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Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace
'Foreclosure Phil' Gramm: How John McCain's Closest Economic Advisor Helped Engineer the Morgage Crisis
Posted by Democracy Now!, Democracy Now! on July 9, 2008 at 12:37 PM.
In the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine, David Corn writes, "Who’s to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters."
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Rachel Maddow on the FISA Capitulation
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 9, 2008 at 10:15 AM.
Political pundit Rachel Maddow on the Democrats' capitulation on illegal domestic spying and telecom immunity.
G8 Dispatches: Amid Repression, Spider Web of Protests Expand in Japan
Posted by Marina Sitrin, David Solnit, Asha Colazione, Sarah Lazare, AlterNet on July 9, 2008 at 8:29 AM.
July 9
(See below for previous dispatches.)
The series of demonstrations against the G8 meetings in Lake Toya, Japan, continued this week with lively marches in Sapporo and Toyora. Thousands more showed their opposition to G8 policies by attending a nine-day Counter-Forum, networking and sharing experiences and ideas of how we might build a better world.
Organizers registered the Sapporo demonstration as a "March for Peace," afraid that a "March Against the G8" would not be granted permits. It was a colorful demonstration, with a wide variety of groups and nationalities proceeding through the streets carrying signs, banners, and giant puppets. Many participants wore costumes or brought their own instruments to play as they marched.
The procession was led by a sound truck playing music for the crowd, immediately followed by the beautifully attired Kimono bloc. In another Japanese tradition, a group carried a bamboo tree decorated with words on black paper strips indicating what people wish for in the coming year.
Behind the Kimono block, ominous puppets with heads of G8 leaders and bodies of skeletons donned yellow and red labels such as hunger, global warming, poverty or privatization of resources. Swooping after them, a flock of shimmering yellow birds made of painted cardboard and satin-like fabric carried signs indicating what they'd like to see instead of the G8--"democracy," "healthy environment," "peace."
A clown in a green wig and pink boa approached the lines of riot police with a rainbow-colored duster and proceeded to dust off their shields. A few more members of the Clown Army loomed behind, sporting red noses and army camouflage, waving their rainbow dusters in the air. A roving band of drummers kept up a lively beat behind them.
Police divided the march into three segments, each surrounded on all sides by two rows of police in riot gear. A group of demonstrators led by radical workers' movements, anarchist activists, and black bloc rebelled against the strict control of the demonstration by moving out beyond the one lane of traffic they were allocated in order to spread across the entire road.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
McCain’s Flea-Market Economy
Posted by Tula Connell, AFL-CIO on July 8, 2008 at 11:35 AM.
George W. Bush’s solution to our
nation’s economic mess—that his failed policies helped create—is to
applaud people who must work three jobs to make ends meet.
Sen. John McCain colors his solution to working families’ financial struggles with similar crayons: He encourages us to make a living selling stuff on eBay. As reported on Bloomberg:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
AT&T; Whistleblower Gets Cold Shoulder from Democrats in Congress
Posted by Democracy Now!, Democracy Now! on July 7, 2008 at 3:10 PM.
The Senate is expected to vote on a controversial measure to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tomorrow. The legislation would rewrite the nation’s surveillance laws and authorize the National Security Agency’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping. We speak with Mark Klein, a technician with AT&T; for over twenty-two years. In 2006 Klein leaked internal AT&T; documents that revealed the company had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the National Security Agency access to its fiber optic internet cables. [includes rush transcript]
Mark Klein, former technician at AT&T; for over twenty-two years. He discovered that internet traffic in AT&T; operations centers was being regularly diverted to the National Security Agency. Klein is a witness in a lawsuit filed against AT&T; by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which alleges AT&T; illegally gave the NSA access to its networks.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Wal-Mart Broke MN Labor Laws Over 2 Million Times
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 2:42 PM.
