Speaking of Democracy
by Maud Schaafsma and Charlie Cray
Published on Tuesday, August 1, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
"Key to limiting the influence of corporate money in politics is our ability to challenge corporate speech and corporate squashing of independent speech. Campaign finance reform is just one facet of a concern that we can ill afford to leave to the lawyers to settle. There are many key places in the public sphere where corporate speech rights have been used to constrict and even dumb down the political discourse, undermining the cultural basis of our political democracy."
"A whistleblower who works for British Gas has revealed that staff were told customers without central heating
'no longer constituted a priority', even though they have paid around £200 a year for emergency call-out insurance.
More than 3.4 million people have such policies promising
'expert boiler care', but thousands have endured long waits in the cold for engineers who often fail to arrive or don't have the correct parts.
The whistleblower contacted the Guardian after reading our report on how it took British Gas three months and seven appointments to fix a minor problem in an oven in Surrey.
He says call centre staff deal with similar instances every day, and every
'third or fourth call is currently from someone complaining about the poor service they have received'.
He reveals that appointments to fix boilers are frequently cancelled without informing the customer. ...
British Gas admitted it has experienced problems with its HomeCare operation, but denied several of the whistleblower's claims."
Exxon Mobil profits disappoint
"Energy giant Exxon Mobil has seen high gas and oil prices push first quarter profits to a new record - but they still missed Wall Street forecasts."
BBC News, 27 APR 2006
"It made a net profit of $8.4bn (£4.7bn) between January and March,
up from $7.86bn a year ago.
But Exxon shares fell by over 1% in early trading because analysts had predicted a profit of over $9bn.
In January Exxon reported an annual profit of $36bn,
the highest in US corporate history."
"It's nearly impossible for the average citizen to grasp the scale of ExxonMobil Corp.'s huge profits.
In the quarter ended Dec. 31, the giant company made $10.7 billion, the equivalent of more than $115 million for every one of its 92 days, nearly $5 million each hour, more than $80,000 every minute, nearly $1,350 each second.
ExxonMobil's overall 2005 revenues of $371 billion amounted to more than $1 billion a day! The total was larger than the entire economies of all but 16 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank.
It was 40 percent greater
than the gross national product of Indonesia,
a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
with a population of 242 million."
"BP, which likes to tout itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” is the oil company that knows how to be a good corporate citizen. ...
What else could explain the apparent willingness of a fine public institution like UC Berkeley to be on the verge of entering into a “partnership” with the petro-giant -- accepting $500 million to fund an Energy Biosciences Institute? ...
Actually, if approved, this deal is the most egregious example of “science for sale” at most American universities. Through such arrangements, corporations are able to leverage far greater amounts of public funds to accomplish their commercial research agenda. In a very real sense, the university becomes the lab of the company. Taxpayer-funded scientists (and most importantly graduate students) do their bidding, and the results receive the university’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."
"Baker comments on a followup to Circuit City's firing of all its highest-paid salespeople last March .... Circuit City's stock has cratered in the meanwhile, and their response has been to offer $1 million retention bonuses to executive VPs. Baker points out that each one of these bonuses represents 35 years' salary for one of the fired salespeople.
"
