Tag Archives | Corporation Watch

Koch Brothers Pressuring Thousands Of Employees To Vote For Mitt Romney

By on October 16, 2012 in News 24

In the aftermath of the Citizens United ruling granting First Amendment rights to corporations, companies such as Koch Industries are telling their employees whom they should vote for, while simultaneously forbidding workers from expressing political opinions, In These Times reports:

In a voter information packet obtained by In These Times, the Koch Industries corporate leadership informed tens of thousands of employees at its subsidiary, Georgia Pacific, that their livelihood could depend on the 2012 election and that the company supports Mitt Romney for president. The packet arrived in the mailboxes of all 45,000 Georgia Pacific employees earlier this month.

Ironically, while the Kochs have been taking advantage of Citizens United to expand political communications to employees, they have also capitalized on weak labor laws to limit the political speech of those employees.

A new Georgia Pacific social media policy [PDF] implemented earlier this year that warns, “Even if your social media conduct is outside of the workplace and/or non-work related, it must not reflect negatively on GP’s reputation, its products, or its brands.” Given the policy, the workers were scared to appear next to a candidate the Kochs do not support with the plant in the background.

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Anti-Fascists for Romney

By on October 15, 2012 in News 56

Norman Pollack makes a pretty cogent case for why Romney may actually be the lesser of two evils, at From Counter Punch. Better the Fascist you can see right through rather than the one most Democrats can’t?

America on the Cusp of Fascism
I use “fascism” here not as a cliché, but as an historical-structural formation principally rooted in the mature stage of capitalism, in which business-government interpenetration (what the Japanese political scientist Masao Maryuma called the “close-embrace” system) has created hierarchical social classes of wide differences in wealth and power, the militarization of social values and geopolitical strategy, and a faux ideology of classlessness to instill loyalty for the social order among working people. In fact, each of these factors is already present to a high degree in America–superbly disguised however by the rhetoric of liberalism, as in Mr. Obama’s presidency.

This said, my provocative hypothesis (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) is that in the coming election Romney is preferable to Obama.

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The Pro-Cancer Lobby In Washington D.C.

By on October 8, 2012 in News 9

In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof describes what he terms the “cancer lobby” — how major industry spends millions of dollars to influence Congress in support of carcinogenic chemicals:

Who knew that carcinogens had their own lobby in Washington? Just consider formaldehyde, which is found in everything from nail polish to kitchen countertops, fabric softeners to carpets. Largely because of its use in building materials, we breathe formaldehyde fumes when we’re inside our homes. According to government scientists, it causes cancer.

The chemical industry is working frantically to suppress that scientific consensus — because it fears “public confusion.” Big Chem apparently worries that you might be confused if you learned that formaldehyde caused cancer of the nose and throat, and perhaps leukemia.

The industry’s strategy is to lobby Congress to cut off money for the Report on Carcinogens, a 500-page consensus document published every two years by the National Institutes of Health, containing the best information about what agents cause cancer.

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On The Rise Of Predatory Privatization

By on October 3, 2012 in News 6

People for the American Way‘s paper (available in PDF form) titled Predatory Privatization, is a must-read overview of how corporate players are attempting to use state and local budget crises as an opportunity to seize essential public assets and functions, making America closer to an oligarchy:

Privatization is a wonky term that can obscure the real mechanism and process at work. Through privatization schemes to outsource traditional governmental functions, taxpayer dollars are diverted from the building of public assets and institutions to create long-term revenue streams and profit for corporations.

Through privatization schemes that directly sell off assets that belong to the public, legislators enrich corporate interests at the expense of the long-term interests of the American people in assets their taxes have helped build. The privatization of the people’s assets is essentially permanent.

The agenda of privatization schemers was manifest at last August’s American Legislative Exchange Council meeting in New Orleans where ALEC members urged that the government, meaning the people, should not own buildings but should sell them to the private sector, which could then lease the space back to the government at a profit.

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Koch Brothers Funding Pro-Free Market, Anti-Occupy Rally In New York City

By on September 22, 2012 in News 12

Ordinary billionaires are mad and they’re not going to take it anymore, Raw Story reports:

An activist group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers is planning a rally in New York on Thursday to “stand up to Occupy Wall Street extremists”.

Americans for Prosperity will gather at the Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan to demonstrate against Occupy protesters and Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. “The Occupy Wall Street crowd is nothing but a fringe element of malcontents bent on mayhem and destruction,” said Steve Lonegan, Americans for Prosperity’s New Jersey state director.

