Posts Tagged ‘Corruption’
Jeffrey Sachs on the American Corporate State
The Economist Nov 12, 2011 
Homeward bound
How to turn America around
The Price of Civilisation: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity. By Jeffrey Sachs. Random House; 336 pages; $27. Published in Britain as “The Price of Civilisation: Economics and Ethics after the Fall”. Bodley Head; £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
JEFFREY SACHS is an American economist best known for his prescriptions for economically diseased poor countries. The country he now considers most in need of his diagnostic gifts is his own. “Something has gone terribly wrong in the US economy, politics, and society in general,” Mr Sachs writes in “The Price of Civilisation”. American politicians are the stooges of corporations, he says. And American voters have been tranquillised into obesity by saturation advertising.
Such sentiments would appear unremarkable if spouted by an Occupy Wall Street protester. But Mr Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, is a respected, mainstream macroeconomist. Mr Sachs catalogues the familiar problems that beset the American economy: unemployment stuck at 9%, an exploding budget deficit, America ceding technological leadership to China, poorly educated American children.
But this is not principally a work of economics. Mr Sachs blames America’s problems on politics. In the 1960s, southerners began to desert the Democratic Party and Republicans began to build an insurmountable congressional barrier to more activist government, which Mr Sachs deeply regrets. He despises Barack Obama’s Democratic Party almost as much as he does Ronald Reagan’s Republicans: “On many days it seems that the only difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that Big Oil owns the Republicans while Wall Street owns the Democrats.” He is particularly scathing of the “revolving door” between Mr Obama’s administration and Wall Street.
The convergence between the parties, says Mr Sachs, has led to policies that systematically favour capital over labour, keep tax rates low on footloose multinational corporations and starve government programmes that benefit the poor and the unemployed. This, he claims, flies in the face of popular will: he cites polls that find the majority of Americans favour more activist government and higher taxes on the rich.
Mr Sachs’s analysis can be doctrinaire and one-dimensional, but it is almost always grounded in solid economics. Capital, he argues, has prospered more than labour during the era of globalisation. And America’s per head GDP is inflated by spending on an inefficient health-care system and the armed forces. Mr Sachs’s prescriptions are also admirably precise: the federal government should spend an additional 0.5% of GDP on worker training and the same again on early-childhood development; the top tax rate should be raised to 39.6%, which, neatly enough, he says, would raise the equivalent of 0.5% of GDP……….
The unPATRIOTic Act & COINTELPRO 2.0 (you think you still have rights?)
The PATRIOT Act has allowed the FBI and other government agencies to spy on you and monitor your activities. Join the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and fight back.
Government cyber-bullying: David House on political harassment 2.0
Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 11:37 am by Philip Leggiere People’s Blog for the Constitution
First a couple of government agents come to your apartment, offering cash rewards for you if you’ll only “keep your ear to the ground” and feed them juicy tidbits of information about any acquaintances or professional colleagues you think they might be interested in.
After you refuse the “carrot” is quickly replaced by a stick. Everywhere you go the same black sedan lurks nearby. Friends and family receive visits from government agents during which they are asked probing questions about you and your acquaintances.
When you and your girlfriend go the airport you’re pulled aside and questioned at length about the books you’re reading and your opinions about all sorts of political topics. Then your property (in this case computers, phone, notes, information storage devices) are confiscated for further study by the authorities. Then you’re called before a secret “grand jury” where you’re compelled on threat of imprisonment to testify about any potentially juicy tidbits of information that might help the government at some future time to build an unspecified criminal case against someone, or some group, or, perhaps, you.
No criminal warrant has ever been produced to justify all this surveillance and harassment.
The preceding description is neither fiction nor an account from another place or era (East Germany, 1970s?). It’s an outline of the life of David House (co-founder of The Bradley Manning Support Network) over the past year as recounted in an engaging hour-long video to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
It was unconscionable to cooperate with this grand jury. The grand jury is obviously politically motivated, and it’s—I can’t imagine a principled activist for Bradley Manning or for WikiLeaks cooperating with this investigation in any way. And it’s been said by others in the Boston area that they will not cooperate, even if they are compelled to testify before the grand jury. So it seems to be this is like a commonly held belief in the Boston area.
