Scandalous Measures
States might lose controls on corporate crooks
by A.C. Thompson and James A. Thompson
In These Times / InTheseTimes.com, 19 NOV 03
"The Bush administration is quietly seeking to roll back oversight of the banking business and the scandal-riddled securities market through two pending proposals -- a planned rule change for the banking industry and a house bill -- that diminish the ability of states to police banks and stock brokers.
The plans are worrisome because the federal government has been largely MIA when it comes to cracking down on corporate crooks in the post-Enron era. While the feds have grabbed headlines with a few high-profile indictments, state law enforcers -- most notably New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer -- are taking a far more active role in purging Wall Street of con artists and thieves.
Formulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency,
the shakeup would nullify state banking laws stricter than federal regulations.
Headed by John D. Hawke, Jr., a K-Street player who’s worked for Democrats and Republicans, the OCC is a little-known regulatory backwater but it wields a vast amount of power over the nation’s financial institutions."
"It is not a coincidence that as global trade has expanded, the tax burden has shifted increasingly onto working people. In the U.S., corporations are contributing a paltry 10 percent of the federal income tax burden, about one-half the level they paid in the 1960s, with further declines projected in coming years. It is a symptom of a set of ground rules that let corporations reap the greatest benefits of trade and make workers bear the primary burdens."
"A Pentagon audit has found that Halliburton, the company formerly run by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, overcharged the government by $61m (about £35m) for delivering petrol to Iraq.
The Texan oil services company has denied the charges and defence officials said there was no evidence that it profited disproportionately from the overcharging, saying it simply passed on high prices charged by a sub-contractor. ...
The debate over the spoils of war is fuelled by Halliburton's intimate link to the White House and by the fact that through its subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), it has been awarded a series of contracts without competitive bidding, potentially worth more than $15bn."
"A judicial investigation has been opened with regard to
“the bribery of a foreign public official”,
for the first time in France.
It focuses notably on the French company Technip and the American Halliburton, which were associated in a Nigerian operation.
... Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke is conducting his investigations and the Paris court contemplates an eventual indictment of the present United States’ Vice President, Richard Cheney, in his capacity as former CEO of Halliburton. The investigations concern 180 million dollars of commissions paid on the occasion of a gas complex bid in Nigeria. ... According to projections of the case, he
(Cheney)
could be charged with “eventual complicity in supplying the means or the orders or the reception (of stolen goods)”, for the misappropriation of public property.
If such a prospect is not on the agenda, it is possible since the opening of the judicial inquiry October 8 for “the bribery of foreign public officials and misappropriation of public property” targeting the American company Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) which is the principal subsidiary of Halliburton, known for having obtained more than 2 billion dollars worth of Iraq reconstruction contracts from the American government and over which Richard Cheney presided as CEO from 1995 to 2000.
(I assume that this construction means,
"If this prospect is not
[currently]
on the agenda it is
[nevertheless]
possible
[in the future].")
Concretely, Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke is trying to identify the beneficiaries of 180 millions dollars of commissions paid during the bidding for a gas complex construction contract in Nigeria for an amount estimated at 6 billion dollars or three times that of Iraq...."
"The suspected bribe money was mostly ladled out between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney was Halliburton's CEO.
The Journal du Dimanche reported on December 21 that 'it is probable that some of the 'retrocommissions' found their way back to the United States' and asked, did this money go 'to Halliburton's officials? To officials of the Republican Party?' "
The movie is called: The Corporation. It is by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan. ...
For years, we've been reporting on critics of corporate power -- Robert Monks, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Sam Epstein, Charles Kernaghan, Michael Moore, Jeremy Rifkin.
For years, we've reported on the defenders of the corporate status quo like Milton Friedman, Peter Drucker and William Niskanen.
But Bakan, a professor of law at British Columbia Law School, and Achbar and Abbott have pulled these leading lights together in a 145-minute documentary that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go.
The movie is selling out major theaters across Canada. And if it detonates here -- which in our view is still a long shot -- the U.S. after all is not Canada -- it could have a profound impact on politics. ...
The movie and the book drive home one fundamental point -- the corporation is a psychopath.
Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare runs down a checklist of psychopathic traits and there is a close match.
The corporation is irresponsible because in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.
Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.
Corporations are grandiose, always insisting that "we're number one, we're the best."
Corporations refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.
And the key to reversing the control of this psychopathic institution is to understand the nature of the beast."
"... here in Texas
(the)
three top fundraising lieutenants to Rep. Tom DeLay got indicted on Tuesday, along with eight corporations. They are charged on the unlikely grounds of having broken Texas campaign finance law.
... I was interested in the corporate indictments because I found a couple of familiar names there."
"I worked on Star Wars and MILSTAR and SMARTSKINS airborne
weapons programs. I soon spoke the language of war eloquently: C3 (Command, Control, Communications), EW (Electronics Warfare), SATCOM, RADAR, missile defense. We worked with RADC (Rome Air Development Center), NASA, Hughes Aircraft, Lockheed. ...
I won company awards for killing myself, 80 hours a week, dedicating my soul -- I have come to realize -- to the design of some million dollar electronic widget to be used to slaughter innocent people on behalf of the secret society we live under.
In retrospect, it was a culture of small-mindedness,
discrimination, technological worship, and alcoholism.
At the highest echelons, it a culture of exclusion, white superiority, privilege and contempt: contempt for
democracy, contempt for freedom, contempt for the environment and the rights of the ordinary American citizen. ...
To understand this secret society, one needs first comprehend one's own mental illness. Said differently, one needs self-education about the nature of indoctrination,
of everyday American life, of propaganda in a so-called democratic society.
This translates to an examination of the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Yankee, TV Guide, and all the little everyday fascisms that define what we as Americans know and love.
American Edward Bernays wrote the book on propaganda. The Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, adapted Bernays' ideas to the service of the Third Reich. Propaganda techniques refined by the Nazi's were adopted by the US media. Like it or not, we have been inundated with 50 years and billions upon billions of dollars worth of systematic, malicious, intentional and ubiquitous propaganda.
Now, you can stop reading, stamp your feet, get angry,
get drunk, beat up your wife, watch a movie, shrug your shoulders in disgust -- but that will not help us solve the problem of our communal mental illness and what it means to you and me and our children's future. That is just playing into the hands of those whose interests we so dutifully serve. Grow up. Clear your mind. And do your homework."
"Oxfam says that huge retailing "empires" are undermining the very labor standards they claim to uphold by pursuing a common global strategy that demands ever-quicker and cheaper delivery of the freshest and latest products. ...
For brief biographies of partners and contacts in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Honduras, Kenya, Morocco, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Thailand, UK, US: http://www.maketradefair.com"
"Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay surrendered to the FBI Thursday morning to face criminal charges stemming from the 2001 collapse of the energy company he founded and led to industry prominence.
Lay, who insists he knew nothing of any wrongdoing and was misled by underlings, was taken away with his hands cuffed behind him to be charged. ...
Enron's collapse in late 2001 cost investors billions of dollars,
put thousands of Enron employees out of work and wiped out retirement savings for many. The company, once admired, became a symbol of corporate greed and excess, and its fall was followed by a string of scandals at other companies."