A Minnesota judge awarded $6.5 million in damages to Wal-Mart employees for wage-and-hour violations. This is the third wage-and-hour court battle Wal-Mart has lost in a row:
Wal-Mart and its lead trial counsel, Houston's Susman Godfrey, are now 0-for-3 in wage-and-hour class action trials.
On Tuesday, after a three-month bench trial, a state court judge in Minnesota ruled that in failing to provide rest breaks, Wal-Mart broke state labor laws more than 2 million times. Judge Robert King Jr. awarded $6.5 million in compensatory damages to the class, which consists of about 56,000 Wal-Mart employees in Minnesota.
King's ruling follows a $172 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart in California in 2005 and a $78 million jury verdict in Pennsylvania in 2006. Both cases are on appeal. Susman Godfrey represented the company in both trials and is leading the appeals as well. Partner Neal Manne, who tried all three Wal-Mart cases, declined to comment and referred questions to Wal-Mart spokesperson Daphne Moore. In an e-mail statement, Moore said, "We are pleased that the court in Minnesota ruled in Wal-Mart's favor on many points before, during, and after trial. We respectfully disagree with portions of the decision. As part of the order, the court invited both parties to file an appeal, and we are considering that option." Wal-Mart's national coordinating counsel, Brian Duffy of Greenberg Traurig, did not return calls for comment. [American Lawyer]
Let's hope Wal-Mart's losing streak is a sign of things to come. Maybe the courts can see their way clear to penalizing them enough to actually discourage the company from violating wage-and-hour laws in the first place--the threat of a $3.25 penalty per incident of lawlessness isn't enough to keep Wal-Mart honest.
Americans Want NAFTA Renegotiated
Posted by Brandon Wu, Eyes on Trade on June 24, 2008 at 8:54 AM.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone poll indicates that over half - 56 percent - of Americans think NAFTA should be renegotiated. The juicy bits include:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken Monday night finds that 56% of voters support renegotiation while 39% say U.S. free trade agreements in general have directly impacted their families. Of that latter group, 73% say the impact has been a bad one, as opposed to 14% who say it was beneficial.
Only 16% of respondents favor NAFTA - a pact which came into being in 1994 and lowers nearly all trade barriers between the U.S., Canada and Mexico -- as is, with 28% undecided... Perhaps most importantly, 71% say negotiation of trade agreements is important to them in terms of how they will vote. Only 20% say it is not important.
(We've been talking about that last point for a while now...)
This comes a few weeks after a Pew Research Center poll showing that 48 percent of Americans, including 42 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Independents, believe "free trade agreements—like NAFTA, and the policies of the World Trade Organization" have been "a bad thing" for the United States, while only 35 percent said they have been a good thing. This is a dramatic reversal from a 2004 poll in which Americans believed that these trade agreements have been a good thing, by a 47-34 margin.
The same Pew poll also shows that 61 percent of Americans believe free trade costs U.S. jobs, and 56 percent believe it lowers wages. Only 9 percent believe free trade creates U.S. jobs, and only 8 percent believe it raises wages -- results which are consistent across party affiliation lines.
And, just for fun, if you care to take at face value the ABC News/Facebook poll (to be clear... I wouldn't), 79 percent of Americans think the U.S. should renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from it entirely.
A few more polling tidbits after the jump ...
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Marriage Counselling Can Hurt Your Credit
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on June 22, 2008 at 10:44 AM.
CompuCredit Visa is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for discriminating against customers based on what they bought:
Most borrowers know a late payment or high outstanding balance can hurt their credit. But what about frequenting a massage parlor, retreading a tire, or visiting a marriage counselor? Such activities count, too, according to a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission in federal court in Atlanta on June 10 against card issuer CompuCredit (CCRT).
