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Corporate Aristocracy: teaching the Serfs their place in American society

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:24:08 -0400

Corporate Aristocracy: teaching the Serfs their place in American society:

Here we have another story about ‘greedy’ labor unions and the American workers they represent:

After posting record revenue of $60.1 billion and boosting CEO pay by 60 percent, Caterpillar demands concessions from workers

Workers at an Illinois plant for the mega manufacturer Caterpillar have been on strike for a month after rejecting a concession-heavy contract proposed by the company. Yesterday, workers overwhelmingly rejected a second Caterpillar offer, by a vote of 504-116.

According to union officials, the contract “provided no raises, eliminated the defined benefits pension program, weakened seniority rights and required machinists to pay higher contributions for health care.” All of this, at a time when the company is making record profits. In fact, Fortune Magazine recently said the company is “crushing it” when it comes to profitability.

At the same time that it is refusing to give its workers a fair raise, the company saw fit to increase its CEOs pay by 60 percent:

The annual compensation of Caterpillar Inc.’s chairman and chief executive rose 60 percent in 2011, as the company posted a record revenue of $60.1 billion. Douglas Oberhelman earned $16.9 million in 2011, a figure that includes salary, bonuses, stock and option awards and retirement plan contributions.

[…] The typical American worker would have to work 244 years in order to earn what the average CEO makes in just one year. Over the last 30 years, CEO pay has increased 127 times faster than worker pay.

– Think Progress

How dare ‘workers’ ask for living wages and benefits from a company to which they’ve contributed their labor and production? Remember it’s definitely not greed when corporate CEOs pocket all the profits for themselves — and so what if workers contributed towards that success — that’s just the way America works!

More From the Inequality Speech That Was Too Hot for TED

"So, if corporations are people (a special class of people with lots and lots of money and influence..."

Sun, 27 May 2012 13:20:53 -0400

“

So, if corporations are people (a special class of people with lots and lots of money and influence and power), it’s fair to ask what they want. Do they want the same things as the average citizen? Do they want decent pay for all, adequate health care for all, a solid education for all, and democratic structures that foster individual creativity, informed dissent and equitable power-sharing?

To ask these questions is to answer them. Generally speaking, major corporations prefer minimal pay and benefits for workers, a largely uncritical and powerless workforce and minimal taxes, as well as unlimited power for themselves, which they can then employ to influence elections and maximize profits.

In a word, they want control.

”

- What Do Corporations Want? (via ryking)

underthemountainbunker: … Austerity on steroids: the Ryan /...

Tue, 01 May 2012 18:00:34 -0400

underthemountainbunker:

…

Austerity on steroids: the Ryan / Romney / Republican economic ‘method’

Big spending cuts to social programs +
Tax increases on lower-income people +
A reduction in the size of the federal workforce
= Immediate job growth and a more robust recovery?

Hardly.

Jamelle Bouie outlines what’s wrong with the current Republican economic policy (emphasis mine):

The problem, of course, is that all available evidence points to the opposite. In Europe, austerity has renewed the economic crisis—the United Kingdom, for example, is growing at a rateslower than it saw during the Great Depression. At home, austerity at the state and local level—by way of balanced budget requirements—has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and a significantly weaker economy.

[…] The least you can say is that this was disasterous; if states and localities had the funds to keep all, or most, of the jobs they’ve shed over the last three years, the economy would be in much better shape, and the recovery would be on a stronger path. But this is one of those areas where the administration didn’t have much control; given the extent to which Republicans have rejected friendly compromises over the last year, there was no chance that they would accept tens of billions in new relief for states.

Mass layoffs for teachers, police officers, and other public servants—this is the inevitable consequence of GOP budget cutting, should Mitt Romney win the election. Someone should ask the former Massachusetts governor how he intends to “fix the economy” with his coked-out version of European austerity.

