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Viewing Corporatism NEWS articles 301 through 375 of 380
- “Congress should not be in the business of slipping taxpayer subsidies into large bills to benefit individual corporations, especially executives from a company that perpetrated one of the greatest corporate frauds in American history."
- One day in 2000 after lecturing about risks of the pain-reliever Vioxx, Harvard University professor Lee Simon got a call that shocked him. It was from Louis M. Sherwood, then a senior vice president at Merck & Co. Inc., maker of Vioxx. Sherwood challenged Simon's view - later proved correct - that Vioxx could cause more strokes than a rival drug.
Sherwood didn't stop there. He said "he would hurt my career if I continued to lecture," Simon recalled. "I was astonished."
- BP’s profits come with enormous human cost and environmental damages, and its latest venture -- the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which opened in late May -- has done little to make amends.
- "If it's true what people say, that big multinational companies are outsourcing health care to taxpayers, then it would be good to have a handle on which ones. It's just information."
- The chain does 32 BILLION DOLLARS a year. We won't get into name-calling or labels. I'm presenting the facts with a few comments. There shouldn't be one person on the planet that should not be concerned about what they are doing. With more than 500 stores in the US alone, they have a big impact and far too much power.
- Every item bought at Wal-Mart adds another nail in the coffin of America's future.
- Regardless as to whether or not Americans as a whole perceive it, we may single out the ten deadly enemies of the American people and of all people of all nations as a matter of fact. These are ten American largest corporations whose product is virtually lethal. They put in danger not only the people who work for such industries but also those who are directly or indirectly affected by their deadly products. - More than 2,000 workers at plants in California and Connecticut that bottle Coca-Cola soft drinks went on strike Monday, just before the start of the summer season.
- Local grocery workers union leads the fight to block Wal-Mart's efforts to infiltrate inner suburbs. The growing belief that Wal-Mart's highly touted efficiency is depressing wages throughout the economy, have snowballed into an image problem that is making it increasingly hard for Wal-Mart to build stores in the Washington region.
- Business Week reported that Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney earned $565 million in 1998 and nearly $1 billion over the past ten years. On its website, the UAW lists the compensation of the largest corporations in America in an effort to expose the glaring disparities between the haves and the have nots.
- Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich will stand with Wal-Mart Stores COO Eduardo Castro-Wright and veto his legislature’s historic bill to compel the retail giant to pay more for its Maryland employees’ health care coverage. Wal-Mart Watch has previously called upon Ehrlich to return Wal-Mart’s campaign donations. - Four women and six men are at Houston Police Southeast and six men at at Houston Police Central.
- Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.
- An Alternative Annual Report on Halliburton. On May 18, Halliburton will hold its annual shareholders meeting in downtown Houston. Inside, CEO David Lesar will be congratulating himself on the astonishing $7.1 billion revenue the company has made off its recent work in Iraq. This number is double what the company made in the war-torn country the previous year; it boosts Halliburton's overall revenue some 25 percent, bringing it to over $20 billion for 2004.
- The Judge who exonerated Cheney, A. Raymond Randolph, is with the George Mason University. A. Raymond Randolph serves on the Advisory Board of George Mason University Law and Economics Center. George Mason University, Law and Economics Center has received $115,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
- Last week Standard and Poor's, a bond rating agency, downgraded both Ford and General Motors bonds to junk status. It sees a significant risk that the companies won't be able to pay their debts. Don't cry for the bondholders, but do cry for the workers. In 1968, when General Motors was a widely emulated icon of American business, many of its workers were lifetime employees. On average, they earned about $29,000 a year in today's dollars, a solidly middle-class income at the time. They also had generous health and retirement benefits.
- In the ’70s and ’80s, the banana companies Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita used a carcinogenic pesticide, Nemagon, to protect their crops in Nicaragua. Today, the men and women who worked on those plantations suffer from incurable illnesses. Their children are deformed. The companies feign innocence. - In the wake of the recent cancellation of the CHEERS study in which parents were to be paid to expose their infant children to pesticides, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing a new policy that encourages the same type of human dosing studies by industry. - How would you like a 54-percent pay raise? That's how much pay jumped last year for the chief executives of the 500 largest U.S. companies, according to Forbes magazine. Worker pay is shrinking, the economy is stalling, the trade deficit is growing, and the stock market is below 1999 levels -- but CEO pay is still on steroids. The highest-paid CEO in 2004 was Yahoo's Terry Semel, who hauled in $230.6 million. That's more than $4 million a week
- With help from some unlikely places, Corrections Corporation of America is hoping to build the largest for-profit private prison in the United States.
- Many of us greeted the unveiling of the government's new food pyramid with a mixture of puzzlement and confusion. Indeed, the dizzying layers of rainbow-colored lines helped distract from the fact that the food industry's fingerprints are all over the new dietary guidelines; in ways that hurt rather than help consumers.
- BP has a legal right to get a licence from Indonesia to extract gas in West Papua. Its moral case is less clearcut. - A new group of Wal-Mart critics ran a full-page advertisement on April 20 contending that the company's low pay had forced tens of thousands of its workers to resort to food stamps and Medicaid, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. On April 26, as part of a campaign called "Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart," five members of Congress joined women's advocates and labor leaders to assail the company for not paying its female employees more.