Lenders, insurers, and other financial firms use credit scoring systems to make a host of decisions about consumers, including the interest rate on their mortgages, the limits on their credit cards, and the monthly premiums for their auto coverage. Some rely heavily on FICO, a three-digit score developed by Minneapolis-based financial firm Fair Isaac, while others use proprietary models developed by statisticians. But companies don't disclose what's baked in to their formulas, leaving many borrowers to wonder which factors determine their financial fate. The FTC suit against Atlanta-based CompuCredit for allegedly "deceptive" marketing practices offers a rare look inside the opaque business of credit scoring. It reveals a mechanism that consumer advocates and politicians have long suspected exists—one in which purchasing behavior, not just payment history, matters.
The allegations, in part, focus on CompuCredit's Aspire Visa, a subprime credit card for risky borrowers. The FTC claims that CompuCredit didn't properly disclose that it monitored spending and cut credit lines if consumers used their cards at certain places. Among them: tire and retreading shops, massage parlors, bars, billiard halls, and marriage counseling offices. "The company touted that cardholders could use their credit cards anywhere," says J. Reilly Dolan, assistant director for financial practices at the FTC. "What they didn't say was that you could be punished for specific kinds of purchases." The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is also seeking $200 million in penalties from CompuCredit in the matter. [Business Week]
Why is tire retreading bad for your credit, anyway? It's a sign of responsibility when someone maintains their car (or their marriage, for that matter).
Regardless, it's outrageous that credit companies are allowed to secretly judge consumers without revealing the methods they use to assess creditworthiness. Cardholders deserve clear, fair, transparent guidelines for lending. These credit card companies probably also have investors, who might like to know whether the firm is giving loans based on sound business or capricious prejudice.
The revelations emerging from the FTC suit underscore the need for comprehensive legal reform of the credit card industry. Barack Obama has called repeatedly for credit card industry reform. Let's hold him to that promise.
Fisa Fiasco, Continued
Posted by Christy Hardin Smith on June 20, 2008 at 9:14 AM.
Debate on the FISA bill on the floor of the House will be coming up shortly. It will begin with a rules vote and then debate onthe bill itself will proceed after that. The rules vote is critical on whether the bill vote will proceed -- and I have no good idea where folks stand on the rules vote, although Pete Hoekstra seemed pretty confident about its outcome this morning on C-Span.
Will be following this as it happens here. Ryan Singel sums up my disgust this morning. If you haven't called your Representative, please do so now.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Blackwater Asks To Be Tried Under Islamic Law
Posted by Attaturk, Firedoglake on June 19, 2008 at 8:10 AM.
Well, just when you think you may have just ONE day in life where your snark can outdo reality, you find out how absurd the world has been made. And not in a good way:
The private military company Blackwater has cultivated a patriotic reputation, with its staff of retired military and former police officers, and the requirement that most of its workers swear an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.
Blackwater’s aviation wing recently filed a unique request in federal court, where the widows of three American soldiers are suing the company over a botched flight supporting the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
The company, based in Moyock, doesn’t want the case heard in an American courtroom under American law: it wants the case heard under Shari’a, the Islamic law of Afghanistan.
Don't let too many Republicans know this, but Shari'a law is apparently great for business and bad for the most evil people on earth, not Al Qaeda silly, AMERICAN TRIAL LAWYERS:
The company argued that the lawsuit must be dismissed; legal doctrine holds that soldiers cannot sue the government, and Blackwater’s aviation wing was acting as an agent of the government.
Last year, a series of federal judges dismissed that argument.
In April, Blackwater asked a federal judge in Florida to apply Islamic law, commonly known as Shari’a, to the case. If the judge agreed, the lawsuit would be dismissed. Shari’a law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.
If this becomes well-known, the GOP's corporate base will become fundamentalist Muslims faster than you can say Mecca Oil & Gas. James Taranto is wearing a burka already (he's very confused).
Nader Wants Bush and Cheney Held Accountable
Posted by Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet on June 17, 2008 at 10:00 AM.
