Thursday, November 21, 2002

Corporate Impact Analysis QUOTE OF THE DAY "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - - George Orwell RHINO HERE: So the lame ducks passed the Homeland Security bill 90 to 9 and not just a few corporations are set up to profit from it. For instance, Eli Lilly (which the Bush family has been major stockholders in for several generations) wins the right to be free from legal accountability for their dangerous drugs, products and technologies. Corporate "Homeland Security" contractors also won the right to maintain off shore tax havens. Jamie Court is executive director of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR). http://www.consumerwatchdog.org He's co-author of "Making A Killing: HMOs and the Threat To Your Health" (Common Courage Press, Fall 1999), which Publisher's Weekly called "one of the most powerful indictments of the managed care industry...must reading for anyone concerned with the health of the U.S. medical system." http://www.makingakilling.org A tireless consumer activist, Court helped pioneer the HMO patients' rights movement in the U. S., sponsoring successful laws in California and aiding them elsewhere. He inspired the nation's first flat-rate, low-cost auto insurance program for the poor and other consumer protection laws. As the Wall Street Journal described him, "...a familiar character in the hallways and hearing rooms of the state Capitol. He's notorious for his dramatic, sharp-tongued attacks on the health- and auto-insurance industries, and on any politician who takes their campaign cash." In his recent essay excerpted below the line today, Patriotism Has Become The Refuge Of Corporate Scoundrels, he states that the corporations' real power is their unlimited resources which allows them to be invisible while framing political and cultural issues. He argues every corporation should publish a Corporate Impact Analysis enumerating its political activities. 8:31:25 AM    comment

Patriotism Has Become The Refuge Of Corporate Scoundrels By Jamie Court, 11/20/02, Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights This week Eli Lilly and other large American corporations hijacked the "Homeland Security" legislation to win the right to be free from legal accountability for their dangerous drugs, products and technologies. Corporate "Homeland Security" contractors also won the right to maintain off shore tax havens. In the guise of providing cheaper terrorism insurance, Congress sent President Bush a bill throwing out state regulation of insurance premium increases for policies that provide terrorism coverage. President Bush's energy bill, which professes to reduce dependence on foreign energy sources, will surreptitiously repeal a 65 year-old federal law, the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, that protects ratepayers from subsidizing corporate expansion, monopolistic abuses and shoddy accounting practices. While individuals are losing liberties, such as protection from search and seizure under secret spy court rulings, corporations are exploiting the national crisis to gain new freedoms from accountability to government and the courts. The corporate pork is the result of both the growing political power of corporations and the lack of public knowledge about their power plays. That corporations can manipulate markets was clear from documents released last week by federal regulators showing officials at two energy companies colluded to keep electric power off line in order to drive up prices. Discussing how corporations manipulate society, however, is far more taboo in a political process that corporations have come to capture. The new corporate freedoms are, in fact, the spoils of a 2002 election in which, according to an analysis by one of America's largest corporate law firms, "business fully engaged in pivotal races" and corporate spending was "pivotal in close Republican victories." The November 6th analysis by Piper Rudnick, the world's 34th largest law firm, details how the GOP victories stemmed from corporations turning out their employees to vote by stuffing employee paychecks with voting materials, and from corporate funding for eleventh hour television advertising in key races. Both sides of the aisle in this week's lame duck U.S. Senate, which voted 90 to 9 for the "Homeland Security" bill, obviously took notice of the real 2002 electoral victors: Corporate America... READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/ftcr/co/co002885.php3 Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All copyrights belong to original publisher. "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. RHINO'S WEB SITES: http://www.rhinosblog.info (RHINO'S WEBLOG - PRESENT & PAST) http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) 8:26:24 AM    comment

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