- The bankruptcy reform bill that President Bush just signed into law will do more than discipline those who live riotously on loans without paying them back in full. Think for a moment about new prisons to house the indebted. Back to the future of debtors' prison.
- The War in Iraq has been very good for Halliburton. KBR, a Haliburton subsidiary was given $10.5 billion in contracts. It charged $88 million for 3.4 million meals that it never served. In one outrageous example, KBR allegedly billed $27.5 million to deliver liquefied petroleum gas that had been purchased in Kuwait for $82,000. - Wal-Mart wants in on banking, but critics are concerned that Wal-Mart's interest in establishing an industrial bank may open a Pandora's box (a bank branch in every store), which could devastate community banks, credit unions and others. - Shoplifting is more than a way to survive in the cutthroat competition of the 'free market' and protest corporate injustices. It is also a different kind of orientation to the world and to life. The shoplifter makes do with an environment that has been conquered by capitalism and industry, where there is no longer a natural world from which to gather resources and everything has become private property, without accepting it or the absurd way of life it entails.
- More than 10,000 Striking Workers at Japanese-Invested Walmart Supplies Firm in Shenzhen Demand Right To Set Up Their Own Trade Union.
- Bush has spent a lot of time lately pretending that energy prices are skyrocketing for every reason except the real one. He falsely claims his energy bill will solve the problem. He claims its about supply. But take a look at this little snippet from Fortune Magazine and you will see how this is nothing more than energy industry price gouging
- Members of Congress have taken $16 million in privately financed trips since 2000, and more than half were sponsored by non-profit groups that don't have to disclose who is providing the money, a study out today says
- The world’s largest known hydrocarbon resource is neither in Iraq nor in Saudi Arabia. The oil sands in the western Canadian province of Alberta comprise the largest known hydrocarbon reserves -- estimated at over 300 billion barrels of currently recoverable oil. This area was invaded by corporations and the victims were the native peoples.
- Wal-Mart’s low pay and meager employee benefits force hundreds of thousands of employees to resort to Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing and it costs you 1.5 billion dollars.
- Walmart espouses the benefits of free market all the while taking advantage of govenment programs in the USA and government control of labour abroad in third world countries and China.
- Owners of gas-guzzling SUVs and other heavy vehicles who use them entirely for business can get Uncle Sam to pay for four or more years of fuel costs -- in the form of tax breaks. It's hard to think of a worse formula for wrecking the country.
- ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.
- As America's largest company, with more than $285 billion in sales and more than $10 billion in profits, Wal-Mart has a responsibility to set the standard for customers, workers, families and communities. America's largest employer — with nearly 1.3 million workers — must reflect America's values - Retailer, which has gotten $50M in subsidies, has Florida's highest number of Medicaid-eligible workers. - The trail of financial criminality has factored into all life as we know it. There is absolutely nothing that has been left unscathed. Nothing is as it seems and nothing is ethical, and 95% of all American people know all the above to be true.
- Maryland's House of Delegates voted 82 to 48 to approve a bill that would require all businesses in the state with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits for workers (or, alternatively, donate the funds to the state's Medicaid program).
- Documentary on Dow's Dioxin Scandal Ignored by Four Local PBS Stations
- Some Americans have joined an e-mail war on Big Oil to protest record high gasoline prices, calling for a long-term boycott of the nation's leading fuel retailer ExxonMobil. - The chief executives of major U.S. corporations enjoyed double-digit pay raises last year, adding to a record of 'jaw-dropping' compensation largely undisturbed by recent years' falling profits and share prices and a wave of scandals involving management chicanery, the country's leading labor federation said in a new survey.
- The largest U.S. grocery union has filed a complaint against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., asking the National Labor Relations Board to investigate whether the retailer "bribed" employees to block union activities.
- The Supreme Court rejected Wal-Mart Canada's fight to keep a "union prevention handbook" away from the labour board probing its conduct in Saskatchewan.
- Lobbyists have spent billions of dollars to influence the US Congress and government since 1998, twice the amount spent to elect lawmakers, a watchdog group said.
- The giant retailer's CEO says the company's foes are taking cheap shots and telling lies and Wal-Mart will fight back. - Shadowy lobbyists ignore rules and exploit connections -- and their industry of influence nets almost $13 billion.
- Walmart has inexpensive products that save us money...right, or do Walmart stores in our areas end up costing us money?
- Led by Sam Walton's only daughter, Alice, the family spent $3.2 million on lobbying. That's more than double what it spent in the previous two elections combined, public documents show. The Waltons have joined a coterie of wealthy families trying to save fortunes through permanent repeal of the estate tax. - The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001. "It's DeLay Inc...if it's not illegal, it certainly is inappropriate for members of Congress to use their positions to enrich their families."
- Venezualan government cracks down on delinquet oil companies. Only 10 percent of all 33 oil operation agreements in the oil-rich nation have paid income taxes this year, Vielma Mora said. The remainder have declared no gains or have claimed losses during the past fiscal year, he said. "We don't understand how Venezuela's state oil company has earned profits and paid taxes, but private companies are declaring losses".