In fact, the day that I was actually called to testify, there was a protest happening outside the Alexandria court house and also in Boston against the grand jury and the politically motivated investigation of WikiLeaks currently happening in the States. And in my mind, this kind of reeks of the Pentagon Papers investigation. I mean, Richard Nixon’s DOJ 40 years ago attempted to kind of curtail the freedoms of the press and politically regulate the press through the use of policy created around the espionage investigation of the New York Times. I feel the WikiLeaks case we have going on now provides Obama’s DOJ ample opportunity to kind of continue this attempt to politically regulate the U.S. media, and so I’m very worried about this happening. And I think this grand jury is a step in the process.
Industry and regulators covered up Roundup/birth defect link for decades
July, 2011 ResponsibleTechnology.org
The pesticide industry knew from its own studies (including one by Monsanto) as long ago as the 1980s-and EU regulators knew since the 1990s- that the best-selling herbicide Roundup causes birth defects.
A new report by international scientists now exposes the 30-year cover-up, including efforts as recent as last year by the German government’s consumer protection office to rebut a 2010 study showing Roundup causes birth defects in frogs and chickens at tiny doses. The study was prompted by reports of high rates of birth defects and cancers in areas of South America growing GM Roundup Ready soy, which is sprayed with high doses of the herbicide. Read a lengthy article on this in the Huffington Post, a summary in The Ecologist, or the full report “Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?” Monsanto responded to the report, but the report’s authors pick apart the company’s statements, showing how they are unsupported and unscientific.
Going Public- to see that justice is served
March 26, 2011
A news discussion on CNN yesterday revealed the Army’s reversal of charges of dereliction of duty by superior officers Army accused of covering up mistakes in Afghan battle evidently in the hallowed tradition of “protecting the institution” and blaming the dead……
I noted another article in The Scientist which discusses the same inclination in scientific circles:
Sometimes going public with an accusation is the only way to bring the truth to light……..the local commission investigating the case might delay, play down or even suppress incriminating evidence, perhaps going public was the only way to see that justice was served.
A South Carolina news item Ideology trumps health reports:
Dr. David Cull, a prominent vascular surgeon in Greenville, had invented a small valve system that, if it works, could spare 300,000 dialysis patients across the country enormous suffering and save U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars.
But Cull’s hometown senator, Jim DeMint, would not write a letter supporting the surgeon’s application for a federal grant under the landmark health care bill that President Barack Obama signed into law a year ago today….
DeMint vowed in 2009 to make health care Obama’s “Waterloo” and is leading Republican efforts in Congress to repeal or deny funding to the law.
All our institutions are prone to cover their butts, choose ideology over the public good and discard those who seek justice.
In effect this delays institutional ability to learn from mistakes, and it used to go on for generations. New technology and recognition of the value of “transparency” (in word if not in action) are game changers. Recent comments by Fouad Ajami about WikiLeaks in Foreign Policy magazine included observations that nothing particularly new was revealed, just confirmation of what people already knew but was not officially acknowledged.
The powers-that-be are certain to push back in order to censor or punish those who reveal painful truths. But those with the courage to go public today are challenging traditions of smirking hypocrisy, institutionalized corruption, and blaming the victim. I applaud them!
–Claudia
see also: Despite Reforms, Whistleblowers at Development Banks Face Retaliation
By Charles Davis
The Great American Giveaway
excerpted from: The War Against the Republic: The Battle of Madison 
Feb 24, 2011 By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Power Grab
At the risk of sounding disagreeable, it’s hard to find an “honest difference of opinion” on ideology that explains a paragraph like this one in Gov. Walker’s new bill, spotted by my eagle-eyed pal Mike Konczal: “… the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount … no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant …”
This allows the governor to bypass regulators and legislators and sell the state’s power plants, built with millions in taxpayer money to anybody he likes. This paragraph goes on to say that ” any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project.” The governor can give these plants away if he wants, and nobody can stop him.
Cui bono? Who could possibly benefit from giving the governor the ability to sell the state’s “heating, cooling, and power plants” (there are 32 of them), or “contract with a private entity” to operate them, without a bid process or any regulatory oversight?