What Ryan, Romney and the Republicans won’t do is entertain a tax increase on the wealthy, or a reduction of subsidies / loopholes for profitable corporations (corporate welfare), or go through with a formerly agreed upon reduction in defense spending. Isn’t that what ending wars should automatically do — put money back into our own country?

underthemountainbunker: msnbc: Health care laws leave...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:42:24 -0400

underthemountainbunker:

msnbc:

Health care laws leave hospitals overwhelmed by ‘permanent patients’

Under federal law, hospitals must treat any patient who needs emergency medical attention even if they have no way to pay. Nursing and rehab facilities are not required by law to do so. At the same time, hospitals cannot discharge a patient without a plan in place for his or her ongoing care.

The result is patients stuck in the hospital in need of long-term care but with nowhere to go, large medical bills, and no way to pay – a cost that is usually covered at the hospital’s expense.

Image: Garrick Amato (NBC News)

…

But who needs healthcare reform?

U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:18:05 -0400

U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money:

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.

[…]

The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention. The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house. So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.

According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.

"The Buffett Rule, a bill backed by President Obama that would ensure millionaires pay a comparable..."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:17:46 -0400

“The Buffett Rule, a bill backed by President Obama that would ensure millionaires pay a comparable tax rate to middle-class Americans, fell to a Republican filibuster in the Senate this evening, despite a new poll showing it to be overwhelmingly popular. While the rule, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, earned a majority vote of 51-45, it didn’t get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster.”

- Senate Republicans Filibuster Buffett Rule

NJ Gov. Chris Christie: friend of corporations and the wealthy

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:48:47 -0400

NJ Gov. Chris Christie: friend of corporations and the wealthy:

underthemountainbunker:

Pat Garofalo points out how NJ Governor Chris Christie has been literally handing his state’s treasury over to corporate interests:

Back in November, we noted that New Jersey was foolishly set to give the food company Goya $80 million to create just nine (nine!) jobs. […] One program Christie has run doled out $900 million in tax credits. The companies receiving that largesse “have promised to add 2,364 jobs, or $387,537 in tax credits per job, over the next decade.” In one instance, Campbell Soup was given $42 million to create jobs in Camden. When the company proceeded to cut 100 jobs, Christie merely slapped it on the wrist, reducing its tax credit to $34 million, with the stipulation that the company add five jobs per year over a decade after it regains its previous employment total. For those keeping score, that’s $34 million for 50 jobs.

The NYTimes reports Christie has approved a record number of corporate tax subsidies:

Since taking office in 2010, Gov. Chris Christie has approved a record $1.57 billion in state tax breaks for dozens of New Jersey’s largest companies after they pledged to add jobs…The critics pointed out that even when the promised jobs have not materialized, the Christie administration has merely reduced, not withdrawn, the subsidies. And they say that the administration is mortgaging the state’s future by forgiving so much tax revenue for the next 10 to 15 years.

Anyone with eyes can see the GOP agenda is simple: get all the money into the hands of the wealthy and the corporations now, by whatever means necessary. Period. Meanwhile, how will Christie pay for this huge loss of revenue (for decades to come)? Austerity measures:

Cuts to cancer reasearch,

Medicaid and Medicaid nursing home rates,

Women’s health programs,

State employee and teacher pensions,

Marine-mammal rescues,

Legal-aid funding,

Food programs,

Layoffs of police and firefighters and teachers,

And diverting millions from programs like a clean energy fund and an affordable housing fund into the general fund.

You’d think that this income redistribution scheme would somehow benefit Christie personally one day, wouldn’t you? Stay tuned…

Blackwater Videos Show Guards In Iraq Firing Weapons ‘Enthusiastically,’ Vehicles Hitting Civilians

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:47:21 -0400

Blackwater Videos Show Guards In Iraq Firing Weapons ‘Enthusiastically,’ Vehicles Hitting Civilians:

mohandasgandhi:

Journalist, author and publisher Charles Glass has a feature in this month’s edition of Harper’s magazine called “The Warrior Class,” a feature covering the rise of private security contractors after 9/11. The article describes a number videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for Blackwater. Harpers published clips from the videos yesterday, which show Blackwater guards and other private security contractors operating as if living in the Wild West. One video shows a contractor randomly and “enthusiastically” firing an AK-47 from the turret of an armored vehicle and another shows a private guard yelling obscenities at passers-by and other armored cars smashing into civilian vehicles:

[Video]

Another video shows what appears to be an American-made SUV running over a civilian without stopping. The car videoing the incident also does not stop:

[Video]

Harpers reports that “the tape ended with the inscription ‘In support of security, peace, freedom and democracy everywhere.”

