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AUGUST 2008
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL IS FAR
WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT
What They Teach You
at Harvard Business School
Philip Delves Broughton
Christopher Hart, Sunday
Times, UK - In 2004, the journalist Philip Delves Broughton walked
away from what sounds like a peach of a job, Paris bureau chief
for the Daily Telegraph, to enroll in Harvard's world-famous
MBA course. . .
Feelings of unease emerge
even before he arrives. He reads a student guide on What to Bring.
"Don't bring that guitar . . . Don't bring any books from
literature or history classes . . . Don't bring your cynicism.
Do bring all the diverse rest of you. We can't wait to share
the experience." Immediately, his bolshie British bullshit-
detector thrums into life: "Who were these people? And why
did they talk like this? Why can't I bring my cynicism? Or my
books? Aren't they a part of the 'diverse rest of me'?"
. . .
He is surprised at the
large presence of earnest Mormons and unimaginative former-military
men in this cauldron of capitalism. But gradually this begins
to make sense, for HBS is pervaded with an oppressive atmosphere
of unquestioning obedience and creepy religiosity. There is the
confessional My Reflected Best-Self exercise, to encourage students
"to create a developmental agenda for leveraging their reflected
best-self" and "work maximally from positions of strength".
Approved results sound like this: "I do not take on the
negative energy of the insecure . . . I stay centered . . . I
try to model the message of integrity, growth and transformation."
. . .
The weirdest and creepiest
episode is when a student writes to the entire school, confessing
to a "regrettable property- damage incident", a gorgeous
euphemism for urinating against a neighboring student's door.
"His behaviour had made him realize he still had work to
do figuring out exactly who he was." . . . Even more creepily,
Delves Broughton finds that he no longer responds to such tosh
with a healthy snort of laughter. "It was serious, right?
Leadership. Core values. Transformation. Being true to oneself."
It takes his wife - his American wife - to inject some common
sense. "These people are freaks.". . .
For all its vast reputation,
power and pomposity, you feel that HBS neither understands the
complexity nor acknowledges the chaotic unpredictability of the
world economy any better than anyone else. More conclusively,
it encourages its little alumni to major in hypocrisy. You go
there for one simple reason: to make shedloads of money. Fine,
so it's no crime in itself to want to be absurdly and pointlessly
rich, although it's certainly no virtue. What sticks in the gullet
is graduates' self-flattering delusion that they're on some kind
of crusade, their "very American" insistence, as Delves
Broughton puts it, on being not only "the most powerful,
the richest and most successful", but also "the most
morally good". At the same time as learning how to manipulate
billions in order to profit, say, from ordinary people's fretful
indebtedness during a recession, you can believe that you are
a philanthropic leader of men. Yet these are people whose answer
to their own question, "How will I know how much is enough?"
is, "When you've got your own jet." Any notion that
such jet-setting plutocrats are truly concerned about the rest
of us, or the planet, or the future, is laughable. . .
These money-loving graduates
must nurture "heightened self-awareness" and "a
strong moral compass", they must "foster integrity
strategies", acquire "leadership and values".
But why the hell would the rest of us want to be led by these
spreadsheet-reading, PowerPoint-presenting swots who've devoted
the best years of their lives simply to making moolah?
JUNE 2008
CEOs OVERCREDIT THEMSELVES FOR SUCCESSES
MORE TOP FIGURES RECEIVED SWEETHEART DEALS
FROM COUNTRYWIDE
JAILED LOBBYIST HAD 485 CONTACTS WITH BUSH
OFFICIALS OVER THREE YEARS
MARCH 2008
HOW CORPORATIONS TOOK OVER THE SUPREME COURT
JEFFREY ROSEN, NY TIMES - A generation
ago, progressive and consumer groups petitioning the court could
count on favorable majority opinions written by justices who
viewed big business with skepticism - or even outright prejudice.
An economic populist like William O. Douglas, the former New
Deal crusader who served on the court from 1939 to 1975, once
unapologetically announced that he was "ready to bend the
law in favor of the environment and against the corporations."
Today, however, there are no economic
populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since
John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has
seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent
of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests,
up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist
Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average,
between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its
first two terms - and all of them were decided in favor of the
corporate defendants.
Business cases at the Supreme Court
typically receive less attention than cases concerning issues
like affirmative action, abortion or the death penalty. The disputes
tend to be harder to follow: the legal arguments are more technical,
the underlying stories less emotional. But these cases - which
include shareholder suits, antitrust challenges to corporate
mergers, patent disputes and efforts to reduce punitive-damage
awards and prevent product-liability suits - are no less important.
They involve billions of dollars, have huge consequences for
the economy and can have a greater effect on people's daily lives
than the often symbolic battles of the culture wars. In the current
Supreme Court term, the justices have already blocked a liability
suit against Medtronic, the manufacturer of a heart catheter,
and rejected a type of shareholder suit that includes a claim
against Enron. In the coming months, the court will decide whether
to reduce the largest punitive-damage award in American history,
which resulted from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. . .
It should come as little surprise
that John Roberts and Stephen Breyer, both of whom studied the
economic analysis of law at Harvard, have similar instincts in
business cases. This elite consensus, however, is not necessarily
shared by the country as a whole. If anything, America may be
entering something of a populist moment. If you combine the groups
of Americans in a recent Pew survey who lean toward some strain
of economic populism - from disaffected and conservative Democrats
to traditional liberals to social and big-government conservatives
- at least two-thirds of all voters arguably feel sympathy for
government intervention in the economy. Could it be, then, that
the court is reflecting an elite consensus while contravening
the sentiments of most Americans? Only history will ultimately
make this clear. One thing, however, is certain already: the
transformation of the court was no accident. It represents the
culmination of a carefully planned, behind-the-scenes campaign
over several decades to change not only the courts but also the
country's political culture. . .
The origins of the business community's
campaign to transform the Supreme Court can be traced back precisely
to Aug. 23, 1971. That was the day when Lewis F. Powell Jr.,
a corporate lawyer in Richmond, Va., wrote a memo to his friend
Eugene B. Snydor, then the head of the education committee of
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In the memo, Powell expressed his
concern that the American economic system was "under broad
attack." He identified several aggressors: the New Left,
the liberal media, rebellious students on college campuses and,
most important, Ralph Nader. Earlier that year, Nader founded
Public Citizen to advocate for consumer rights, bring antitrust
actions when the Justice Department did not and sue federal agencies
when they failed to adopt health and safety regulations.
Powell claimed that this attack
on the economic system was "quite new in the history of
America." Ever since 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt
threatened to pack a conservative Supreme Court with more progressive
justices, the court had largely deferred to federal and state
economic regulations. And by the '60s, the Supreme Court under
Chief Justice Earl Warren had embraced a form of economic populism,
often favoring the interests of small business over big business,
even at the expense of consumers. But what Powell saw in the
work of Nader and others was altogether more extreme: a radical
campaign that was "broadly based and consistently pursued."
To counter the growing influence
of public-interest litigation groups like Public Citizen, Powell
urged the Chamber of Commerce to begin a multifront lobbying
campaign on behalf of business interests, including hiring top
business lawyers to bring cases before the Supreme Court. "The
judiciary," Powell predicted, "may be the most important
instrument for social, economic and political change." Two
months after he wrote the memo, Powell was appointed by Richard
Nixon to the Supreme Court. And six years later, in 1977, after
steadily expanding its lobbying efforts, the chamber established
the National Chamber Litigation Center to file cases and briefs
on behalf of business interests in federal and state courts.
Today, the Chamber of Commerce is
an imposing lobbying force. To fulfill its mission of serving
"the unified interests of American business," it collects
membership dues from more than three million businesses and related
organizations; last year, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, the chamber spent more than $21 million lobbying the
White House, Congress and regulatory agencies on legal matters.
But its battle against the forces of Naderism got off to a slow
start. In 1983, when Robin Conrad arrived at the chamber, the
Supreme Court was handing Nader and his allies significant victories.
That year, for example, the court held that President Reagan's
secretary of transportation, Andrew L. Lewis Jr., acted capriciously
when he repealed a regulation, inspired by Nader's advocacy,
that required automakers to install passive restraints like air
bags. . .