Let’s see now: Wisconsin has nearly one million natural gas customers, so it would presumably be a company that “provides consulting, engineering, design, procurement, fabrication and construction services for the natural gas and gas processing industries worldwide” and has “been the general contractor on some of the largest natural gas plants built in the U.S.” And since there are a number of coal-fired plants on the state’s list, our corporation would need to be a “leading supplier of coal and related products typically used in industrial applications or to generate electricity.”
Those quotes were taken from the website of Koch Industries, the company whose owners are bankrolling a little-known group that’s behind initiatives like Walker’s budget proposal.
Looting Public Assets: here come the Koch brothers!
(updated) x 3
First Wisconsin, then your back yard.
This isn’t just about unions- the big scam is about power plants and a vertical monopoly for the Koch Brothers with total disregard for the public interest. In a word: looting.
This is the big issue hidden behind the bargaining conflict: selling off public assets for peanuts to corporate cronies of corrupt politicians. We will soon be prisoners in our own country if this continues: pay a corporation to drive on your street, to cross every bridge, to use your water faucet, to flip a light switch….They’ll add exponential profits to use what used to be public utilities and infrastructure built with public funds. The new feudalism is at the gate!
May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
“On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union halls and labor leaders were arrested. Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was abolished. This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by the fascist regime which systematically wiped out all opposition groups, starting with unions, liberals, socialists, and communists using Himmler’s state police. Fast forward to America today, particularly Wisconsin. Governor Walker and the Republican/Tea Party members of the state legislature are attempting to pass a bill that would not only severely punish public unions (with exception for the police, fire, and state trooper unions that supported his campaign), but it would effectively end 50 years to the right of these workers to collectively bargain.”
The Koch Brothers’ End Game in Wisconsin
[Note: Now here's a thought...] As always this has to do with money, and the union “compromise” coming down the pipe was set up to be the “booby” prize while the Koch Brothers get their “booty” prize. This is all being well-orchestrated with an end game that has absolutely nothing to do with unions. As I said in comments before, to much bewilderment, this is about power plants and a vertical monopoly the Kock Brothers have their eye on in Wisconsin. So in short: 1) Koch Brothers get their puppet Governor Walker in power 2) Governor Walker gins up a crisis 3) Democrats and Progressives take the bait and counter-protest on collective bargaining 4) Governor Walker will compromise on collective bargaining if the rest of the budget is passed as is 5) Bill passes, with trojan horse give-a-way to the Koch Brothers nested in 6) Koch Brothers will buy Wisconsin state-owned power plants for pennies on the dollar in closed unsolicitated bids for which there will be no oversight 7) Koch Brothers get the best vertical monopoly in a generation .
Scott Walker Threatens Rights and Jobs for Wall St. Billions
In a move so fitting for a hero of the modern Corporate Facist Republican Party Scott Walker today is having a hissy fit if he does not get his way. Yes, the Governor that started that state’s budget problems with huge giveaways to Corporate America now wants his plan to make workers pay for it passed at all costs. Today he is refusing to compromise and threatening to axe 1500 jobs in a recession if he does not get his way. But of course Scott Walker has already been bought and paid for and has received his marching orders. Indeed, Walker has become a foot soldier for billionaires in the War on the Working Class and is relishing his new role as “warrior” for the greediest and least patriotic among us.
Wisconsin Is a Battleground Against the Billionaire Kochs’ Plan to Break Labor’s Back
By Adele M. Stan | AlterNet
What’s at stake in Wisc: Public Assets No-Bid Give-Away to Koch brothers
The fight in Wisconsin is over Governor Walker’s 144-page Budget Repair Bill. But the MSM is missing a large part of what the bill would do. The bill would allow for the NO-BID selling of state-owned heating/cooling/power plants, without concern for the legally-defined public interest. The attempt to break labor is part of the same continuous motion as saying that the crony, corporatist selling of state utilities to the Koch brothers and other energy interests is the new “public interest.”
A CMD Special Report: Scott Walker Runs on Koch Money
Madison, Wisconsin — A new investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy documents the big money funneled by one of the richest men in America and one of the richest corporations in the world to put controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in office.
