Category Archives: Corporations

America’s Epidemic Of Head-Up-The-Butt Disease.

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There are many things we know that are detrimental to our society, but for a variety of reasons (mostly political) we refuse to correct them.

For example, we know that it’s dangerous to text while driving, but many do it anyway.  We know that many military contractors have been found guilty of defrauding the government, yet we continue to reward them with multi-billion dollar contracts. We know that abstinence-only programs do not help prevent teen pregnancies, but we cut funding for sex education and easy access to contraceptives.  We also know that early education programs greatly improve a child’s future, yet many are trying to defund them.

Similarly, the world’s scientists have warned us of the dangers of climate change caused by man.  Still, we refuse to address the problems even when experiencing extreme weather.  And we know that mass killings are made possible by unrestricted access to military-style, semi-automatic weapons.

All of these issues could be fixed.  It only takes a will to do so.  Yet we continue to listen to those who profit from these problems. 

We accept the oil industry’s arguments that lessening our dependence on renewable energies will be costly and result in lost jobs.  We accept the absurd notion of “clean” coal being marketed by the coal industry.  And we accept the fear-based arguments of gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association that “Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.”  That may be true, but semi-automatic weapons with large-capacity magazines make it much easier.

When’s the last time you read about a mass killing committed by a lunatic carrying a single-shot rifle or a 6-shot revolver?

Of course, the NRA argues that there will be less violence when everyone is armed.  But if you take your head out of your nether regions, you’ll discover the obvious flaws in that argument.  Do you have to carry a weapon with you at all times?  In church?  In school?  In the swimming pool?

So come on, America, stop limiting your view to your inner colons.  Pull your heads out of your butts and start examining the world around you.

Mitt Also Outsourced The Olympics.

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Last week, Congress was in an uproar upon finding out that the uniforms for the US Olympic team were made in China.  As it turns out, this is not the first time.

Mitt Romney, who counts his experience as “savior” of the 2002 Winter Olympics among his qualifications to become president, outsourced the uniforms for the US Olympic team to Burma (AKA Mynamar).

But that should come as no surprise to anyone.  After all, Mitt outsourced jobs from numerous companies to other countries, just as he outsourced his money to Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland in order to avoid paying US taxes.

“Believe In America.”

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That’s the slogan for Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Believe in America?  Really, Mitt?

Is that why you bought US companies and outsourced their jobs to China, Mitt?  Is that why you stashed most of your money in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands?  Did you invest in those tax havens instead of the US because you believe in America?

What of your secretive Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, Ltd in Bermuda?  Did you create that offshore tax shelter because you believe in America?

What of your feeder tax havens in which you funnel money into the US so that you can skip the usual tax, disclosure and regulatory requirements you’d face if you invested directly in the US?  What of your investments in blocker corporations in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere allowing you to escape the Unrelated Business Income Tax?

Is that what people who believe in America do?

If you believe in America, Mitt, why are you taking campaign contributions from places like London and Macao?

I believe in America, Mitt.  But after looking at your business career and listening to your ever-changing opinions and excuses, I don’t believe in you.

Conservatives Strike Yet Another Blow Against Real Representation.

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I’ve previously written about ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the organization sponsored by many of the nation’s largest corporations with the intent of writing much of the legislation proposed in state houses across the country.  ALEC brags that it writes approximately 1,000 bills a year for conservative legislators to sponsor.  This is how Arizona’s SB 1070 came into being – written by a Kansas lawyer for Corrections Corporation of America (a private prison firm) and ALEC, and sponsored by former AZ Senator Russell Pearce.

In other words, ALEC is more involved in legislation than our legislators.

Well, it turns out that ALEC is not the only such organization in America.  (No, there are no liberal or Democratic versions of ALEC.)  The other large conservative organization is Stateside Associates.

The home page of Stateside’s website states “Lean forward…we have your back.”  It says, “Stateside Associates offers deep expertise in the core services, strategies and execution of state and local government relations.  We help clients shape the public policy environment by knowing what is happening, who is involved and what tools are needed to influence the process.”

They help ensure that the interests of corporations outweigh the interests of individuals.

In addition to Stateside, there are many smaller conservative organizations such as the Goldwater Institute and the Center for Arizona Policy in Arizona.  All of these groups are more than lobbying firms paid to look after the affairs of corporate clients.  These are ideological groups intended to change our entire political system by writing laws for conservative legislators.

They need to go.

U…S…A! U…S…A…er, China!

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Remember those chants after the US Olympic hockey team upset the Soviet Union?  We’ve come a long way since then.