Exactly how successful has the Chamber
of Commerce been at the Supreme Court? Although the court is
currently accepting less than 2 percent of the 10,000 petitions
it receives each year, the Chamber of Commerce's petitions between
2004 and 2007 were granted at a rate of 26 percent, according
to Scotusblog. . . .
Thirty years after the Chamber of
Commerce founded its litigation center to counteract his influence,
Nader all but conceded defeat in the battle for the Supreme Court.
With the decline of economic populism in Congress, the weakening
of trade unions and the rise of globalization, the political
climate, he lamented, was passing him by. "I recall a comment
by Eugene Debs," Nader said, looking at me intensely. "He
said: The American people live in a country where they can have
almost anything they want. And my regret is that it seems that
they don't want much of anything at all." Nader chuckled
quietly and shook his head. "I say ditto.". . .
The Supreme Court is unlikely to
reconsider its pro-business outlook anytime soon. Nevertheless,
there are several currents in American political life that run
counter to the court, even if they may not be strong enough,
or suitably directed, to reverse it. There are, for example,
economic populists in both political parties - John Edwards Democrats
and Mike Huckabee Republicans, to cite just two types - who express
concern about growing economic inequality and corporate corruption,
and blame unchecked corporate power for America's escalating
economic problems. These populists tend to be from the working
and middle classes rather than the professional classes, and
their numbers may be growing. In recent Pew surveys, 65 percent
of Americans agreed that corporations make excessive profits
- the highest number in 20 years. Moreover, about half the country
now asserts that America is divided on economic lines into two
groups - the "haves" and "have nots" - up
from only 26 percent two decades ago. And the number of Americans
who view themselves as "have nots" has doubled to 34
percent today from 17 percent in 1988. . .
A long but excellent piece well
worth reading in full
JANUARY 2008
MPAA BADLY MISLED CONGRESS OVER COLLEGE
PIRATING
ARS TECHNICA - After commissioning
a 2005 study from LEK Consulting that showed collegiate file-swappers
were responsible for 44 percent of movie studio "losses"
to piracy, the MPAA then used the report it bought to bludgeon
Congress into considering legislation to address this massive
problem. Now the MPAA admits that the report's conclusions weren't
even close to being right; collegiate piracy accounts for only
15 percent of "losses." Oops. And that's assuming you
believe the rest of the data.
The Associated Press broke the news
today; apparently, the MPAA is busy notifying government and
education officials about the blunder, which may explain why
it's too busy to post a mea culpa to its web site. The group
blames "human error" for the calculation problem. .
.
Howard Berman (D-CA), a powerful
Congressman from Hollywood who does plenty of work with IP issues,
bought the complete bill of goods. In March of 2007, we reported
on Berman's veiled threats against universities and colleges
in the US, comments apparently based in part on the now-discredited
report.
"Indeed, the statistics demonstrate
that students engage in rampant piracy," he said at the
time, "and while Congress has given universities many exemptions
from copyright liability it might be time to condition some of
those exemptions on action taken by universities to address the
piracy problem."
This attitude led to bills like
the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, still
pending a vote in the House. That bill directs schools to "develop
a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer
distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore
technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."
RIAA: COPY A CD AND YOU MAY BE A CRACKHEAD
TERRORIST
RECORDING GLUTTONS WANT OVER A $1 MILLION
FOR EACH IMPROPERLY DOWNLOADED CD
CIRCUIT CITY EXECS GET MILLION BUCK REWARDS
FOR DRIVING STOCK PRICE DOWN
CARLYLE GROUP WANTS TO TAKE OVER NURSING
HOME GIANT
AIRLINES: WORSE SERVICE, HUGE PROFITS
EVEN CORPORATE BOSSES ADMIT THEY'RE OVERPAID
THE INSURANCE COMPANIES THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS
U.S. INCOME GAP SETS POSTWAR RECORD
MORTGAGE LENDERS PREFER FORECLOSURE TO HELPING
HOME BUYERS PAY OFF LOAN
INDICATORS: ROBBER BARONS STILL DOING WELL
THE REAGAN-BUSH-CLINTON-BUSH YEARS: BRINGING
INEQUALITY TO PRE-DEPRESSION LEVELS
STUDY: WAL MART REDUCES NATIONAL
WAGES $4.5 BILLION A YEAR
Retail workers in the U.S. are making
$4.5 billion less each year due to Wal-Mart's presence, according
to a new study by the University of California's Center for Labor
Research and Education.
The study focuses on stores that
opened between 1992 and 2000 and concludes, "Opening a single
Wal-Mart store lowers the average retail wage in the surrounding
county between 0.5 and 0.9 percent."
Wal-Mart's presence pushes down
wages in two ways. "First is the substitution effect: a
new Wal-Mart store replaces better paying jobs with lower-paying
ones," the authors explain. "A second factor is competition:
Wal-Mart pushes down wages in competing businesses."
Not only did Wal-Mart lower average
wage rates, but "every new Wal-Mart in a county reduced
the combined or aggregate earnings of retail workers by around
1.5 percent." Because this number is higher than the reduction
in average wages, it indicates that Wal-Mart not only lowered
pay rates, but also reduced the total number of retail jobs.
That finding is consistent with a major study published earlier
this year that found that the opening of a Wal-Mart store causes
a net loss of about 150 retail jobs.
"At the national level, our
study concludes that in 2000, total earnings of retail workers
nationwide were reduced by $4.5 billion due to Wal-Mart's presence,"
they find.
Most of these losses were concentrated
in metropolitan areas. Although Wal-Mart is often associated
with rural areas, three-quarters of the stores it built in the
1990s were in metropolitan counties.
Another new study from the UC Center
for Labor Research and Education indicates that Wal-Mart could
substantially raise its workers' earnings, particularly those
living at or near poverty, with little impact on most shoppers.
"Living Wage Policies and Wal-Mart" analyzes the effects
of instituting a $10 minimum wage at Wal-Mart. More than half
of the retailer's employees (56%) currently earn less than $10
an hour.
"We find that 46.3 percent
of the pay increase would go to workers in families with total
incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level,"
the study finds. "These poor and low-income workers could
expect to earn an additional $1,020 to $4,640 a year."
http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_slug.php?slugid=365
MAY 2007
STUDY: CORPORATIONS SEEK SUCK-UP DIRECTORS,
PUNISH THOSE WHO DO THEIR JOB
CNN - The most sought-after
corporate board members are those who curry favor with fellow
directors, not those who are active in standing up for shareholders,
a new academic study has concluded. . . The study by business
professors James Westphal of the University of Michigan and Ithai
Stern of Northwestern University suggests that directors - who
are supposed to be watchdogs for shareholders - still are not
independent enough. . .
"Our findings indicate that directors
who engage in monitoring and control behavior are effectively
punished in the director labor market," Westphal and Stern
wrote. "They are less likely to be selected onto additional
boards, and thus they are less likely to become central in the
board network" that exists throughout corporate America.
The study also concluded that board members
who are women or ethnic minorities are rewarded significantly
less than white male directors when they try to ingratiate themselves
with peer directors "and are punished more for any given
level of monitoring and control behavior."
APRIL 2007
SPEEDING TICKET POINTS HELP INSURANCE
COMPANIES PROFITS, BUT NOT GOOD DRIVING
THE NEWSPAPER - The practice of assigning
license demerit points for traffic violations has little effect
on reducing bad driving behavior according to a study published
in this month's issue of the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.
Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine
came to this conclusion after examining the driving records of
3.7 million motorists within the state from 2001 to 2003.
"Our findings indicate that a single
speeding citation has limited effects on changing drivers' likelihood
of receiving subsequent speeding citations," the researchers
concluded. "Receiving fines and points had no significant
impact on the risk of repeat citations, although this was the
most severe penalty."
Maryland offers motorists accused of speeding
two options. The easiest is to pay a fine by mail and suffer
an increase in insurance premiums of anywhere from $25 to $1000
a year from license points. Judges also have the power to grant
"probation before judgment" to motorists who show up
at trial. This option allows the court to collect either a full
or reduced fine without license points appearing on the motorist's
record if no other violation is committed within a 6 to 12 month
period.
Heavy lobbying from the insurance industry
has pressured lawmakers into emphasizing the importance of license
points. In Maryland, about 120,000 motorists receive points on
their license each year. Assuming an average rate increase of
just $100 per ticket, the insurance companies stand to make $36
million in additional profit for a single year's worth of ticketing,
as violations remain on the record for three years.