This is American exceptionalism at its finest.

ryking: Maddow relays censored memo on CIA ‘war crimes’ during...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:44:52 -0400

ryking:

Maddow relays censored memo on CIA ‘war crimes’ during Bush Administration

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night explained a legal memo that advised the Bush Administration that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were torture and therefore illegal.

Wired reporter Spencer Ackerman obtained the memo, written by State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, through a Freedom on Information Act request.

Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer in 2010 that he authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding because his “lawyer said it was legal, said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act.” But Zelikow’s memo warned the Bush Administration in 2006 that the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects by the CIA were “a felony war crime.”

"I don’t think that it’s a ‘hospitality’ guideline to prevent rape of detainees."

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 01:34:20 -0400

“I don’t think that it’s a ‘hospitality’ guideline to prevent rape of detainees.”

- Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), during a hearing on conditions at the Department of Homeland Security’s immigrant detention centers.

"Were it not a matter of life and death, it would be amusing to watch the Supreme Court contort..."

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:39:05 -0400

“

Were it not a matter of life and death, it would be amusing to watch the Supreme Court contort itself – and the Constitution – in slavish fealty to Corporate America.

In June, the Court’s Republican majority is expected to rule that, under international law, corporations are not people. And as such they cannot be held responsible for their complicity in the gross abuse of human rights…

So, as with Citizens United, the lines are drawn. On one side, a pack of lawyered-up marauders claim their rights as persons one day and deny their culpability the next. On the other side, living beings seek relief from the jackals that gorge upon the fruits of human labor and gobble up the riches of the earth.

”

- The Banality of Corporate Evil

In other words: American corporations are “people” under American law on American soil, but they magically lose that personhood under international law when operating in other countries. Uh-huh.

climateadaptation: Global ocean temperatures spiking.

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:26:41 -0400

climateadaptation:

Global ocean temperatures spiking.

"Imagine if Liberals put forth legislation requiring every prospective gun owner to undergo a review..."

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 02:21:29 -0400

“

Imagine if Liberals put forth legislation requiring every prospective gun owner to undergo a review by a pyschologist to detmine that they understood the consequences of gun ownership and that they were of sound mind and wouldn’t go crazy.

The Right would go nuts that it interferes with their rights.

Mess with my wife, daughter, sister or mother, but don’t mess with my guns!

”

- Top Comment on Huffington Post article (via miscellaneouspoliticalramblings)

"So there is no savior. And let us please be clear on why there is no savior. Because there is no one..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:51:13 -0500

“So there is no savior. And let us please be clear on why there is no savior. Because there is no one who could satisfy the base of the GOP = a cohort so drunk on ideology and resentment that they cheer electrocutions and boo a soldier - and be elected president of the United States. Period. The standard journalistic trope the past few months has been to say that the Republican establishment would step in at some point and not let things get too out of hand. But that’s mostly nonsense. This GOP establishment is barely less loopy than the base. If this base is driving the party into a ditch, the establishment is riding shotgun holding a shovel.”

- Michael Tomasky - There Will Be No Saviors for the GOP in 2012/The Daily Beast

h/t digby

(via randomactsofchaos)

underthemountainbunker: The Truth About GOP Hero Ayn Rand The...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:56:50 -0500

underthemountainbunker:

The Truth About GOP Hero Ayn Rand

The things she says in the video become all the more hypocritical when you find out what she did in later life:

A heavy smoker who refused to believe that smoking causes cancer …unfortunately, Miss Rand was a fatal victim of lung cancer.

However, it was revealed in the recent “Oral History of Ayn Rand” by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand’s law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand’s behalf she secured Rand’s Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O’Connor (husband Frank O’Connor).