Presidential Candidate (I) Ralph Nader, positioned with a crowd of supporters in front of the White House, called out Bush for "contracting out the U.S. government to corporations." Nader tied corporate accountability and government accountability, saying that in Bush's seven years he has "dishonored the White House, and brought to the White House a pattern of criminality, insensitivity and waste unparalleled in American presidential history."
Congressman Kucinich also called for impeachment, giving us hope that, for at least these politicians, demanding justice is on the agenda.
Arbitration is a corporate scam
Posted by Dave Johnson, Huffington Post on June 17, 2008 at 7:33 AM.
Does your credit card or bank loan agreement have an "arbitration clause?" More and more consumer-oriented contracts and "agreements" have clauses specifying that disputes must go to arbitration rather than our civil justice system. The justification for this is that arbitration saves the time and expense of working within our legal system. But here's the thing: the corporations choose the arbitrators and every arbitrator knows they will never, ever, ever, ever (ever) get another job if they rule against the corporations. Never.
And guess what: 98.8% of arbitrations end up in favor of the corporations. This is not a surprise.
The Progressive States Network's newsletter has a story about this today, Arbitration:"Set up to squeeze small sums of money out of desperately poor people",
The headline above is a quote from former West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely, describing what his role was as an arbitrator at the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), a for-profit company hired to enforce mandatory arbitration clauses for credit card consumer loans. "NAF is nothing more than an arm of the collection industry hiding behind a veneer of impartiality," says Richard Neely.
In a devastating expose by BusinessWeek, Neely and other former arbitrators describe an arbitration system stacked completely against consumers -- a system where creditors win 99.8% of all disputes involving companies ranging from Bank of America to Sears to Citgroup. Arbitration clauses buried in the fine print of credit card offers means consumers lose the right to have disputes decided in an independent court and instead are forced into corporation-selected arbitration firms.
The BusinessWeek story mentioned in the Progressive States Network story is titled, Banks vs. Consumers (Guess Who Wins).
This story about credit card companies taking unfair advantage of consumers is one more attack on citizen rights to access our own legal system (one more of so many attacks). Think about what is happening here. First the big corporations fought against "regulations" which are the rules that We, the People set up requiring safe workplaces or environmental standards, or products that do not injure people, etc. Then when fewer regulations of course resulted in worker or consumer injuries or toxic spills or other harms the inured parties filed more lawsuits asking the companies to make good. So in response to these lawsuits the corporate-financed "tort reform" movement came along, working to limit the ability of citizens to be compensated for the results of corporate bad behavior. The result has been fewer regulations preventing harms and more restrictions on citizen access to courts where we can seek damages after we are harmed.
I didn't even bring up the corporate-conservative movement efforts to install their own business-friendly judges in the courts.
But even those erosions of our access to justice has not been enough for the greedy corporations. Now there is arbitration: clauses that show up in contracts and agreements that remove your ability to take a dispute to the courts at all! And the judges in these courts are dependent on the corporations for their livelihood!
Deregulation, tort reform and now arbitration that is rigged against the consumer. Drip, drip, drip. One after another the big corporations are eroding the rights of citizens.
Click through to Speak Out California.
When Did the American Dream Turn Into Forced Labor?
Posted by Tula Connell, Firedoglake on June 12, 2008 at 12:44 PM.
They sold their homes. They said goodbye to their families. After paying recruiters $20,000 for visas to take part in this nation's H-2B guest worker program, they traveled from India to Pascagoula, Miss. There, the Indian welders and pipe fitters were promised good jobs at the Signal International shipyard and the chance to bring their families here.
Like many of our relatives, they came to the United States in search of the American Dream.
Yet, what they found was modern-day forced labor. They were forced to live in a cramped space with two dozen other workers—and pay more than $1,000 per month for the privilege. Toilet and shower facilities were few, and they were not allowed off-site to purchase groceries to replace the company's intolerable food.
In April, I described here how the workers left the shipyard and traveled to Washington, D.C., to seek help from Congress in a struggle that resembled the battle for human dignity throughout the civil rights era. The Indian workers described their journey to Washington as a “satyagraha,” or truth action, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi.