The study found, however, that probation
was significantly more effective than license points at preventing
additional speeding. The 15,814 drivers who received a speeding
ticket in May 2002 were twice as likely to receive another speeding
ticket within the next year than the 3.7 million who were not
ticketed in May. Yet the 4584 motorists who received probation
in May were less likely to receive additional tickets than the
9527 who received license points.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1678.asp
FEBRUARY 2007
TRUE STORY OF CHOCOLATE ISN'T ALL THAT
SWEET
TEX DWORKIN, GLOBAL EXCHANGE FAIR TRADE ONLINE
STORE, TREE HUGGER - This year
marks the 100th anniversary of the Hershey's kiss, and yet a
celebration is hardly in order. Why? Because with each bite,
we are reminded that most chocolate sold in the U.S. comes from
cocoa farms where farmers work in unsafe conditions, receive
below poverty wages, many of them children under 14 years old
who are forced to work and denied education. . . The Ivory Coast
is the world's largest cocoa producer, providing 43% of the world's
cocoa. And yet, in 2001 the U.S. State Department reported child
slavery on many cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast. A 2002 report
from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture about
cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast and other African countries estimated
there were 284,000 children working on cocoa farms in hazardous
conditions. U.S. chocolate manufacturers have claimed they are
not responsible for the conditions on cocoa plantations since
they don't own them. . .
Hershey's and M&M/Mars alone control
two-thirds of the $13 billion U.S. chocolate candy market. The
result? An industry marred with child slavery, unsafe working
conditions and a cycle of poverty with no end in sight for cocoa
farmers. Chocolate companies are not held accountable for sourcing
practices, and despite their knowledge about the travesties that
occur on cocoa farms, they lack the will to change.
The U.S. chocolate industry has faced multiple
deadlines requiring new protocol, and yet little has changed.
Under pressure from Congress, in the Harken-Engel Protocol, the
U.S. chocolate industry agreed to voluntarily take steps to end
child slavery on cocoa farms by July of 2005. This deadline has
since passed, and the chocolate industry has failed to comply
with the terms of this agreement. . .
JANUARY 2006
Putting the squeeze
on the robber barons
DECEMBER 2006
NON-PROFITS DOING COVER LOBBYING FOR
CORPORADOS
BILL ADAIR, ST PETERSBURG TIMES
- Like other charities, Citizens Against Government Waste enjoys
gentle treatment from the government.
It doesn't have to pay income taxes. It doesn't have to publicly
disclose its donors. And those who donate get generous tax deductions.
But CAGW, as the group is known
in Washington, sometimes acts more like a corporate lobbying
firm than a guardian of the little guy. It has received tens
of thousands of dollars from corporations and trade associations
to lobby on topics such as imported avocados that have nothing
to do with government waste.
CAGW, like other so-called watchdog
groups, uses its special federal status to lobby in disguise.
While Washington lobbyists must tell the public who pays them,
tax-exempt groups do not.
The pay-to-play activities of
CAGW, first detailed by the St. Petersburg Times last April,
have raised questions about whether tax-exempt groups exploit
their status to build false credibility with Congress and the
public. Critics say such actions undermine faith in all tax-exempt
groups. . .
A recent Senate Finance Committee
report shows CAGW is not alone. It reveals how former lobbyist
Jack Abramoff orchestrated elaborate lobbying campaigns with
Americans for Tax Reform, an influential conservative group.
The report documents how Abramoff secretly paid the group thousands
of dollars to write favorable research reports and newspaper
articles about his clients.
The Senate report says CAGW,
Americans for Tax Reform and other groups "appear to have
perpetrated a fraud" by hiding behind their special tax-exempt
status when they were simply acting like corporate lobbyists.
"Nonprofits should not function as de facto lobbying firms,"
said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the incoming committee chairman.
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/12/11/Worldandnation/Groups_hide_behind_ta.shtml
CORPORATE BOSSES PLAY HIDDEN ROLE IN FALL OF PENSIONS
WALL STREET JOURNAL - A Wall
Street Journal analysis of corporate filings reveals that executive
benefits are playing a large and hidden role in the declining
health of America's pensions. Among the findings:
- Boosted by surging pay and
rich formulas, executive pension obligations exceed $1 billion
at some companies. Besides GM, they include General Electric
Co. (a $3.5 billion liability); AT&T Inc. ($1.8 billion);
Exxon Mobil Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. (about
$1.3 billion each); and Bank of America Corp. and Pfizer Inc.
(about $1.1 billion apiece).
- Benefits for executives now
account for a significant share of pension obligations in the
U.S., an average of 8% at the companies above. Sometimes a company's
obligation for a single executive's pension approaches $100 million.
- These liabilities are largely
hidden, because corporations don't distinguish them from overall
pension obligations in their federal financial filings.
- As a result, the savings that
companies make by curtailing pensions for regular retirees --
which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years -- can
mask a rising cost of benefits for executives.
- Executive pensions, even when
they won't be paid till years from now, drag down earnings today.
And they do so in a way that's disproportionate to their size,
because they aren't funded with dedicated assets.
One reason executive pensions
have grown so large is that they are linked to ballooning overall
executive compensation. Companies often design retirement payouts
to replace a percentage of what a person earns while active.
But for executives, the percentage
of pay replaced is itself higher. Compensation committees often
aim for a pension that replaces 60% to 100% of a top executive's
compensation. It's 20% to 35% for lower-level employees.
SEPTEMBER 2006
HALF OF AMERICA'S BUSINESS ELITE
ADMIT CHEATING IN GRAD SCHOOL
RICHARD MORIN, WASHINGTON POST
- Not only do
cheaters apparently prosper, they get graduate degrees in business.
That's what business professor Donald L. McCabe of Rutgers University
and his colleagues found when they surveyed more than 5,000 graduate
students and asked if they had cheated in the past year - and
if so, how often. A majority of MBA candidates -- 56 percent
-- acknowledged that they had cheated at least once, compared
with 47 percent of graduate students in other disciplines, the
researchers reported in the latest issue of Academy of Management
Learning & Education. . . Nearly as many graduate students
in engineering (54 percent) said they had cheated at least once
in the previous year . . . Those least likely to cut corners
were grad students in the social sciences and humanities -- 39
percent said they had broken the rules.
HALLIBURTON CEO EARNED $100 MILLION
SINCE WAR STARTED
& OTHER WAR PROFITEERING
SCANDALS
AUGUST 2006
BIG MYTHS ABOUT BIG BOXES AND
WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM
WHAT ONE TOWN IS DOING
NW AIRLINES ADVISES FIRED EMPLOYEES
TO TRY DUMPSTER DIVING
REUTERS - Bankrupt Northwest
Airlines Corp. advised workers to fish in the trash for things
they like or take their dates for a walk in the woods in a move
to help workers facing the ax to save money. The No. 5 U.S. carrier,
which has slashed most employees' pay and is looking to cut jobs
as it prepares to exit bankruptcy, put the tips in a booklet
handed out to about 50 workers and posted for a time on its employee
Web site.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/4119078.html
JULY 2006
WAL-MART BOMBS IN GERMANY
REUTERS - Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer,
is selling its underperforming German stores to the country's
leading retail chain Metro, marking a major retreat that will
cost it about $1 billion. The U.S. retail giant has struggled
to capture market share ever since entering the crowded German
retail arena eight years ago, hurt by cut-throat competition
and tepid consumer spending, and frustrated by Germany's tight
labor and trade laws.
The move to quit Germany
marks the second time in two months that Wal-Mart has pulled
out of a country to focus on more promising growth opportunities
in China and South and Central America, and as it lobbies for
permission to build stores in India. . .
Wal-Mart, which operates
85 hypermarkets across Germany, said on Friday it would incur
the roughly $1 billion pretax loss on the deal in the second
quarter of its fiscal 2007 year. . .
THE CASE FOR BREAKING UP THE
WAL-MART MONOPOLY
BARRY C. LYNN, HARPER'S - It is now twenty-five years since the
Reagan Administration eviscerated America's century-long tradition
of antitrust enforcement. For a generation, big firms have enjoyed
almost complete license to use brute economic force to grow only
bigger. And so today we find ourselves in a world dominated by
immense global oligopolies that every day further limit the flexibility
of our economy and our personal freedom within it. There are
still many instances of intense competition -- just ask General
Motors. . .