As Pryor said, “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently… She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”

Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers

Running Chicken: Hypocrisy or Heuristics?

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:47:29 -0500

Running Chicken: Hypocrisy or Heuristics?:

kohenari:

What follows is a guest blog post, written by Carly M. Jacobs, a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research interests include group identity, political psychology, biology and politics, and political behavior.

Accusations of hypocrisy…

A Brief History of the Corporation

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:17:43 -0500

A Brief History of the Corporation:

tetw:

by Venkat Rao

It is a sort of grim privilege for the generations living today to watch the slow demise of such a spectacularly effective intellectual construct. The Age of Corporations is coming to an end. The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center of gravity of economic life in another generation or two. They will live on as religion does today, as weakened ghosts of more vital institutions from centuries ago.

moderation: China Unveils High Resolution Global Moon...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:40:07 -0500

moderation:

China Unveils High Resolution Global Moon Map

—

Chinese scientists have assembled the highest resolution map ever created of the entire Moon and unveiled a series of global Moon images on Monday, Feb. 6.

The composite Lunar maps were created from over 700 individual images captured by China’s Chang’e-2 spacecraft and released by the country’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), according to reports from the state run Xinhua and CCTV new agencies.

“The map and images are the highest-resolution photos of the entirety of the Moon’s surface to be published thus far,” said Liu Dongkui, deputy chief commander of China’s lunar probe project, reports Xinhua.

Of course there are much higher resolution photos of numerous individual locations on the Moon taken from orbit by the spacecraft of other countries and from the surface by NASA’s Apollo lunar landing astronauts as well as unmanned Russian & American lunar landers and rovers.

(via universetoday)

"[Louisiana Democrat Mary] Landrieu and a Republican senator from Ohio named Rob Portman have joined..."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:15:12 -0500

“

[Louisiana Democrat Mary] Landrieu and a Republican senator from Ohio named Rob Portman have joined their oily hands to jack around with an upcoming EPA report on fracking-related groundwater contamination in Wyoming. The EPA already has made it known that the report will be both specific and damning as regards the reckless way the fracking procedures have been used in Wyoming and the terrible consequences that may result…

Now why should a senator from Ohio and another one from Louisiana want to slow-walk an EPA report about groundwater contamination in Wyoming? Because they’re both a couple of [corporate whores], that’s why. Landrieu’s been in the pocket of the extraction industries for so long that she probably has dryer lint in her ears, and Portman wants to be re-elected and so needs some of that sweet-sweet crude cash to do so. So the two of them draft a letter [to the Obama Administration] complaining that the EPA might go too harshly on the frackers in Wyoming…

[The letter contains] a threat, pure and simple. Get the EPA to soft-pedal its report or there will be hell to pay over this during an election year. And to hell with what might be going on right now with the water people are drinking in Wyoming.

”

- Charles Pierce (via ryking)

"This is a new, MUST-READ book by my colleague and friend Alan Moore. “In No Straight Lines, Alan..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:15:54 -0500

“

This is a new, MUST-READ book by my colleague and friend Alan Moore. “In No Straight Lines, Alan Moore argues that we have reached the nadir of the adaptive range of our industrialised world. Now faced with an unsustainable trilemma of social, organisational and economic complexity, we have entered an era in which the rules we have previously organised our lives around no longer apply. Leaving us with both a design problem and a design challenge which we must urgently solve. By describing an entirely new way for true social, economic and organisational innovation to happen, No Straight Lines presents a revolutionary logic and an inspiring plea for a more human-centric world.

‘Alan Moore is a visionary, someone who takes concepts from many sources and detects the previously hidden relationship between them. He has a firm grasp of the changes which are reshaping our world, always pointing towards a more participatory, cooperative, reciprocal model of what our society might look like.’ Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School for Communication

‘Economic transactions and markets have warped perceptions to such a degree that most people fail to see what is important in life, even when it’s right in front of them. Alan Moore offers a vision that is at once more humane, more forward-thinking, and more realistic.’ Howard Rheingold, writer and critic

”

- Amazon Kindle Book Alan Moore: No Straight Lines MUST READ

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