Walker’s hidden energy agenda was evident even before he took office:
Walker kills project to convert power plant to burn biofuels
***
Addendum: thanks to Mike Konczal at Rortybomb
- Shawn Doherty in Cap Times has a great article on Governor Walker going after Medicaid. I’ve been trying to get my head around this part of the debate, a part equally important as the public union breaking part. The ability for a Governor to rework important state functions without oversight and without some sort of check for the “public interest” leads to crony deals and corruption. Jonathan Cohn has an important followup, where he points out the telling idea that Walker is even going after Tommy Thompson’s reforms.
Item from August, 2010:
COVERT OPERATIONS The billionaire brothers [owners of Koch Industries, Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, 74 and 70, respectively, at date of publication 8/30/2010], are waging a war against Obama
Rupert Murdoch and David Koch Collude Against Wisconsin Workers
While Fox News feeds its rabble the anti-union line, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal columnists front for Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and coddle elite investors
In spite of their criticism of unions in Wisconsin, AlterNet has confirmed that leading right-wing pundits are American Federation Television and Radio Artists union members.
USDA Decision On GE Alfalfa Leaves Door Open For Contamination, Rise Of Superweeds
Update: see more links at end
Center For Food Safety January 27, 2011
ROGUE AGENCY CHOOSES “BUSINESS AS USUAL” OVER SOUND SCIENCE
CENTER ANNOUNCES IMMEDIATE LEGAL CHALLENGE TO USDA’S FLAWED ASSESSMENT
The Center for Food Safety criticized the announcement today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that it will once again allow unlimited, nation-wide commercial planting of Monsanto’s genetically-engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa, despite the many risks to organic and conventional farmers USDA acknowledged in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). On a call today with stakeholders, Secretary Vilsack reiterated the concerns surrounding purity and access to non-GE seed, yet the Agency’s decision still places the entire burden for preventing contamination on non-GE farmers, with no protections for food producers, consumers and exporters.
“We’re disappointed with USDA’s decision and we will be back in court representing the interest of farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. “USDA has become a rogue agency in its regulation of biotech crops and its decision to appease the few companies who seek to benefit from this technology comes despite increasing evidence that GE alfalfa will threaten the rights of farmers and consumers, as well as damage the environment.”
On Monday, the Center sent an open letter to Secretary Vilsack calling on USDA to base its decision on sound science and the interests of farmers, and to avoid rushing the process to meet the marketing timelines or sales targets of Monsanto, Forage Genetics or other entities.
CFS also addressed several key points that were not properly assessed in the FEIS, among them were: Read the rest of this entry »
Bill Moyers: “Welcome to the Plutocracy!”
You would think the rich might care, if not from empathy, then from reading history. Ultimately gross inequality can be fatal to civilization…. Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Jared Diamond writes about how governing elites throughout history isolate and delude themselves until it is too late.
Wednesday 03 November 2010 t r u t h o u t 
The first Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture was delivered by veteran journalist, Bill Moyers, Friday, October 29, 2010, at Boston University .
. Howard Zinn (b. Aug. 24, 1922, in Brooklyn, N.Y.; d. Jan. 27, 2010, in Santa Monica, Calif.) was a professor of Political Science at Boston University from 1964 to 1988, historian, playwright, activist, and author of more than 20 books, including A PEOPLE’S HSTORY OF THE UNITED STATES: 1492 – PRESENT (1980), revised (1995)(1998)(1999)(2003).
* * * * *
I was honored when you asked me to join in celebrating Howard Zinn’s life and legacy. I was also surprised. I am a journalist, not a historian. The difference between a journalist and an historian is that the historian knows the difference. George Bernard Shaw once complained that journalists are seemingly unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. In fact, some epic history can start out as a minor incident. A young man named Paris ran off with a beautiful woman who was married to someone else, and the civilization of Troy began to unwind. A middle-aged black seamstress, riding in a Montgomery bus, had tired feet, and an ugly social order began to collapse. A night guard at an office complex in Washington D.C. found masking tape on a doorjamb, and the presidency of Richard Nixon began to unwind. What journalist, writing on deadline, could have imagined the walloping kick that Rosa Park’s tired feet would give to Jim Crow? What pundit could have fantasized that a third-rate burglary on a dark night could change the course of politics? The historian’s work is to help us disentangle the wreck of the Schwinn from cataclysm. Howard famously helped us see how big change can start with small acts.
