The corporate takeover of American politics started with a man and a memo you’ve probably never heard of. Continue reading
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Category Archives: Business
Microchip, macro impact, micro vision
Let’s say you’re looking to invest some savings in the expanding micro-chip industry and a friend hands you the 2021 Annual Report of the Delaware (chartered) Corporation, Microchip Technology, a firm based in Chandler, Arizona. You’re a studious type and want to know what the company is producing before deciding if becoming a shareholder-owner is for you. Continue reading
Beware the 21st century robber barons
This great shift in bargaining power from workers to corporate shareholders has created an increasingly angry working class vulnerable to demagogues peddling authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia.
Why do big corporations continue to win while workers get shafted? It all comes down to power: who has it, and who doesn’t. Continue reading
Still more reasons to defund our CEOs
Their relentless rush to hit the pay jackpot is fueling the calamities that confront us.
America’s dirtiest three-letter word may now be “CEO,” and our ongoing economic meltdown is only making that tag even dirtier. Chief executives the nation over have spent this past spring scheming to keep their pockets stuffed while their workers suffer wage cuts, layoffs, and even death by COVID-19. Continue reading
A holiday comeback for Toys ‘R’ Us?
Retail workers are organizing to make sure private equity firms can’t make money by putting people out of work.
For many years, Giovanna De La Rosa enjoyed working at Toys ‘R’ Us—especially during the holiday shopping season. “I loved bringing joy to families and to children,” she shared at a recent congressional hearing. “I watched so many of the local kids grow up over the years while shopping in our store.” Continue reading
A tire that should inspire fear in the heart of workers
This sad story is as old as NAFTA.
Mickey Ray Williams keeps a Goodyear tire in his Gadsden, Alabama, conference room. Made in Mexico and imported to Gadsden, that tire induces fear. Continue reading
The gig is up
Uber just filed its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company. Although it lost $1bn, investors may still do well because the losses appear to be declining. Continue reading
Trump’s trade war has probably permanently damaged America’s tech leadership position
On May 15, US president Donald Trump issued an “Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain.” Continue reading
Trump takes on General Motors (and guess who wins?
Donald Trump’s “America first” economic nationalism is finally crashing into the reality of America’s shareholder-first global capitalism. Continue reading
NAFTA 2.0 is another bad deal
US free trade deals are profoundly unfair. They facilitate offshoring of jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Continue reading
What Big Meat doesn’t want you to know about slaughterhouses
It has happened at slaughterhouses run by Smithfield Foods, Swift and Agriprocessors. Continue reading
Is Donald Trump a new Herbert Hoover with his policy of isolationism and protectionism?
American president Donald Trump seems intent to isolate the U.S. economy from neighboring economies, and even from the world economy, and thus to break with three quarters of a century of closer economic cooperation between countries, established after World War II. There is a clear danger that the international economic system could become structurally unsettled for years to come, which does not mean that such a system is not in need of reform. Continue reading
Why making American corporations more competitive doesn’t help most Americans
Trump and congressional Republicans are engineering the largest corporate tax cut in history in order “to restore our competitive edge,” as Trump says. Continue reading
Renegotiating NAFTA: Hold the cheers
Trump promised a “stronger and better” deal. The only equitable one is fair, not free, trade benefiting everyone, not business and large investors exclusively. Continue reading
Don’t trust business with education
Greasy politicians use education funds to enrich corporations—and themselves.
Betsy DeVos and her husband Dick are lucky: They inherited a big chunk of the multi-billion-dollar fortune that Dick’s dad Richard amassed through his shady Amway corporation. But what they’ve done with their Amway money is certainly not the American Way. Continue reading
‘1984’ at the grocery store
Amazon is buying Whole Foods, and that's bad news for humans.