Back then, our Olympic team’s uniforms were made in America.  But, today, our Olympic team’s uniforms are made in China like almost everything else we use.  The US Olympic Committee hired an American icon, Ralph Lauren, to design them.  Then he turned around and outsourced their manufacture to China.

Of course, many Americans are upset upon learning the news, including politicians on both sides of the aisle.  They called it an embarrassment.  They said our Olympic Committee should be ashamed.

But are they willing to do anything about it?

In fact, it’s Congress that is responsible for subsidizing corporations for sending jobs and money offshore.

The Truth About The Great “Job Creator.”

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Former Governor and current Panderer-In-Chief, Mitt Romney, claims that he has the experience to put our economy on the fast track.  The question is, the fast track to where?

In his 15 years at Bain Capital, Romney made tens of millions by buying companies and dismantling them, or firing employees and outsourcing jobs to China.  Indeed, according to a story published in Vanity Fair, Bain itself found that during the period of 2002 to 2007, there is “little evidence that private equity owners, overall, added value” to the companies they took over.  Instead, the company found that most of its profits were the result of overall economic growth, rising stock markets and leverage.

More disturbing, the Vanity Fair article found that Romney used every conceivable trick to avoid paying federal income taxes.  Not only did he stash money in a secret Swiss bank account.  He stashed an estimated $30 million in Bain Capital Funds in the Cayman Islands.  In another questionable transaction, he shifted funds to his wife’s name in order to avoid taxes.  There’s even the mystery of how Romney’s IRA, with contribution ceilings of $2,000 per year for 15 years, now contains up to $102 million!

So, while most Americans play by the rules and pay up to 35 percent of their income in taxes, the great “Job Creator” deposited millions off-shore in order to avoid paying taxes to the country he wants to run?  And in the process, he destroyed American companies and jobs?

If this man collects a single vote from an ordinary working American, that’s one more than he deserves.

Willing Ourselves To A Better Economy.

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As several economists have told me, we get the economy we want.  If we think the economy is good, we will buy what we want or need.  Our purchases will increase sales for retailers.  That will increase manufacturing, and the economy will thrive.  As a result, tax revenue grows and our deficits decrease.

On the other hand, if we think the economy is going to be bad, we will restrict spending and increase saving.  If enough people do this, our economy will be pushed into recession, jobs will be cut, tax revenues drop and our deficits and national debt will grow.

Most people know this, especially large corporations, the wealthy and politicians.  And they often manipulate these principles in order to cash in on easy money.  The losers of this sort of manipulation are almost always ordinary working people.

Everyone knows about the principle of buy low, sell high.  So if you’re among the wealthy and powerful, it doesn’t benefit you if the economy grows at a steady, sustainable rate.  In order to really cash in, you need to create periods of high growth, followed by recessions.  In the midst of a recession, you buy low.  Then at the peak of growth, you sell high.  That’s why a chart of our economic history looks like a ride through the Rocky Mountains.

The interest of the wealthy and powerful is obviously money.  But why would politicians be interested in such a strategy of manipulation?

In a word, Power.

If the opposition is in power, the GOP (Guardians Of Privilege) starts screaming about inflation, deficits, debt and other issues in order to frighten ordinary people.  If they scream loud enough and long enough, a large percentage of our population will hold onto their cash in preparation for the coming calamity and delay purchases.  As a result, the economy struggles.

That’s what’s been happening for the past 3+ years.

In order to make President Obama fail, Teapublicans have howled about “outrageous” deficits.  They talk about “saddling our grandchildren with oppressive, overwhelming debt.”  They’ve scared voters about illegal immigrants taking their jobs.  They’ve talked about an “out-of-control government” and “the end of freedom.” 

Unfortunately, the Tea Party, the religious right and others have scooped up this load of dung as if it were gold in the streets.

The only way to avoid being buried by the dung is to call it what it really is.  And to let everyone know that the people spreading the dung are the southern-most end of a north bound elephant.

Clean Coal? Is That Like A Poor Billionaire?

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AmericasPower.org (aka American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity) is currently running a television campaign attacking the Obama administration’s evironmental protections.  The commercials claim that “clean” coal is an important part of our nation’s energy needs.

They ignore the fact that there simply is no such thing as “clean” coal.

While it is true that much of our electricity comes from coal and will for many years to come, coal should be viewed as little more than a necessary evil.  We will not be able to completely avoid its use for the foreseeable future. However, we should be working to free ourselves from it.