The idea that Wal-Mart's power actually subverts the functioning
of the free market will seem shocking to some. . . One of the
basic premises of the free-market system is that actors are free
to buy from or sell to a variety of other actors. In the case
of Wal-Mart, no one can deny that every single firm that supplies
the retailer is, technically, free not to do so. But is this
true in the real world? After all, once a firm comes to depend
on selling through Wal-Mart's system, just how conceivable is
the idea of walking away? Producers own and maintain machines,
employ skilled workers, lease land and buildings. Even with careful
planning, most would find the sudden surrender of 20 percent
or more of their revenue to be extremely disruptive, if not suicidal.
. .
No one can deny that, technically, every firm that supplies Wal-Mart
is free to ask whatever price it wants. But again, we must ask
whether this holds true in the real world. Every producer knows
that Wal-Mart is, as one of its executives told the New York
Times, a "no-nonsense negotiator," which means the
firm sets take-it-or-leave-it prices, which as we know from the
previous paragraph are far harder to leave than to take. Every
so often Wal-Mart will accept a higher price, but then the retailer's
managers may opt to punish the offending supplier, perhaps by
ratcheting up competition with its own in-house brands. . .
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/39251/
JUNE 2006
WAL-MART WANTS YOU ON FILM
MAX MCCOY, JOPLIN GLOBE
- Call it Area 71. Behind a fence topped with razor wire just
off U.S. Highway 71 is a bunker of a building that Wal-Mart considers
so secret that it won't even let the county assessor inside without
a nondisclosure agreement.
The 125,000-square-foot
building, tucked behind a new Wal-Mart Supercenter, is only a
stone's throw from the Arkansas line and about 15 miles from
corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
There is nothing about
the building to give even a hint that Wal-Mart owns it.
Despite the glimpses through
the fence of manicured grass and carefully placed trees, the
overall impression is that this is a secure site that could withstand
just about anything. Earth is packed against the sides. The green
roof - meant, perhaps, to blend into the surrounding Ozarks hills
- bristles with dish antennas. On one of the heavy steel gates
at the guardhouse is a notice that visitors must use the intercom
for assistance.
What the building houses
is a mystery.
According to one consumer
activist, Katherine Albrecht, even the wildest conspiracy buff
might be surprised at just how much Wal-Mart knows about its
customers - and how much more it would like to know. "We
were contacted about two years ago by somebody who runs a security
company that had been asked in a request for proposals for ways
they could link video footage with customers paying for their
purchases," Albrecht said. "Wal-Mart would actually
be able to view photos and video of customers paying, say, for
a pack of gum. At the time, it struck me as unbelievably outlandish
because of the amount of data storage required." But Wal-Mart,
according to a 2004 New York Times article, had enough storage
capacity to contain twice the amount of all the information available
on the Internet. For the technically minded, the exact amount
was for 460 terabytes of data. . . Albrecht, founder of Consumers
Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, said she
never could confirm the contractor's story. . . A Globe request
for information about the Jane data center was referred at Wal-Mart
headquarters to Carrie Thum, a senior information officer and
former lobbyist for the retailer. "This is not something
that we discuss publicly," Thum said. "We have no comment.
And that's off the record.". . .
Bill Wilson, McDonald
County presiding commissioner, said he has never been inside
the green-roofed data center, and that to his knowledge, only
one county official has: Assessor Laura Pope. "I had to
sign a document saying that I wouldn't talk about what's in there,"
Pope said. "I've never been in a situation to tour anything
like that before. I don't want to be secretive about it. Basically,
it houses computer equipment." Pope said she had never been
asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement before in her job as
assessor, and that she didn't keep a copy. She said she didn't
appraise the building and equipment, but rather came to an agreement
with Wal-Mart on what it was worth. . .
Albrecht, the consumer
activist, said that when the contractor came to her with the
story about Wal-Mart wanting to biometrically identify customers
through video, one of the reasons given was to help law enforcement.
. . In 2003, she said, Wal-Mart did two experiments using RFID
on. . . razor blades and lipstick. At Brockton, Mass., Albrecht
said, the company used a surveillance camera on a shelf that
was linked to chips in packages of razor blades. When someone
picked up a package, she said, the shelf camera would be activated.
Another camera would take a mug shot of the customer at the checkout
stand. At Broken Arrow, Okla., she said, the company linked devices
in packages of lipstick that triggered a camera that allowed
the lipstick manufacturer to watch consumers on live video.
"There's a sense
that when you enter a retail space, you should retain some degree
of privacy." But, Albrecht said, there's a push among retailers
to collect as much information about their customers as possible
- and to keep the lower-profit individuals, known as "barnacles"
and "bottom-feeders," away. . . ."
http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/local_story_148015054/resources_printstory
APRIL 2006
NO MORE ENRON TRIALS? NEGROPONTE
GETS POWER TO EXEMPT CORPORADOS FROM SECURITIES LAWS
DAWN KOPECKI, BUSINESS
WEEK - Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules Now, the White House's
top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses
from reporting requirements. President George W. Bush has bestowed
on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in
the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies
from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.
Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal
Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained
eye.
Unbeknownst to almost
all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other
President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt
companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from
portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration
officials told Business Week that they believe this is the first
time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone
outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined
whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.
The timing of Bush's move
is intriguing. On the same day the President signed the memo,
Porter Goss resigned as director of the Central Intelligence
Agency amid criticism of ineffectiveness and poor morale at the
agency. Only six days later, on May 11, USA Today reported that
the National Security Agency had obtained millions of calling
records of ordinary citizens provided by three major U.S. phone
companies. Negroponte oversees both the CIA and NSA in his role
as the administration's top intelligence official.
In addition to refusing
to explain why Bush decided to delegate this authority to Negroponte,
the White House declined to say whether Bush or any other President
has ever exercised the authority and allowed a company to avoid
standard securities disclosure and accounting requirements.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2006/
nf20060523_2210.htm
TARGET: THE WAL-MART THAT GETS
AWAY WITH IT
KARI LYDERSEN, CORPWATCH
Target may look more upscale -- but when it comes to wages, working
conditions, sweatshop-like suppliers, and effects on communities,
the two big boxes are eerily similar. . . While many people associate
Wal-Mart with low-income, rural communities perhaps dominated
by a prison or power plant, life-size photos throughout Target
stores remind you that their customers are a lively, beautiful
cast of multi-cultural hipsters. . .
In contrast to this image,
however, critics say that in terms of wages and benefits, working
conditions, sweatshop-style foreign suppliers, and effects on
local retail communities, big box Target stores are very much
like Wal-Mart, just in a prettier package.
Of more than 1,400 Target
stores employing more than 300,000 people nationwide, not one
has a union. Employees at various stores say an anti-union message
and video is part of the new-employee orientation. At stores
in the Twin Cities, where Target is headquartered, the United
Food and Commercial Workers union Local 789 has been trying for
several years to help Target employees organize, with little
luck.
"People ask what
the difference between Wal-Mart and Target is," said UFCW
organizer Bernie Hesse. "Nothing, except that Wal-Mart is
six times bigger. The wages start at $7.25 to $7.50 an hour [at
Target]. . . .
Wal-Mart has about 3,800
stores nationwide and another 2,600 worldwide, employing about
1.6 million people. Target plans to open at least 600 more stores
by 2010, for a total of about 2,000 in 47 states. . .
A survey by the UFCW found
that starting wages are similar in Targets and Wal-Marts - possibly
higher overall at Wal-Marts - and that Target benefits packages
are often harder to qualify for and less comprehensive. . .
Perhaps Target's oddest
singularity is the fact that it boasts one of the nation's top
forensics labs at its company headquarters. A product of its
efforts to stop shoplifting and property destruction at its stores,
its mastery of surveillance and investigative technology and
strategy is now eagerly subscribed to by law enforcement agencies
nationwide, including the FBI. The company provides training
for police and federal agents on investigation and prevention
of everything from arson and robbery to smuggling.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/35610/
WATCH WAL-MART GROW:
MAP SHOWS HOW VIRUS SPREAD
SIGN OF THE TIMES
FORBES
LISTS BEST PLACES TO GO TO PRISON
The most narrow-minded,
mean-spirited, nasty member of Congress is probably Rep. James
Sensenbrenner, who, among other things, is promoting a bill which
would turn 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons, punish
anyone guilty of providing them assistance, and construct an
iron wall between the US and Mexico. Sensenbrenner is also an
heir to the family fortune of Kimberly Clark, which is now the
subject of a latino boycott
MARCH 2006
SURPRISE, SURPRISE: ELECTRIC
DEREGULATION WAS A SCAM
TERENCE O'HARA AND AMIT R. PALEY,
WASHINGTON POST
- Maryland and District consumers angry at the record electric
bills they will receive this summer might want to recall the
promises made by proponents of deregulation seven years ago.