Wall Street analysts tell us that Amazon’s $14 billion buyout of Whole Foods isn’t only a win-win for both of them, but also for consumers, for Amazon intends to lower the organic grocer’s prices. Continue reading
Globalist leaders ensure North American integration mechanisms remain in place
As Donald Trump prepares to become U.S. president on Jan. 20, the future of NAFTA is in doubt. He has promised to either renegotiate or withdraw from the trade agreement. Despite the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, there are still many different existing North American integration mechanisms that remain in place. Continue reading
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA): Canada and the EU
Most interesting watching the progress of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU through the various opaque backroom ministrations this past week. Continue reading
France imposes widely despised anti-labor bill by decree
On top of punishing austerity, new rules imposed benefit business exclusively at the expense of worker rights. Continue reading
TTIP—American economic imperialism
Greenpeace has done that part of the world whose representatives are so corrupt or so stupid as to sign on to the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic “partnerships” a great service. Greenpeace secured and leaked the secret TTIP documents that Washington and global corporations are pushing on Europe. The official documents prove that my description of these “partnerships” when they first appeared in the news is totally correct. Continue reading
Pharma giant Pfizer blocked from tax evasion
New Treasury Department rules helped scrap the alleged tax-dodging giant's attempt to merge with overseas firm.
Big Pharma received $127 billion of our tax dollars in 2014 through the federal programs Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and TRICARE. But just because they live on our tax dollars, doesn’t mean Pharma companies want to pay taxes. Increasingly, they seek tax inversions, reincorporating in countries like Britain, Ireland or the Netherlands, often merging with a European entity to duck U.S. taxes. Continue reading
Trans-Atlantic & Trans-Pacific ‘Partnerships’ complete corporate world takeover’
As I have emphasized since these “partnerships” were first announced, their purpose is to give corporations immunity from the laws in the countries in which they do business. The principle mechanism of this immunity is the granting of the right to corporations to sue governments and agencies of governments that have laws or regulations that impinge on corporate profits. For example, France’s prohibitions of GMO foods are, under the “partnerships,” restraints on trade that impinge on corporate profits. Continue reading
The lie machine
Corporations, trade pacts and the media
I have come to the conclusion that the West is a vast lie machine for the secret agendas of vested interests. Consider, for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership. Continue reading
Have you ever heard of the JOBS Act? Neither have many would-be entrepreneurs, especially women
The JOBS Act is a “game changer” that would allow “ordinary Americans . . . to go online and invest in entrepreneurs they believe in,” says President Obama. Continue reading
The fracking prostitutes of American colleges
Part 3 of 3 parts
Among the mission statements of the University of North Dakota Department of Geology and Geological Engineering is that it “strives to develop in its engineering graduates keen insight and abilities to design an environmentally sound and sustainable future for humanity.” Continue reading
The fracking prostitutes of American colleges
Part 2 of a 3-part series
Two of the reasons Pennsylvania has no severance tax and one of the lowest taxes upon shale gas drilling are because of an overtly corporate-friendly legislature and a research report from Penn State, a private state-related university that receives about $300 million a year in public funds. Continue reading
The fracking prostitutes of American colleges
Part 1 of a 3-part series
Lackawanna College, a two-year college in Scranton, Pa., has become a prostitute. Continue reading
Global capitalism has written off the human race
Economic theory teaches that free price and profit movements ensure that capitalism produces the greatest welfare for the greatest number. Losses indicate economic activities where costs exceed the value of production, thus investment in these activities is curtailed. Profits indicate economic activities where the value of output exceeds its cost, thus investment increases. Prices indicate the relative scarcity and value of inputs and outputs, thus serving to organize production most efficiently. Continue reading
Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad idea
H. Ross Perot, the independent candidate for US president in 1992, said if NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, were passed you would hear a “giant sucking sound” as jobs left the US for Mexico. Continue reading
Happy birthday, NAFTA
“I believe we have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment and a greater possibility of world peace. We are on the verge of a global economic expansion that is sparked by the fact that the United States, at this critical moment, decided that we would compete, not retreat. In a few moments, I will sign the North American Free Trade Act into law. NAFTA will tear down trade barriers between our three nations. It will create the world’s largest trade zone and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone. The environmental and labor side agreements initiated by our administration will make this agreement a force for social progress as well as economic growth.” Continue reading
‘Rank hypocrisy’: WTO deal bows to wealth, squashes the poor
US and EU called out for protecting their own subsidies while demanding world's poorest citizens be pushed back into starvation
In announcing a final agreement in Bali, Indonesia on Saturday morning, head of the World Trade Organization Roberto Azevedo, said: “For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered.” Continue reading
Big business won’t save us from itself
Nearly 200 CEOs have signed a pledge to ‘do better’ than serving their own greed. How? They won’t say.
Posted on September 25, 2019 by Jim Hightower
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote of being leery of a fast-talking huckster who visited his home: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons,” Emerson exclaimed. Continue reading →