimate rage, and a legitimate sense of betrayal towards the vulnerable; towards Muslims; towards undocumented workers; towards homosexuals, intellectuals, feminists, liberals…they have a long list of people they don’t like. And I think that remains a very powerful and frightening undercurrent in American society.”

“What you get when you enter that kind of ideological belief system, you no longer deal with reality. You believe in magic,” Hedges continued. “You believe that Jesus will intervene to protect you and promote you, and then it becomes impossible to have a kind of rational discussion, for instance, with people who believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.”

To make the point, Hedges noted that he visited the Creationist Museum where dinosaurs are displayed alongside Adam and Eve in a representation of the Garden of Eden. In discussing his tour of the park, Hedges recalled a guide saying, “I suppose you wonder why the T-Rex had such big teeth.” She explained that it was because “Adam and Eve needed the T-Rex to open the coconuts.”  When a child asked how Noah had managed to get the dinosaurs onto his Ark, the tour guide responded that “Noah only took the dinosaur babies.”

Hedges stated that this kind of walking away from science is what allows totalitarian systems to thrive. One of the concerns is the Christian right’s lust for apocalyptic violence. He said, “It’s almost a celebration of the destroying of a world that almost destroyed them.”

As for the state of our government, Hedges stated, “We have the facade of the democratic state, and yet we’ve undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion.”

For more insights from Chris Hedges check out his weekly column at www.truthdig.com.

The DDT Of Our Time.

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In 1972, the federal government banned the use of the pesticide DDT for agricultural use in the US. At the time, many species of birds (including the Bald Eagle) were on the path to extinction, and DDT was considered the culprit.

Not surprisingly, farmers were outraged. They were convinced that DDT was their only means of controlling the devastating effects of grasshoppers and other common pests. They were equally certain that DDT was not responsible for all the environmental ills attributed to it.

Decades later, the ban has proven to be justified as most species of birds have dramatically rebounded.

Now we’re facing a similar situation. Only this time the pesticide is Neonicotinoid, a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically related to nicotine. These insecticides created by Shell and Bayer are now the most widely-used in the world. And they are believed to be related to the colony collapse disorder resulting in the disappearance of billions of honey bees, which is why Neonicotinoids were recently banned throughout the European Union.

Of course, agribusiness and chemical companies are outraged. They are aggressively fighting a similar ban in the US by saying their scientific evidence doesn’t support such a ban.

If they’re right, the makers of Neonicotinoids could unnecessarily see their profits suffer. We could also see modest reductions in crop yields. But if they’re wrong, we could see the end of the honey bee and a near total collapse of food production.

What would you do?

From Kathie Lee To Bangladesh.

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Nearly a decade ago, the media were awash with stories tying Kathie Lee Gifford to sweatshops in Honduras. It seems she had endorsed a line of clothing sold at Walmart and, when it was discovered that Walmart outsourced the clothing manufacture to sweatshops using children, Kathie Lee was vilified. Walmart, on the other hand, emerged from the scandal unscathed.

Of course, much has changed since then. Such clothing lines are no longer made in Honduras. They are now outsourced to countries with even cheaper labor and even more deplorable working conditions…countries like Bangladesh where more than 1,100 recently died while working in an unsafe building.

But one thing hasn’t changed. The retailer, clothing brand and contractors are still held blameless for outsourcing their brands to sweatshops.

As long as they offer clothing at low prices, we simply shake our heads at such tragedies and continue to shop for the next bargain. It doesn’t matter that the clothing is as disposable as the workers forced to make it. All we really seem to care about is price. We’re seemingly unconcerned that adding a few pennies to the cost of a garment would improve working conditions. Likewise, we seem unconcerned that the owners of Walmart and other large retailers pressure manufacturers to continue to cut costs in order to line their own pockets with millions more.

This, of course, is a never-ending cycle.

As long as there are regions of desperate, impoverished people in the world, manufacturers and retailers will take advantage of them. And, as long as consumers reward those corporations by continuing to purchase their junk, the practice will continue.

The sad truth is that we’re all as responsible for the deaths of the workers in Bangladesh as the owner of the building and the brands being made there.

A Role Model For The US Senate.

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If US senators are wondering what they can do to endear themselves to their constituents, they should look to their new colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts. In her short tenure, Warren has already shown a willingness to tell truth to power. She has also shown she has the guts to stand up for those who are not represented by lobbyists and special interests.

In other words, unlike most other senators, she is actually doing the job she was elected to do. What a concept!

To see what a senator should look like and sound like, check out this link from Upworthy.com. This wasn’t a one-time event. She wasn’t grandstanding. She wasn’t seeking approval or looking for votes. She wasn’t engaging in blind partisanship. She was simply representing the American people…all Americans.

More recently, Warren has written a bill that would give college students the right to borrow money at the same rate the too-big-to-fail banks enjoy. Imagine that…government money being loaned to ordinary people in order that they might improve themselves and our country. Students would not only be required to pay the money back, as they become successful, they would increase government revenue by contributing more in income taxes.

It’s the ultimate win-win.

Let’s hope other politicians eventually follow Warren’s lead by focusing on the needs of their constituents. If they don’t, we need to elect different politicians.