If they do, they'll be even angrier. At the time, in 1999, evangelists
for deregulation described a competitive, efficient and lower-priced
system of energy delivery that, for the most part, remains a
fantasy in the Mid-Atlantic region and other parts of the country
today, according to industry experts.
The District, Maryland
and Virginia, along with much of the nation, are wrestling with
the ramifications of deregulation at the same time that the cost
of producing electricity is skyrocketing. But as energy prices
have soared, electricity rates have gone up more in deregulated
states than in regulated ones. Though Northern Virginia residents
won't feel the full effects of deregulation until 2010, when
rate caps expire, caps were lifted for Pepco customers in the
District and Maryland several years ago, resulting in steady
increases, including a 38 percent jump for suburban Maryland
and 12 percent for the District announced last week.
JANUARY 2006
WAL-MART, TARGET, COSTCO CONSIDERING
BIG BROTHER CHECK ON CUSTOMERS
FORTUNE - Buying groceries with the touch of a finger
could be closer than you think, if new research touting the benefits
of biometric payment for retail giants like Wal-Mart, Target,
and Costco is anything to go by. The report, by Sanford Bernstein
analyst Emme Kozloff, found that the use of so-called "electronic
wallets" reduces the potential for fraud and identity theft,
speeds up the checkout process, and most importantly, lowers
transaction processing fees for retailers, improving their bottom
line. A 20% reduction in processing costs at big-box discounters
like Wal-Mart over the next several years could result in a 3%
to 4% increase in earnings per share by 2009, the report estimated.
"We believe both Wal-Mart (Research) and Costco (Research)
are looking at it closely," Kozloff wrote. (Both companies
declined to comment.)
Already in use at supermarket
chains like Albertsons (Research) (which yesterday agreed to
be sold to a group that includes CVS and Supervalu), Cub Foods
(part of Supervalu), and privately held Piggly Wiggly, biometric
systems are just one of several emerging payment technologies
that retailers are currently experimenting with. Others include
self-checkout (widely deployed at Home Depot), contactless cards
like J.P Morgan Chase's "blink," and so-called "near
field communication," which involves waving your cell phone,
say, near a reader.
Here's how biometric payment
works: To set up an account, customers scan their fingerprint
at an in-store kiosk, enter their phone number, and then submit
checking and credit card account information. To make a purchase,
they place their finger on a scanner at the register, enter their
phone number, and choose how they want to pay (credit, debit,
or checking.). . .
The privacy issue "remains
a deep bone of contention and will mitigate against pervasive
usage," says David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report,
an industry newsletter. One industry source calls biometric readers
"clunky." And if enrollment is confusing or time-consuming,
few shoppers will even bother.
ALICE HILL REAL TECH NEWS
- Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stephanie Schuckers and her team at Clarkson University found
that most scanning systems can be fooled 90% of the time by taking
a mold of the mark's finger, filling the mold with Play-Doh,
and using the fake digit to gain access. Don't go running out
to Toys 'R Us just yet, though, as the Clarkson team also designed
an algorithm that detects the spread of perspiration from the
pores out to the ridges of a live person's finger, and is only
foiled by the Play-Doh method 10% of the time.
FROM WASHINGTON SQUARE TO FEDEX
FIELD
JON ROWE, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR - The news that a town in Texas has changed its name
to that of a corporation, in exchange for free TV, made me think
about my elementary school, which was named for a local man who
died in World War I. I'm not going to pretend that I sat at my
desk each day and pondered his bravery, as opposed to, say, the
little League Game that evening.
But I still remember the
awe I felt when I looked up at the plaque in the main corridor.
Somehow the message penetrated my unruly mind, that I was supposed
to be brave and unselfish, and to serve my community and my country,
the way young Albert Edgar Angier had done.
America once was full
of messages like that. Schools, arenas, and public places bore
the names of civic leaders and national and local heroes. A Washington
Square Park, a Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, was not just
a memorial to a dead person. It was a testament to the qualities
of character that the nation purports to stand for and to pass
along to its young. . .
It's not the kind of message
that young Americans are getting much these days. . . A high
school football field in Illinois has become Rust-Oleum Field.
In New Jersey, an elementary school now has a ShopRite gym. It's
not just the schools. Piece by piece the civic landscape is collapsing
under a deluge of commercial self-promotion. Sports stadiums,
parks, and other spaces all are dropping civic names for corporate
ones. Ballparks once were a kind of lyric poetry of place. Crosley
Field meant Cincinnati. Briggs Stadium meant Detroit. Candlestick
conjured up the San Francisco fog, and the wondrous Willie Mays.
Now you hear Cinergy, Comerica, SBC, and you are everywhere and
nowhere. . .
Next time ideologues bemoan
the decline in traditional values in America today, and how young
people choose self-indulgence over service, they might look at
the propaganda they have invited into the schools, and into the
culture at large. Character comes with a price; and if you aren't
willing to pay for it, don't blame others when it is gone.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0126/p09s01-coop.html
BANK REFUSES TO MAKE LOAN FOR EMINENT
DOMAIN DEVELOPMENT
DEE ANN DIVIS, DC EXMAINER -
BB&T, one of the largest banks in Washington area, announced
Wednesday it will no longer lend to development commercial projects
that involved the seizure of private property under eminent domain
rules. "It's a philosophical decision consistent with our
values," said Ken Chalk, BB&T's senior executive vice
president and chief credit officer. "We think this is just
not good public policy.". . .
The bank is the third-largest
in Virginia with some 405 branches. It has nine branches in the
District and 127 in Maryland. Nationally, BB&T makes roughly
$75 billion in loans a year, with half of that going to commercial
projects. . .
"I think there is a good
change other banks will follow," said George Nation III,
and expert on commercial lending a professor of law at Lehigh
University, Bethlehem, Pa. "From a strictly legal point
of view, I think there is a good chance you may wind up with
more litigation in these types of projects," said Nation,
who noted that there was also little incentive to take on a project
likely to generate negative publicity. . .
"This is a unique move,"
said Susan Besaw, a spokeswoman for the American Bankers Association.
No other banks have implemented similar policies, she said, but
the announcement was very new.
http://dcexaminer.com/articles/2006/01/26/business/00business26bbandt.txt
TO OPEN A BB&T CHECKING ACCOUNT
[BB&T serves AL, DC, FL,
GA, IN, KY, MD, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV]
MEDIA CORPORADOS COME UP WITH
PLAN TO BLOCK ANYTHING
NEW
HANNIBAL, ARSTECHINICA
- The EFF's Deeplinks section has a pretty alarming post about
the RIAA and MPAA's attempts to freeze the progress of consumer
electronics technology and then start turning back the clock
on all of us. Fair use, meet your successor: "customary
historic use."
The post points to broadcast
flag draft legislation sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.)
that contains provisions which appear to limit digital broadcast
media reception devices to "customary historic use of broadcast
content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with
applicable law and that prevents redistribution of copyrighted
content over digital networks." In other words, if it does
anything heretofore unheard of with the digital content that
it receives, then it's illegal. And if it does anything "customary"
that could also possibly lead to unauthorized redistribution,
then it's also illegal. So all the bases are covered. . .
So, if you were planning
to launch a startup and make millions off the coming digital
broadcast media revolution by inventing the next iPod or by combining
digital radio with Web 2.0 and VoIP and Skype and RSS and WiFi
mesh networks, then forget about it. When digital broadcast nirvana
finally arrives, the only people who'll be legally authorized
to make money off of music and movies are the middlemen at the
RIAA and the MPAA. . .
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060121-6025.html
THE QUESTIONS NO ONE HAS ASKED
OF ALITO
MEMO
To: Members of the Senate
Judiciary Committee
From: Morton Mintz
Subject: Your hearing
on Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s nomination.