Coal is a carbon-based fuel and, as such, its use spews large quantities of carbon dioxide (aka greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere. According to Richard Conniff in his article, Myth of Clean Coal, coal-fired power plants produced 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide — 36 percent of total U.S. emissions in 2006. So even with the use of the most advanced technology, coal-fired plants are harming the environment. And many older power plants lack the technology to clean other elements from their smokestacks, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, mercury, and fine particulates. Indeed, coal power plants are the primary reason most of the lakes across the upper US have warnings limiting the number of fish that should be consumed due to mercury pollution.

And emissions are not the whole story.

Much of our coal is mined by mountaintop removal in the Appalachians, transforming the beauty of the region forever.  In addition to flattening the terrain, over 1,000 miles of West Virginia streams have been buried by strip mine waste.  300,000 acres of hardwood forests in West Virginia have been destroyed.  And 75 percent of West Virginia’s streams and rivers have been polluted.  Underground mining is not much better.  For generations, some coal mining companies have skirted around safety regulations, endangering those who work in the mines.

Yet another issue is coal ash (aka fly ash), the residue from burning coal.  Operators of coal-fired power plants have long been puzzled as to what to do with this by-product.  In the area of the Tennesee Valley Authority, they built vast containment pools.  In 2008, one of those containment dams burst creating a torrent of this poisonous residue into the Emory River. Cost of the cleanup is estimated at more than $1.2 billion.  A few weeks later another spill occured in Alabama polluting Widows Creek and the Tennessee River.

The real crime is that, with a little investment in our infrastructure, we could be moving away from coal as a means of generating electricity.  Studies have shown that roughly half of all the electricity generated in the US is lost in our outmoded “grid.”  So half of the pollution to our air, water and soil is completely unnecessary

A modern grid coupled with increased use of solar, wind and other alternative means of generation could all but eliminate coal-fired electric generation in the US.  But “America’s Power” will never include that information in its ads.

The Freedom To Fail On Your Own.

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There’s a long-standing attitude of individualism in the US that causes people to inherently dislike any form of collectivism, such as collective bargaining through labor unions.  As I wrote in a previous post, we come from a long line of independent-minded people; people who were pushed out of Europe by dictators of all ilks, from royalty to the Roman Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, corporations and their lackeys on the right have been able to exploit this inborn streak of independence to extract money from us.  They have used a combination of lobbyists, campaign contributions, exportation of jobs, and right wing media megaphones to undermine labor unions and pit workers against one another in order to maximize profits while minimizing wages and benefits.

As a result of the propaganda, far too many Americans equate labor unions with socialism or communism.  Many poor and middle class workers vote for candidates that will continue the pattern of withdrawing employee benefits, eliminating pensions, depressing wages and foreclosing on homes.  Now they are turning their attention to the “entitlements” – Social Security and Medicare.

Yet many of us will continue to support corporations out of the fear of losing our jobs, misplaced loyalty, or the determination to “make it on our own.”  What these people don’t understand is that any individual’s disagreement with a large, heavily capitalized corporation is not a fair fight.  A retail clerk cannot fairly negotiate with a big box retailer.  An assembly line worker cannot win against a large manufacturer.  A maid cannot fight a large hotel chain.

The only chance they have to improve their position and their wages is to band together.  Individuals, no matter how hard they work, are far more likely to fail on their own than to make it on their own.

The Age Of The Corporation.

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Following the Great Depression and World War II, most people in the US were independent.  Many owned a small family farm or a small business such as a Five and Dime, a soda fountain, clothing store or whatever.  If they managed to set aside any savings, the money likely went into a Certificate of Deposit or US Savings Bond with guaranteed interest.

Things pretty much continued that way until the 1970s and 1980s.  Then, large indoor shopping malls and big box stores began replacing small retailers.  Farms became larger and larger until only a few families and wealthy corporations could afford the land and equipment.  Much of the US population moved to large cities to work for large corporations. Whatever savings we managed to accumulate went into large, corporate-controlled mutual funds, corporate 401Ks or IRAs.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, yet another trend toward corporate control began as on-line shopping sites began to replace brick and mortor stores cutting salaries and moving many jobs off-shore.

The result of all of this is an almost total corporate dominance of our lives.

We not only rely on large corporations for our jobs.  We have grown to rely on them for food, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, communications, entertainment and our investments (if we’re lucky enough to still have some).  And now large corporations are beginning to seize control of many other aspects of our lives such as education, transportation, even the military.  And, in the most disturbing intrusion of all, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling for Citizens United, corporations are now exerting even more control over our election campaigns.

Our once proud democracy is slowly fading into history.  Welcome to the age of plutocracy.