Category: Corporate Statism

Price-fixing cabel

~ susie

#google employees waiting for #googlebus across street from #eviction #gentrification

I’m sure we’ll have a congressional hearing on this illegal restraint any day now:

Confidential internal Google and Apple memos, buried within piles of court dockets and reviewed by PandoDaily, clearly show that what began as a secret cartel agreement between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt to illegally fix the labor market for hi-tech workers, expanded within a few years to include companies ranging from Dell, IBM, eBay and Microsoft, to Comcast, Clear Channel, Dreamworks, and London-based public relations behemoth WPP. All told, the combined workforces of the companies involved totals well over a million employees.

[…] A confidential Google memo titled “Special Agreement Hiring Policy,” dating from November 2006, divides the company’s wage-fixing agreements into two categories: “Do Not Cold Call” and “Sensitive Companies.” Below that, the Google memo offers a brief chronology and list of companies.

[…] In September 2005, eBay CEO Meg Whitman called Schmidt complaining that Google’s recruiters were hurting profits and business at eBay. Schmidt emailed Google’s “Executive Management Committee”—the company’s top executives— summarizing Whitman’s, and “the valley”’s view that competing for workers by offering higher pay packages was “unfair”.

[…] Beneath that list, a rather cryptic warning suggesting that all across industries, illegal non-solicitation agreements were common everywhere: “Please be cautious when recruiting teams from any company to keep our candidates and potential employees safe from legal action. Most companies have non-solicit agreements which would limit or prohibit a candidate from asking a coworker to interview with us as well.” That passage alone is a stunning example of not just flagrantly illegal practices—it also shows how few rights companies assume their employees are entitled to, rights that Americans take for granted—such as the right to free speech, the right to assembly, the right to ask one’s own co-worker if he or she would be interested in taking a better job somewhere else.

Mickey D’s coughs up the cash for wage theft

~ susie

Restaurant McDonald's - Montréal
I am so damned happy to see this:

Seven McDonald’s franchises in New York owned by Richard Cisneros will pay nearly $500,000 to fast food workers who claimed they were victims of wage theft under a settlement reached by state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, the Huffington Post reports.

More than 1,600 current and former employees will receive payment. The labor bureau “found that cashiers regularly performed off-the-clock work before and after their shifts,” Dave Jamieson writes, doing work without earning any extra income, and were also made to pay for cleaning their own uniforms and didn’t get an extra hour of pay after shifts where they worked 10 hours in a row. All of these practices violate New York State labor laws.

The state also recently won a $1.3 million settlement for workers at Domino’s in New York City who claimed they experienced similar wage theft tactics.

Given how widespread wage theft is among New York City’s fast food businesses, on Tuesday Public Advocate Letitia James announced a proposal to tamp down on these practices, including an anonymous whistleblower hotline for workers, expanding the authority of city agencies to investigate, and urging McDonald’s to amend franchisee agreements so that it can hold them accountable when they violate labor laws.

McDonald’s faces much larger charges of wage theft beyond New York, as workers have brought seven class action lawsuits against the corporate entity as well as some franchisees in three states. They allege they were underpaid when the company made them work off the clock, didn’t pay them overtime, made them pay for their uniforms out of their own pockets, erased hours from their timecards, and denied them breaks for meals and rest.

While many of the lawsuits over wage theft in the fast food industry, such as the one in New York, target franchisees, the class action suits argue that corporate shares liability. The company has defended itself by saying that franchisees operate independently, so it can’t be held accountable for their actions. But workers allege that McDonald’s corporate was directly involved in monitoring labor costs at the store level, leading to the illegal wage tactics.

Living the Kellogg lockout

~ susie

http://youtu.be/EEtfy59VMsA

Locked out Kellogg workers in Memphis, Tenn. have been without a paycheck since late October 2013. These 220 employees have also been without health insurance since the lockout began; employees have had to delay needed surgeries, appointments and procedures, or pay thousands of dollars in out of pocket expenses.

Target ignored warning from security system

~ susie

Target Store

This is pretty unbelieveable:

Target had done a months-long test of FireEye that ended in May and was rolling out the technology throughout the company’s massive IT system. It’s possible that FireEye was still viewed with some skepticism by its minders at the time of the hack, say two people familiar with Target’s security operations. And the SOC manager, Brian Bobo, departed the company in October, according to his LinkedIn page, leaving a crucial post vacant. (Bobo declined to comment.) Yet it was clear Target was getting warnings of a serious compromise. Even the company’s antivirus system, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SYMC), identified suspicious behavior over several days around Thanksgiving—pointing to the same server identified by the FireEye alerts. “The malware utilized is absolutely unsophisticated and uninteresting,” says Jim Walter, director of threat intelligence operations at security technology company McAfee (INTC). If Target had had a firm grasp on its network security environment, he adds, “they absolutely would have observed this behavior occurring on its network.”