There's no doubt that
many of the subjects you are pursuing, women's rights and presidential
powers being foremost examples, are of utmost importance. But
there is also little doubt that many people are being turned
off, not only by the predictable excess of self-serving oratory
and by the bowing and scraping, but also by the emphasis on issues
that few care much about, such as Vanguard. So here's a suggestion
for a line of questioning that the committee -- whether run by
Republicans or Democrats -- has regularly dodged down through
the years, but that really, truly matters to most everybody --
men, women, whites, blacks, Hispanics, the elderly, the young,
the healthy, the sick. In two words, the subject is, corporate
power.
First a bit of background.
In a 1978 case, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the
Supreme Court decided, 5 to 4, that business corporations --
just as flesh and blood like you and me -- have a First Amendment
right to spend their money to influence elections. Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist dissented. "It might reasonably be
concluded," he wrote, "that those properties, so beneficial
in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political
sphere." The late Chief Justice went on to write: "Furthermore,
it might be argued that liberties of political expression are
not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes for which States
permit commercial corporations to exist."
Questions for Judge Alito:
-- Do you believe that
corporate money in our elections poses "special dangers
in the political sphere"?
--Do you believe "that
liberties of political expression" are necessary "to
effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations
to exist"?"
-- Do you believe that
money is speech? Or is it property?
-- Do you agree that Justice
Rehnquist was effectively saying, in the quote that follows,
that the state having created the corporation, the state can
regulate the corporation: "I would think that any particular
form of organization upon which the State confers special privileges
or immunities different from those of natural persons would be
subject to like regulation, whether the organization is a labor
union, a partnership, a trade association, or a corporation."
Key related questions
flow from Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted
in 1868, soon after the end of the Civil War: "All persons
born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Judge Alito, was the "person"
whose basic rights the framers and the people sought to protect
the newly freed slave?
-- Was the "person"
a corporation?
-- Is a corporation a
person "born or naturalized in the United States"?
Another question flows
from Justice Hugo L. Black's dissent in Connecticut General Life
Insurance Co. v. Johnson in 1938. "[W]hen the Fourteenth
Amendment was submitted for approval, the people were not told
that [they were ratifying] an amendment granting new and revolutionary
rights to corporations," Justice Black wrote. "The
history of the Amendment proves that the people were told that
its purpose was to protect weak and helpless human beings and
were not told that it was intended to remove corporations in
any fashion from the control of state governments," he continued.
"The Fourteenth Amendment followed the freedom of a race
from slavery. . . Corporations have neither race nor color.")
-- In proclaiming a paper
entity to be a person, Judge Alito, was the court faithful to
the intent of the framers of the Amendment and to the intent
of the people who ratified it?
The prompt for a final
group of key questions is Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific,
a case the Supreme Court had before it not very long after the
people ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
The issue was whether
the Amendment's guarantee of equal protection barred California
from taxing property owned by a corporation differently from
property owned by a human being. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite
disposed of it with a bolt-from-the-blue pronouncement: "The
Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether
the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
which forbids a state to deny any person the equal protection
of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the
opinion that it does."
- Judge Alito, how would
you characterize the court's refusal to hear argument in a momentous
case before deciding it?
--Would you describe the
court's decision in Santa Clara County as conservative? As radical?
As open-minded?
--Would you agree that
the Court that decided Santa Clara in 1886 failed to meet the
standard of judicial conduct that was met by the Court in 1973,
when it decided Roe v. Wade only after being fully briefed, hearing
oral argument, and deliberating at length?
-- You have expressed
profound admiration for Judge Robert H. Bork. calling him one
of the outstanding nominees of the 20th Century." As you
know, he famously denounced Roe as "a wholly unjustified
usurpation of state legislative authority." Without regard
as to whether Roe was rightly or wrongly decided, was Santa Clara
"a wholly unjustified usurpation of state legislative authority?"
-- Again without regard
as to whether Roe was rightly or wrongly decided, how does it
strike you that the Court has declared a corporation -- a paper
entity that is neither born nor naturalized -- to be a person
but has declared a fetus not to be a person?
Is there just one committee
member who will raise questions such as the foregoing with Judge
Alito? We'll know very soon.
[Morton Mintz covered
the Supreme Court for the Washington Post 1964-1965 and again
1977-1980 and is a former chair of the Fund for Investigative
Journalism]
NEW FRONTIERS IN PRIVATIZATION
DECEMBER 2005
SLAPP SUIT VICTIMS SLAPPING BACK
TIM JONES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
- A year ago Tom and Barbi Diehl were sweating a $5 million libel
and slander suit, filed against them by a company that objected
to Tom Diehl's public opposition to a proposed garbage holding
pen in his suburban St. Louis neighborhood. The lawsuit was tossed
out by Missouri courts this year and now the Diehls are suing
the garbage company for damages, arguing that the suit against
them was malicious.
Defamation lawsuits are
filed every day, but amid the clutter of allegations claiming
damaged reputations and hurt feelings is a trend of countersuits
against corporations, public officials and others that have used
so-called SLAPPs to silence opposition in public forums. The
reaction to strategic lawsuits against public participation,
or SLAPPs, varies from state to state, but legal analysts say
there is a growing backlash against these suits that many say
are designed solely to stifle public dissent and discourage involvement
in civic affairs.
In Nebraska, a jury recently
found two hog-production companies guilty of using a lawsuit
to intimidate two individuals and a lawyer who successfully fought
to keep a large livestock confinement out of a southern Nebraska
county. Each of the defendants was awarded $300,000 in the late
October jury verdict. Part of the reaction against SLAPPs is
fueled by state legislatures, two dozen of which have passed
laws to restrict the filing of such suits or, in some cases,
to make it easier for people to fight back. . .
Most SLAPPs are eventually
dropped or dismissed, but the effect of the filing, some lawyers
say, is to discourage average citizens from speaking out for
fear of incurring the cost of hiring a lawyer. Stephen Kling,
a St. Louis lawyer who describes SLAPPs as a form of economic
warfare used in planning, zoning and development disputes, said
he has recently noticed a drop in such suits.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/13486576.htm
POOH ENDANGERED AS DISNEY PLANS
TO 'REBRAND' HIM
[No comment on reports
that Disney is also planning a new version of the Bible in which
Jesus gets married and settles down]
WASHINGTON POST - After 80 years in Hundred Acre
Wood Winnie the Pooh is to get a female friend, replacing Christopher
Robin, according to reports. The Walt Disney Company has decided
to pair Pooh up with a red-haired six-year-old tomboy for its
2007 series, newspaper USA Today reported. Disney said My Friends
Tigger and Pooh will keep the "trust, friendship and happiness"
of AA Milne's stories. Pooh is being re-branded as part of its
80th anniversary celebrations.
HALLIBURTON GOT BONUSES DESPITE
OVERBILLING TAXPAYERS
HALLIBURTON WATCH - The
Army Corps of Engineers paid profits and bonuses to Halliburton
for oil transport and repair in Iraq even though the Pentagon's
own auditors declared $169 million in costs for the work to be
"unreasonable" and "unsupported," a congressman
disclosed. In a letter to the chairman of the House Government
Reform Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) requested hearings
on how Halliburton could have been awarded $38 million in bonus
payments for contract work plagued by overcharges. The disputed
costs were paid to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under its no-bid
Iraqi oil contract, known as Restore Iraqi Oil , awarded in March
2003.
Typically, between 60
percent and 70 percent of costs challenged by Pentagon auditors
are ultimately denied to contractors by the contracting authority.
But under six of 10 task orders of the RIO contract, only 27
percent of the costs challenged by auditors was ultimately denied
to Halliburton by the Corps of Engineers. Specifically, Pentagon
auditors said Halliburton overcharged the military by $169 million,
but the Corps of Engineers repaid $124 million of the cost to
the company anyway. The Corps denied repayment of $45 million,
or 27 percent of the overcharges.
http://halliburtonwatch.org/news/billings_bonuses.html
WAL-MART, OTHER BIG BOX RETAILERS
PUSHING FOR WTO CONTROL OVER LAND USE POLICIES
PUBLIC CITIZEN - An agreement
that will be discussed at this week's WTO ministerial meeting
in Hong Kong poses a serious threat to state and local authority
over land use policy, according to Public Citizen. Big box retailers
such as Wal-Mart are pushing for new provisions in the WTO's
General Agreement on Trade in Services that could further undermine
local zoning and other land use and development policies.