- Led by Wal-Mart's longtime opponents in organized labor, a new coalition of about 50 groups - including environmentalists, community organizations, state lawmakers and academics - is planning the first coordinated assault intended to press the company to change the way it does business. - The average American in the year 2005 lives a fragile existence, in a struggle for survival that can be ended by missing a few paychecks. The carrot at the end of the stick which was formerly known as "the American dream" has been replaced by a whip that can best be described as the American nightmare of homelessness, and slow, early death.
- The Carlyle Group has completed the world's largest corporate buyout capital-raising at $10 billion to finance mega-sized deals on both sides of the Atlantic, the private equity firm said on Tuesday.
- The British government is using international aid money to promote the privatisation of water and sanitation services across the world
- Bush has implemented a number of tax cuts in recent years that have had a considerable impact on the benefits of ownership. But these have had the effect of increasing the wealth of existing, primarily large owners of wealth -- rather than aiding or helping to create new, smaller owners.
- Next year, the administration will phase out the $2,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid vehicle, which gets over 50 miles per gallon, but will leave in place the $25,000 tax write-off for a Hummer, which gets 10-12 mpg. That's truly crazy, and that's truly what the whole Cheney energy policy is.
- Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.
- So far, six colleges and universities in the United States--including Carleton, Oberlin and Bard--have responded to a call by the Colombian beverages union for a boycott, either by canceling contracts or banning vending machines. Chief among the accusations is the company's alleged complicity in the murder of union members by paramilitaries at bottling plants in Colombia.
- In the wake of the Dec. 26 killer wave, villagers and fishermen from southern India to Sri Lanka to Thailand say powerful businessmen, often in cahoots with politicians, are grabbing lucrative beachfront real estate. - It's awfully refreshing when a former lawmaker simply owns up to becoming a lobbyist. A revolving door of politicians and lobbyists.
- Stephen Johnson, Bush's nominee to run the EPA, advocates the testing of pesticides on humans -- even children -- for the benefit of large chemical companies.
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. escaped criminal charges but agreed Friday to pay $11 million, a record fine in a civil immigration case, to end a federal probe into its use of illegal immigrants to clean floors at stores in 21 states.
- Tweleve separate requests to the Pentagon to view the completed audits on the contractor's $2.5bn contract to supply fuel and other services in post-war Iraq had been ignored.
- Halliburton, where Vice President Cheney served as chief executive from 1995 to 2000, has come under persistent criticism for its handling of several Iraqi reconstruction contracts. For example, auditors turned up $1.8 billion in "unsupported costs" in a $10.5 billion Army logistics contract that KBR won on a competitive bid. Despite those findings and a recommendation to withhold some of the payments, the Army decided last month to continue paying Halliburton in full, plus performance bonuses.
- Former WorldCom Inc. chief executive Bernard J. Ebbers was found guilty Tuesday on all counts against him of conspiracy, securities fraud and false regulatory filings for his role in a massive accounting fraud that led to the downfall of the nation's second-largest telecommunications firm and cost investors billions of dollars - More than 5,000 Chinese miners are killed each year, 75% of the global total, even though the country produces only a third of the world's coal. Working under appalling safety conditions, they are sacrificed to fuel the factories that make the cheap goods snapped up by consumers in Britain and other wealthy nations
- Long-term unemployment, defined as joblessness for six months or more, is at record rates. But there's an additional twist: An unusually large share of those chronically out of work are, like Gillespie, college graduates.
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other retailers are lobbying Congress to extend the workday for truckers to 16 hours, something labor unions and safety advocates say would make roadways more dangerous for all drivers.
- The Presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela have issued a joint statement saying they are committed to pursuing a South American Community of Nations. President Chavez Frias had declared the elitist, US Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA) is dead.
- Halliburton cannot justify why it billed the Pentagon for $1.8 billion of work in Iraq and Kuwait, the Wall Street Journal reported. Pentagon accountants said they are uncertain as to why Halliburton's KBR unit billed the Pentagon $1.8 billion for expenses. This amount represents 43 percent of the $4.18 billion the company billed the Pentagon for logistics work in the Middle East
- Wal-Mart pays its workers such low wages that they qualify for state welfare benefits subsidized by Montana taxpayers, people told a Senate committee Tuesday. As an incentive for those "big box stores" to pay a living wage to their workers, Sen. Ken Toole's Senate Bill 272 would impose a gross proceeds tax on the companies. They would be exempt from the tax if they paid their employees an entry level wage.
- McDonald's Corp. made front-page news nearly 2 1/2 years ago when it promised to cut the level of dangerous trans fats in its cooking oil. But the oil change never came. This week, the fast-food giant agreed in Marin County Superior Court to pay $7 million to the American Heart Association.
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, will pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it broke child labor laws, the Labor Department said Saturday.
- The Canadian arm of U.S. retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said its store in Jonquiere, Quebec, will close this spring after becoming the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America about six months ago. When the store became unionized, the retailer said it was considering all options to block the certification, including legal action against the Quebec Labor Relations Commission.
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