They met with members of Congress and staff, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. They discussed the need for Congress to make fundamental changes to the H-2B system.
But they wanted to take an even bigger step, one in keeping with the momentous move they made giving up everything to seek the American Dream. So, on May 14, several of the workers went on a hunger strike. They camped out in Lafayette Park, just steps from the White House. The hunger strike led to a commitment by congressional leaders to hold a hearing on Signal's complicity to human trafficking and a visit to the United States by members of the Indian Parliament. Except for a few union blogs and other small media outlets, their sacrifice generated little press until publication of an article in The New York Times a few days ago.
On the eighth day of the water-only hunger strike, Christopher Glory was rushed to the hospital for strike-related health problems. In all, five of the hunger strikers were hospitalized, including Paul Konar, who went without food for 23 days.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Insurance Should Benefit Consumers; Not Corporate Managers and Campaign Contributors
Posted by Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! on June 12, 2008 at 6:12 AM.
Insurance shouldn't be a for-profit business. In fact, it has failed miserably as such. So far this year the insurance industry is the 8th biggest source of bribes "contributions" for congressional Republicans ($7,541,565) and the 11th biggest source for congressional Democrats ($9,126,935). (In 2006, when they were fight for their hero Rick Santorum, insurance executives doled out $13,277,247 for Republican candidates (62% of their total) and $7,705,797 to Democratic candidates (36% of their total). This year, with greasy Democratic thugs Schumer, Emanuel and Hoyer replacing greasy GOP thugs Santorum, Delay and Blunt as the enforcers with the power, Dems have gotten 55% of the insurance industry's bribe stash. Why? Well, it surely isn't because they have suddenly gotten that old time religion and realized that Democratic ideals, values and principles are best for the country. It's far more likely that SchumerEmanuelHoyer has assured them that Democratic ideals, values and principles will never get in the way of, you know... business.
The first time I met Howard Dean he talked to me about how health insurance was too crucial in people's lives to be left as a private industry out to make a quick buck and incentivized to deny peoples' claims whenever they can get away with it. Today's CongressDaily features a story by Shihoko Goto that makes it abundantly clear that many Democrats agree with the Republicans that insurance shouldn't just be a private industry, it should be an unregulated one with license to rip everyone off at will, the way they do now.
A bill seeking to create a federal office for insurance regulation within the Treasury Department is coming under close scrutiny, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle questioning the need for it.
Some members of the insurance industry expressed concern about the bill and the possibility of adding red tape to the business.
"There is no crisis in the insurance industry" that warrants the establishment of a federal office, and change current business practices, said Brian Kennedy, a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives and president of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Is a Gutted FDA to Blame for Salmonella-Tainted Tomatoes?
Posted by The Littlest Gator, Group News Blog on June 11, 2008 at 6:00 AM.
In new big-bad-agri-business news, tomatoes are being recalled and chain restaurants are pulling menu items that use uncooked tomatoes.
As California health officials confirmed the state's second case related to a multistate salmonella outbreak, Bay Area supermarkets and restaurants on Monday scrambled to pull tomatoes off their shelves and menus.This story continues to develop with no answers yet as to where/when the salmonella tainted tomatoes entered the market. Huge agricultural corporations, and gutted FDA funding-- not to mention the fact that many FDA officials worked previously for the very companies they should be monitoring, are the cause of these kinds of problems. We will see more of this to be sure. Consumers need to go to local sources, small restaurants, and sustainable businesses to be safe. The up side is that this will make CSA's and Farmer's markets more popular than ever. The downside is we will be seeing more sick people, made ill even as they try to eat healthy fruits and vegetables.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers nationwide during the weekend to avoid raw red plum, red Roma and round red tomatoes unless they were grown in certain states and countries.- By Ken McLaughlin, Sonia Narang and Sandra Gonzales Mercury News