"Unlike many European
and Asian nations, U.S. trade negotiators failed to safeguard
local land use laws from the existing WTO services agreement,
much in the same way that they failed to protect state gambling
laws from the GATS," said Lori Wallach, director of Public
Citizen's Global Trade Watch division, referring to a recent
WTO ruling against U.S. gambling laws.
Unless the United States
takes action to fix this problem in the current round of negotiations,
local governments could see challenges to state and local land
use laws brought before WTO tribunals, which are empowered to
authorize trade sanctions against countries that refuse to conform
their domestic policies to WTO dictates. Across the country,
state and local officials are working to put laws in place to
protect their communities, their environment, their wage base
and tax dollars by putting land use limits on "big box"
retailers, as well as retail chains and other development projects
they deem destructive to the community or the environment or
out of step with local needs and planning.
Among the local laws threatened
by GATS rules are those that impose size and height restrictions
on big box stores; limits on hours of operation; economic needs
tests before stores can be approved; and limits on development
to protect the environment or protect historic and cultural sites.
No state or local group has yet recognized the threat posed to
land use laws and local sovereignty by the WTO's one-size-fits-all
rules for service firms. One group that has recognized this threat
is major retail firms.
"Major big box retail
corporations have been eyeing the GATS as a way of gutting local
zoning and land use laws that have kept them out of communities
in Europe and the United States," said Saerom Park, Public
Citizen's GATS outreach coordinator. "They are pursuing
a strategy of global preemption. Citizens concerned about setting
sane land use policies need to know that Wal-Mart is just one
of the firms that has been lobbying both the U.S. government
and the WTO on this issue."
Indeed, Wal-Mart, in a
May 1, 2002, submission to the U.S. Trade Representative, asked
that Bush administration trade negotiators press countries to
remove "any size limitations on individual stores"
and "geographic limitations on store locations" in
member countries. Similarly, at a Sept. 12, 2002, conference
on the GATS organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a retail
industry representative identified IKEA (the Swedish furniture
retailer) and Royal Ahold (the Netherlands-based owner of the
Stop & Shop and Giant Food chains in the United States) as
among the globalized companies facing problems with local land
use policies. The representative identified regulations related
to the "size and location of stores" as a specific
trade barrier.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2099
TYSON'S PUSHES THE GOOD BOOK
WHILE THE BOOK ON TYSONS GROWS
DOUG IRELAND, DIRELAND
- Ad Age reports today that the giant international mega-conglomerate
Tyson Foods -- twice as large as any competitor in the meat-and-chicken
industry -- is now trying to sell God along with its chickens,
beef, and pre-prepared frozen meals. Tyson is distributing "mealtime
prayer booklets" for a variety of faiths all over the world.
Under the headline, "TYSON LAUNCHES FAITH-FRIENDLY MARKETING
CAMPAIGN," Ad Age reports: "What started out as the
internal manifestation of Tyson's mission statement -- a set
of core values that includes 'striving to be a faith-friendly
company. . . and to honor God. . . ' -- has over the last few
years morphed into placing 128 part-time chaplains in 78 plants
across the country and, now, the external marketing initiative
to play a part in mealtime prayer." Tyson's chairman, born-again
John Tyson, Ad Age notes, is a sometime drug addict and alcoholic.
. .
Blood, Sweat and Fear,
a recent report by Human Rights Watch, condemned Tyson for violating
the basic human rights of its workers by allowing unsafe working
conditions at many of its production facilities and using illegal
means to stop their joining unions: Tyson workers "contend
with conditions, vulnerabilities, and abuses which violate human
rights," said the January, 2005 HRW report. Just four years
ago, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service charged
Tyson Foods and six company execs with running a massive ring
to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States from Mexico,
Honduras and Guatemala. After a two-and-a-half year investigation,
the INS alleged that Tyson had smuggled illegal immigrants to
work at 15 Tyson plants in nine states. Undercover INS agents,
who'd posed as 'recruiters,' testified that Tyson managers had
asked them to smuggle in more than 2,000 workers. Two Tyson managers
pleaded guilty. Another one committed suicide. And the Human
Rights Watch report details the inhuman treatment to which Tyson's
workers are subjected during the hiring process and after their
hiring. . .
In April 2005, the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission sued Tyson Foods and former
chairman and company patriarch Don Tyson (right) for filing misleading
disclosures, and Tyson Foods was forced to pay $1.5 million in
fines, while Don Tyson was ordered to pay a $700,000 penalty.
The SEC found that while Don Tyson was chairman, the company
provided an estimated $3 million US in perquisites and personal
benefits to Tyson, his wife, their daughters, and three close
personal friends, including $8,000 for a horse, $20,000 for oriental
rugs, $84,000 for lawn maintenance at the family's homes, and
$203,675 in personal housekeeping services. . .
Tyson uses violence, among
other impermissible and illegal tactics, to try to stop union
organizing. Just two months ago, in October, Royal Canadian Mounted
Police charged Tyson exec Andrew Crocker, head of security at
its Lakeside, Canada, plant, and Carey Kopp, the company's director
of human resources, with five criminal charges, including criminal
harassment and intimidation, after a car chase which ended when
the car of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 President
Doug O'Halloran was forced off the road and crashed in a ditch.
Four other men with ties to the plant were also charged in the
incident. . .
In August 2005, the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a suit against
Tyson's Foods alleging that its Alabama-based facility maintained
a "whites-only" bathroom and that managers sternly
disciplined black workers who complained about it. . .
The company was accused
not long ago by the U.S. Labor Department of cheating its workers
out of $340 million in "lost" wage hours. And, in case
you've forgotten,Tyson Foods pleaed guilty to bribery 1997 and
paid out $6 million in fines after it corrupted Bill Clinton's
Agriculture Secretary, Mike Espy. The two Tyson executives jailed
in the case were later conveniently pardoned by Pres. Clinton.
. .
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/12/tyson_foods_sel.html
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1998
- Back in 1994, Time reported that a senior pilot for Tyson had
been grilled for three days by [special prosecutor Dan] Smaltz
and FBI agents about transfers of cash to the governor's mansion.
Joe Henrickson claimed to have carried white envelopes containing
a quarter-inch stack of $100 bills on six occasions. Here's how
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard describes what happened next:
"In one case, [Henrickson
claimed] a Tyson executive handed him an envelope of cash in
the company's aircraft hanger in Fayetteville and said, 'This
is for Governor Clinton."
"'I nearly fell off
my chair when I heard Joe make the allegation. I took over the
questions,' Smaltz told Time." But Smaltz had no authority
to investigate Clinton and when he asked Janet Reno for permission
she said no. Reno's refusal, along with Starr's mishandling of
the Mena drug and Foster death investigations, rank among the
biggest scandals that lie within the Whitewater scandal.
JULY 2005.
. .
ELECTRICITY DEREG PROVES JUST ANOTHER
CORPORATE FAD
ERIC KELDERMAN, STATELINE - In 1996, California
launched a national fad by allowing power utilities to compete
for customers within and across its borders. By 2000, 23 states
and the District of Columbia had rushed down the path of electricity
deregulation.
But the fad to open up the electricity
market has faltered. Residential consumers have found little
reason to switch to new power providers, and the promises of
lower prices and a reliable electricity infrastructure have failed
to materialize. The California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the
financial scandals of energy giant Enron, and the massive Northeastern
blackout in August 2003 have soured policy-makers, consumers
and even some power companies on electric utility competition.
As a result, Arkansas, California, Montana,
Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma have changed course and abandoned
or indefinitely delayed deregulation. Oregon has limited electricity
competition to large industrial customers, and pressure is rising
in both Illinois and Michigan to pull back from utility restructuring.
Consumers in many states also are bracing for rate hikes in coming
years as price caps -- enacted to protect them during the early
phases of deregulation -- expire. "Nobody's benefited from
deregulation - period, end of story," said Charles Acquard,
executive director of the National Association of State Utility
Consumer Advocates.
APRIL 2005. . .