David and Charles Koch have poured money into Americans for Prosperity, which is tied to the Tea Party movement and has a focus on small government and low taxes. A spokesman for Americans for Prosperity would not predict how many people might attend the rally at the Rockefeller, but the group’s website claims to be “more than two million activists strong” across the country.

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No More Ben & Cherry’s

By on September 7, 2012 in News 8

Not so counterculture after all, are they? (Ben and Jerry actually sold out to corporate food producer Unilever years ago). Tiffany Hsu reports for the LA Times:

The pornographic exploits of “Ben & Cherry” in titles such as “Boston Cream Thighs,” “Peanut Butter D-Cups” and “Chocolate Fudge Babes” will temporarily simmer down following a court order won by similarly named ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s.

The Vermont company, known for frozen treats such as Boston Cream Pie, Peanut Butter Cups and Chocolate Fudge Brownie, sued Caballero Video this week and persuaded a federal judge in Manhattan to block the porn producer from marketing or selling Ben & Jerry-esque titles for now.

This, of course, is the same sweets company that offers flavors such as Cherry Garcia, Imagine Whirled Peace, Phish Food and more word and name-play options. And we’d be remiss if we forgot Ben & Jerry’s saucier choices, such as Karamel Sutra and Schweddy Balls.

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Target’s Anti-Union Propaganda PSA

By on September 7, 2012 in News 14

Rounding out the the post-Labor-Day work week, here is Target’s informational video educating new employees on the dangers of unionization. The confusing logic seems to be, unions are unnecessary both because they are ineffective (they are just after your dues money), and they accompished so much in the past (ending child labor, et cetera) that all of workers’ problems have already been fixed:

New Target employees are forced to watch this video so that they are indoctrinated into fearing unions. If you’re a Target employee, please don’t be deceived by your bosses. Target Corporation made over 2.9 billion dollars last year. You deserve better wages, benefits, and working conditions, and your employer can afford to give them to you.

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The True Story Of Mitt Romney At Bain Capital

By on August 31, 2012 in News 8

Via Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi explains how what Bain does to the companies it takes over pretty much mirrors what Romney has in mind for America:

In Romney’s version of the tale, Bain Capital – which evolved into what is today known as a private equity firm – specialized in turning around moribund companies (Romney even wrote a book called Turnaround that complements his other nauseatingly self-complimentary book, No Apology) and helped create the Staples office-supply chain.

The reality is that toward the middle of his career at Bain, Romney made a fateful strategic decision: He moved away from creating companies like Staples through venture capital schemes, and toward a business model that involved borrowing huge sums of money to take over existing firms, then extracting value from them by force.

Here’s how Romney would go about “liberating” a company: A private equity firm like Bain typically seeks out floundering businesses with good cash flows.

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The Truth About Sports Drinks

By on July 24, 2012 in News 14

If you’ve ever looked at a fluorescent colored so-called “sports drink” (i.e. Gatorade, Powerade and all the wannabes in the category) and wondered if it could possibly quality as a natural, healthy beverage, we now know the answer: No, it’s not. Don’t take my word for it, here’s an exhaustive review of the relevant science by Deborah Cohen in the BMJ:

Prehydrate; drink ahead of thirst; train your gut to tolerate more fluid; your brain doesn’t know you’re thirsty—the public and athletes alike are bombarded with messages about what they should drink, and when, during exercise. But these drinking dogmas are relatively new. In the 1970s, marathon runners were discouraged from drinking fluids for fear that it would slow them down, says Professor Tim Noakes, Discovery health chair of exercise and sports science at Cape Town University. At the first New York marathon in 1970, there was little discussion about the role of hydration—it was thought to have little scientific value.

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Big Food Companies Corrupting Organic Standards

By on July 8, 2012 in News 17

Texarkana Roadtrip (CC)

The organic food movement in the United States has become a victim of its own success, with corporate food giants buying up most of the successful organic brands and dominating the standards board, writes Stephanie Strom in the New York Times:

Michael J. Potter is one of the last little big men left in organic food.

More than 40 years ago, Mr. Potter bought into a hippie cafe and “whole earth” grocery here that has since morphed into a major organic foods producer and wholesaler, Eden Foods.

But one morning last May, he hopped on his motorcycle and took off across the Plains to challenge what organic food — or as he might have it, so-called organic food — has become since his tie-dye days in the Haight district of San Francisco.

The fact is, organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store.

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