We honor his memory. We honor him, for Howard championed grassroots social change and famously chronicled its story as played out over the course of our nation’s history. More, those stirring sagas have inspired and continue to inspire countless people to go out and make a difference. The last time we met, I told him that the stories in A People’s History of the United States remind me of the fellow who turned the corner just as a big fight broke out down the block. Rushing up to an onlooker he shouted, “Is this a private fight, or can anyone get in it?” For Howard, democracy was one big public fight and everyone should plunge into it. That’s the only way, he said, for everyday folks to get justice – by fighting for it.
I have in my desk at home a copy of the commencement address Howard gave at Spelman College in 2005. He was chairman of the history department there when he was fired in 1963 over his involvement in civil rights. He had not been back for 43 years, and he seemed delighted to return for commencement. He spoke poignantly of his friendship with one of his former students, Alice Walker, the daughter of tenant farmers in Georgia who made her way to Spelman and went on to become the famous writer. Howard delighted in quoting one of her first published poems that had touched his own life:
It is true
I’ve always loved
the daring ones
like the black young man
who tried to crash
all barriers
at once,
wanted to swim
at a white beach (in Alabama)
Nude.
That was Howard Zinn; he loved the daring ones, and was daring himself.
One month before his death he finished his last book, The Bomb. Once again he was wrestling with his experience as a B-17 bombardier during World War II, especially his last mission in 1945 on a raid to take out German garrisons in the French town of Royan. For the first time the Eighth Air Force used napalm, which burst into liquid fire on the ground, killing hundreds of civilians. He wrote, “I remember distinctly seeing the bombs explode in the town, flaring like matches struck in the fog. I was completely unaware of the human chaos below.” Twenty years later he returned to Royan to study the effects of the raid and concluded there had been no military necessity for the bombing; everyone knew the war was almost over (it ended three weeks later) and this attack did nothing to affect the outcome. His grief over having been a cog in a deadly machine no doubt confirmed his belief in small acts of rebellion, which mean, as Howard writes in the final words of the book, “acting on what we feel and think, here, now, for human flesh and sense, against the abstractions of duty and obedience.”
His friend and long-time colleague writes in the foreword that “Shifting historical focus from the wealthy and powerful to the ordinary person was perhaps his greatest act of rebellion and incitement.” It seems he never forget the experience of growing up in a working class neighborhood in New York. In that spirit, let’s begin with some everyday people.
US Probes Corruption in Big Pharmaceuticals
Friday, 13 Aug 2010 
By: Stephanie Kirchgaes, Financial Times
The US Department of Justice is scrutinizing payments by leading pharmaceuticals companies for hospitality, consultants, licensing agreements and charitable donations in markets around the world as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe.
GlaxoSmithKline [GSK-LN 1224.50 28.50 (+2.38%)], Pfizer [PFE 16.15 -0.05 (-0.31%) ], Bristol-Myers Squibb [BMY 26.3925 0.0625 (+0.24%) ] and Eli Lilly [LLY 35.74 -0.86 (-2.35%) ], among others, have disclosed being contacted by the DoJ and Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the investigation. Merck [MRK 35.062 0.022 (+0.06%) ], the US drugs group, announced last week that it had also been contacted and was co-operating with investigators.
An industry attorney familiar with the probe said that the DoJ was looking at whether pharma companies had ignored a “systematic risk” inherent in the global drugs business and ignored obligations under local and US anti-bribery law.
The highly regulated nature of the business, combined with the fact that healthcare officials in many non-US markets were government funded, made the industry a natural target for such a probe, the person added.
The investigation is at a relatively early stage but is considered a priority for the DoJ.
While hospitality – including meals and all expenses-paid travel for conferences – has long been considered a potential risk for pharma groups, the DoJ’s probe is looking at all aspects of companies’ dealings in non-US markets, people familiar with the matter say. That includes the recruitment of physicians for clinical trials. In some markets, the same physicians may serve on regulatory boards that approve or deny drugs.