MEDIAN TOP CAPITAL AREA CEO IS PAID
OVER $5 MILLION
WASHINGTON POST - The median total compensation for the 100 highest-paid
executives in The Washington Post's annual survey of executive
pay was $5.25 million in 2004, up slightly from $5.13 million
the year before. Despite increased scrutiny of executive compensation
after a series of corporate scandals, the executive suite at
many companies remains a charmed place in which boards not only
reward executives with rich salaries and bonuses but also help
them with such routine expenses as commuting to work and preparing
their taxes.
Last year, 294 executives of
area companies received packages worth $1 million or more, compared
with 270 executives in 2003 and 190 in 2000, according to The
Post's study of top-level compensation at 157 local companies
that publicly report pay and benefits.
The median total compensation
-- which includes salary and bonus, long-term benefits, perks
and the projected value of option grants -- for all executives
in the 2004 survey was $704,713, compared with $668,049 in 2003.
The median is the midpoint of the survey, with half below and
half above. The survey covered 764 executives in 2004 compared
with 728 in 2003.
DAVID S. HILZENRATH, WASHINGTON POST - Mired in bankruptcy reorganization,
W.R. Grace & Co. agreed this year to pay newly installed
chief executive Alfred E. Festa a $1.75 million "Chapter
11 emergence bonus" -- whether or not the chemical company
emerges from Chapter 11, according to a report filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission.
General Dynamics Corp. promised
last year that, if chairman and chief executive Nicholas D. Chabraja
stays at the company through April 2008, he will be allowed to
use corporate aircraft for up to 500 hours during his first decade
of retirement. That would be on top of annual retirement pay
projected at $2.1 million based on his salary and bonus last
year, the defense contractor said in an SEC filing.
Perks granted to General Dynamics
chief executive Nicholas D. Chabraja include about $270,000 for
personal travel on company planes.
Coventry Health Care Inc., an
HMO company, gave chairman and former chief executive Allen F.
Wise a deal that includes as much as $12,000 for legal, tax and
financial planning, an unspecified automobile allowance, 75 hours
of personal airplane use and a "tax equalization bonus"
to ensure that those other benefits entail "no net cost
to him," according to a regulatory filing.
GENERAL MOTORS BOYCOTTS LA
TIMES
http://tinyurl.com/4uaor
[If you've ever wondered why
daily newspaper auto sections read like advertising supplements,
this will give you a clue]
REUTERS - The world's largest
automaker, in a rare move for a major corporation, said it was
pulling its ads from one of the country's biggest dailies over
what it called factual errors and misrepresentations in the L.A.
Times' editorial coverage. The boycott likely will be short-lived
because GM won't want to risk losing market share to its rivals
in the large L.A. market, publishing analysts said.
But the Chicago-based media company "doesn't need any more
bad news," said Douglas Arthur, a Morgan Stanley stock analyst.
"Tribune remains the cheapest major media company in the
country, but probably the one with the most issues right now.".
. .
GM's move came a day after the
L.A. Times published a column by its Pulitzer Prize-winning auto
critic, Dan Neil, about the automaker's brand strategy. The column's
headline called the Pontiac G6 "a sales flop." It also
said the automaker should "dump" Chairman and Chief
Executive Rick Wagoner and "let the impeachment proceedings
begin."
FEBRUARY 2005
MCDONALD'S PROTESTERS WIN
CASE, BUT BLAIR REGIME WOULD MAKE ACTIONS CRIMINAL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1419908,00.html
GEORGE MONBIOT, GUARDIAN - It
was the greatest legal victory against corporate power in living
memory. Last week, two penniless activists, Dave Morris and Helen
Steel, persuaded the European court of human rights that Britain's
libel laws, under which they had been sued by McDonald's, had
denied them their right of free speech. The law will probably
have to be changed, depriving the rich and powerful of their
most effective means of stifling public protest. So why aren't
they hopping mad? The company that sued Dave and Helen will say
only that "the world has moved on ... and so has McDonald's."
The Confederation of British Industry, so quick to denounce legal
rulings it doesn't like, hasn't uttered a word.
They don't care, and they don't
need to. You can see why by reading the serious organized crime
and police bill, which has now passed through the Commons for
the third time. What civil law once gave them, criminal law now
offers instead. . .
Section 121 of the bill prohibits
people from "pursuing a course of conduct which involves
harassment of two or more persons" in order "to persuade
any person ... not to do something that he is entitled or required
to do, or to do something that he is not under any obligation
to do". Harassment, the bill explains, can involve "conduct
on at least one occasion". . . "in relation to two
or more persons." In other words, you need only approach
someone once to be considered to be harassing them, as long as
you have also approached someone else in the same manner.
The law is left wide open: there
is nothing in it to prevent a company seeking an injunction and
damages against someone who has handed out leaflets to two of
its customers. To demonstrate harassment, it needs to show that
the protester's conduct has caused its customers "alarm
or distress;" but again the law grants as much scope as
it could ask for.
CORPORATE TRESPASSING IN CENTRAL
PARK
[This is the second such attempt
by a corporation to invade urban public space improperly citing
copyright law. The other involved a sculpture in Chicago where
the city is now backing down after a public outcry. Robert Ledeman
is a NYC artist activist]
ROBERT LEDERMAN - This Christo
- Central Park Conservancy - Bloomberg fiasco is taking on some
amazing twists. Today, a representative of Christo's German publisher
informed street artists, photographers and art vendors around
Central Park that they would be subject to arrest for selling
any images of The Gates. I got the number of this person, Dr.
Fils, and had a lengthy talk with him.
Christo's publisher claims a
vast new degree of copyright and trademark protection. They claim
they will prosecute anyone who sells their own original photos
of the Gates; who makes and sells a drawing of the Gates or who
even uses the words, the Gates, without their permission. They
claim to have copyrighted the words, The Gates. They also claim
to have an agreement with the media that media sources may only
use news photos of the gates for the period the installation
is up. That after that the media will only be allowed to use
"official" photos of The Gates.
They also claim that all of Central
Park is now "private property." Talk about privatization.
Be sure to thank Christo, Bloomscrooge and the CPC.
I called the Central Park Precinct
on this and they said if an artist is selling their own art (rather
than a copy of an official piece of Christo merchandise) it was
legal to do so.
MONSANTO HARASSING FARMERS
WITH SEED POLICE
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27046
STEPHEN LEAHY, INTER PRESS SERVICE
- Agribusiness giant Monsanto has sued more than 100 U.S. farmers,
and its "seed police" have investigated thousands of
others, for what the company terms illegal use of its patented
genetically engineered seeds, and activists charge is "corporate
extortion".
Monsanto prohibits farmers from
saving seed from varieties that have been genetically engineered
to kill bugs and resist ill-effects from the herbicide glyphosate
(sold under the brand name Roundup).
Kem Ralph of Covington, Tennessee
is believed to be the first farmer to have gone to jail for saving
and replanting Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy seed in 1998. Ralph
spent four months behind bars and must also pay the company 1.8
million dollars in penalties. In total, U.S. courts have awarded
Monsanto more than 15 million dollars, according to a new report
by the Washington- based Center for Food Safety called "Monsanto
vs. U.S. Farmers."
"Monsanto's business plan
for GE crops depends on suing farmers," said Joe Mendelson,
legal director for CFS.
CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY - The
report finds that, in general, Monsanto's efforts to prosecute
farmers can be divided into three stages: investigations of farmers;
out-of-court settlements; and litigation against farmers Monsanto
believes are in breach of contract or engaged in patent infringement.
. .
"Monsanto would like nothing
more than to be the sole source for staple crop seeds in this
country and around the world," said Joseph Mendelson, CFS
legal director. "And it will aggressively overturn centuries-old
farming practices and drive its own clients out of business through
lawsuits to achieve this goal.". . .
Farmers even have been sued after
their fields were contaminated by pollen or seed from a previous
year's crop has sprouted, or "volunteered," in fields
planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following
year; and when they never signed Monsanto's Technology Agreement
but still planted the patented crop seed. In all of these cases,
because of the way patent law has been applied, farmers are technically
liable. It does not appear to matter if the use was unwitting
or if a contract was never signed.
REPORT
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/Monsantovsusfarmersreport.cfm
MONSANTO EXTENDS TYRANNY OVER
FOOD SUPPLY
REUTERS -
Agriculture products company Monsanto Co. said it will buy Seminis
Inc., the world's largest commercial fruit and vegetable seed
company, for at least $1 billion from a private equity |