Target’s security blunders don’t end there. Its spokeswoman, Molly Snyder, says the intruders had gained access to the system by using stolen credentials from a third-party vendor. Brian Krebs, a security blogger whose site krebsonsecurity.com first broke the news of the Target hack, has reported that the vendor was a refrigeration and heating company near Pittsburgh called Fazio Mechanical Services. A statement on Fazio’s website says its IT systems and security measures are in compliance with industry practices, and its data connection to Target was purely for billing, contract submission, and project management. Target’s system, like any standard corporate network, is segmented so that the most sensitive parts—including customer payments and personal data—are walled off from other parts of the network and, especially, the open Internet. Target’s walls obviously had holes. The hackers’ malware disguised itself with the name BladeLogic, probably to mimic a component in a data center management product, according to a report by Dell SecureWorks (DELL). (SecureWorks is one of many cybersecurity firms that got their hands on the Target malware, which was made public on various websites used by researchers to help other companies fend off similar attacks.) In other words, the hackers cloaked their bad code with the name of legitimate software used by companies to protect cardholder and payment data.
Continue reading “Target ignored warning from security system” →

Drug company CEO decides kid’s life isn’t worth $50K

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

But public outrage changed his mind:

Drug Company CEO Decides Child’s Life isn’t Worth $50K — Public Outrage Changes His Mind (Video) (via Americans Against The Tea Party)

There’s a famous dilemma that’s used to determine one’s moral outlook. Called the Heinz dilemma, it puts one in the position to determine what course of action “Mr. Heinz” should take in saving his wife, who has a rare type of cancer. According…

Continue reading “Drug company CEO decides kid’s life isn’t worth $50K” →

The NY Post breaks a big story

~ susie

Wells Fargo

Wow, what crooks:

Wells Fargo, the nation’s biggest mortgage servicer, appears to have set up detailed internal procedures to fabricate foreclosure papers on demand, according to allegations in papers filed Tuesday in a New York federal court.

In a filing in New York’s Southern District in White Plains for a local homeowner in bankruptcy, attorney Linda Tirelli described a 150-page Wells Fargo Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual created November 9, 2011 and updated February 24, 2012. According to court papers, the Manual details “a procedure for processing [mortgage] notes without endorsements and obtaining endorsements and allonges.”

Those are the technical terms for the paperwork proving that the company that’s foreclosing owns the loan, and therefore has the right to kick a family out of its home. Wells Fargo services roughly 9 million home loans, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

A Wells Fargo spokesman denied that the manual could be used to order improper documents. “No note is endorsed without the proper authority,” he said. “Wells Fargo’s foreclosure processes—today and back in 2012—are legal [and] appropriate.”

Attorneys, forensic accountants and consumer advocates have long suspected that banks were systematically creating improper documents to prove ownership of loans. Foreclosure defense lawyers use the term ‘ta-da’ endorsement to describe situations in which they say a document appears, as if by magic, in the bank’s possession as needed in a foreclosure case—even though the proper endorsement was not included in the original foreclosure filing. It might sound like a technicality, but correct proof of ownership lies at the heart of the foreclosure crisis for securitized loans, which were sold by the lender that originally issued the mortgage. To legally transfer a securitized loan, the endorsements and allonges have to be created in a very specific way and within a specific time frame, usually 90 days after a residential mortgage trust closes. For many loans in foreclosure now, which were originated years ago and then sold, it’s way too late to correct incomplete documents, experts said.

If the allegations in Tirelli’s court filing are true, this manual represents the first time ‘ta-da’ endorsements are “being described and admitted to be a procedure” at a major bank, as Tirelli claimed to The Post.

H/t Jason Kalafat Defense Attorney.

Off the reservation

~ susie

Reunión con el Diputado Bunmei Ibuki, Presidente de la Cámara de Representantes de Japón.

A man of conscience, it seems. I wonder how they’ll punish him:

In the midst of the solemn, scripted memorial marking the anniversary of Japan’s 2011 triple disaster, a discordant note seemed to creep in.

A leading lawmaker used the bully pulpit at the ceremony to call for an end to nuclear power, a rare instance of apparent public dissent by a top ruling party official against the policy of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“It seems as if we have reaped the benefits of electricity…while letting the people of Fukushima bear the cost,” said Bunmei Ibuki, the speaker of Japan’s lower house of parliament. Mr. Ibuki made his remarks at the National Theater during Tuesday’s memorial to mark the third year since a giant earthquake off the country’s northeast coast triggered a mammoth tsunami that killed nearly 16,000 people, left over 2,500 missing and caused one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

Mr. Ibuki, a three-decade veteran lawmaker, has held four cabinet posts and once served as secretary-general of Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party. His current position in the lower house placed him among the eight official speakers at the event, just after Mr. Abe and the Emperor.

Facing a floral memorial for the disaster’s victims, his back to the audience, Mr. Ibuki lamented how Japan’s admiration of science and technology “gave rise to a sense of arrogance, that humans can control nature.” He ended his brief remarks advocating an energy policy “with a view toward a nuclear phaseout in the future.”

‘Trust us’

~ susie

TEPCO transfers fuel rods

I’m sure it’ll all be fine. I mean, I’m sure they’d tell us if it was going to be a problem!

A senior adviser to the operator of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has told the firm that it may have no choice but to eventually dump hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking to reporters who were on a rare visit to the plant on the eve of the third anniversary of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Dale Klein said Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] had yet to reassure the public over the handling of water leaks that continue to frustrate efforts to clean up the site.

“The one issue that keeps me awake at night is Tepco’s long-term strategy for water management,” said Klein, a former chairman of the US nuclear regulatory commission who now leads Tepco’s nuclear reform committee.

“Storing massive amounts of water on-site is not sustainable. A controlled release is much safer than keeping the water on-site.

“Tepco is making progress on water management but I’m not satisfied yet. It’s frustrating that the company takes four or five steps forward, then two back. And every time you have a leakage it contributes to a lack of trust. There’s room for improvement on all fronts.”

Tepco’s failure to manage the buildup of contaminated water came to light last summer, when it admitted that at least 300 tonnes of tainted water were leaking into the sea every day.

That revelation was followed by a string of incidents involving spills from poorly assembled storage tanks, prompting the government to commit about $500m (£300m) into measures to contain the water.

They include the construction of an underground frozen wall to prevent groundwater mixing with contaminated coolant water, which becomes tainted after coming into contact with melted nuclear fuel deep inside the damaged reactors.

Poor people in the U.S. can’t afford treatment for pneumonia

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Doxycycline_(as_Doxycycline_Hyclate)_100_Mg_Oral_Tablet_1

I found this on Democratic Underground:

Yes, this is a scary headline. Almost sounds sensational. It isn’t. It is a cold hard fact. At this moment, if you are counting your pennies, trying to scrape up enough to pay for a $4 drug at Wal-Mart or Target, you can not afford an antibiotic that will treat your walking pneumonia—meaning that you could end up in the hospital saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

For years, doxycycline has been a valuable drug for physicians who treat the indigent — unemployed or underemployed folks without insurance. A staple of $4 drug lists, it can be used to treat everything from bronchitis to “walking” pneumonia to urinary tract infections to skin infections to acne to venereal disease—and it covers some rarer infections like Lyme’s and is sometimes used for malaria prevention, too.

For as long as I can remember–and I am pretty damn old—doxycycline, a twice a day form of tetracycline has been widely available and cheap as dirt.

And then, this winter, something surprising and very troubling happened. A patient with a list of medical problems longer than his arm and no income (he was still appealing a Social Security Disability denial) came down with bronchitis, possible early pneumonia–the two can be difficult to differentiate. I wrote him a prescription for doxycycline. He took it to the pharmacy. They wanted over $50 for it. He did not have over $50. He had $4. That was how much the drug used to cost at the same pharmacy.

He is not alone. Here is an LA Times Story about someone who had the same problem last year. Turns out that the difference can depend upon which generic drug manufacturer is making a specific medication at any given time. And apparently, right now, the one making doxycycline http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/07/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130308“>charges an arm and a leg for it.

A CVS pharmacist in Los Angeles, who asked that his name by withheld because of fear of retaliation by the company, shared with me the average wholesale price of different makers’ doxycycline, as made available to pharmacists by the McKesson Connect online ordering system.

The system shows that the average wholesale price of 100 doxycycline pills made by Watson with a strength of 100 milligrams is $328.20. The same number of doxycycline pills at the same strength made by Mylan cost $1,314.83.

Mylan? Where have I heard that name before? Oh, yes. ALEC. As in “http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations“>the Koch Brothers” and their corporate welfare mentality.

Where else have I heard of Mylan? Oh yes, the great http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117795“>lorazepam price fixing scandal.

The Federal Trade Commission approved a $100 million settlement with Mylan Laboratories, the largest monetary settlement in the commission’s history.

The agency had charged Mylan, of Pittsburgh, Pa., with conspiring to deny four competitors ingredients necessary to manufacture widely prescribed generic versions of anti-anxiety drugs. The practice resulted in a 3,000 percent boost in the price of the drugs, according to the FTC.

“Anti-competitive acts in the pharmaceutical industry potentially cost consumers millions of dollars in higher prescription prices,” says Richard Parker, director of the commissions’ bureau of competition.

Mylan is now the third largest generic drug manufacturer in the world since it acquired an Indian generic drug manufacturer–meaning that it is in great shape to corner the market http://triblive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_582510.html#axzz2vVDPxdWb“>on all these important key ingredients needed for drug manufacturing.

Not so long ago, the nation watched as patent drug manufacturers paid generic drug makers NOT to produce their product—keeping drug prices high. Keep that in mind as you ask yourself why a drug as popular as doxycycline is in short supply. This is not one of those orphan drugs that no one wants to make because almost no one needs it. This stuff sells itself. The more that is made, the more we will see it used. Why isn’t supply attempting to keep up with demand? Where is the bottleneck in the so called “free market economy”?

If this were a fictional mystery, I would now tell you why doxycycline has gotten so expensive that poor folks can no longer afford it. Since this is real life, I don’t know. If someone out there knows the answer, please tell me. Meanwhile, when a patient without money and without prescription drug coverage comes in with bronchitis/and or pneumonia, I am going to be hard pressed to get him treated with what is currently available on most $4 lists.