Category: Corporate Statism

Closer and closer

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Labor Commissioner

Uh oh. This is not good news for our beloved New Jersey governor:

A former Christie administration official lobbied NJ Transit to build a train station that would benefit a $1 billion office and residential complex being proposed for the Hoboken waterfront — the same complex the city’s mayor claimed she was pressured to fast-track or risk losing Sandy aid.

Records show that the lobbyist argued for the station within months of an agreement signed with NJ Transit to move forward on the rail project. That lobbying occurred in the spring of 2013 — the same time period that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said she was pressured by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

The lobbyist, Lori Grifa, works for Wolff & Samson, the law firm founded by former state Attorney General David Samson.

Samson is also a central figure in the crisis Governor Christie is confronting over the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge. Samson was appointed by Christie to be chairman of the Port Authority and met with Christie on the day The Record reported the now-infamous email, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

The lane closures and Zimmer’s claims are being probed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark. A state legislative committee is conducting its own investigation of the lane closures. Dozens of subpoenas have been issued in the probes.

The Hoboken lobbying effort echoes Zimmer’s claims that there was a full-court press in the spring and summer of 2013 to get the massive project by The Rockefeller Group approved.
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Massive beef recall

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

frozen meat

Whenever possible, I try to get local food. Because these behemoth agri firms are impossible to inspect with the decimated USDA resources we have (thanks, deregulation and self-reporting!). Eating this food is like playing Russian roulette, but many of us are too poor and too distant from other options. Who would think so many years later that we’d be reliving Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” again, a book written in 1906? These huge companies send out beef to so many places, who in turn sell it to many other places, that we consumers have no idea where it is:

California-based Rancho Food Corp. has recalled over 8.7 million pounds of beef products — including oxtail, liver, tongue, and cow carcasses — because the animals they came from were diseased and never inspected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That’s equivalent to a full year’s worth of beef that gets processed by the company. The FDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which has been investigating Rancho Food, classified it as a Class I recall out of fears that the uninspected meat may cause serious medical harm to consumers.

The massive recall comes just one month after Rancho Food Corp. had to recall another 40,000 pounds worth of meat that hadn’t been inspected. There have been no reported illnesses linked with the products to date.

Food recalls are alarmingly common in America. Foodborne illnesses cost the U.S. about $152 billion per year, sickens 48 million Americans annually, and kills 3,000 people ever year. The proliferation of massive, national food companies such as Cargill Beef also makes recalls tricky, since products from a tainted batch may be shipped all across the country.

Unfortunately, food safety inspections are stymied by a significant lack of funding and insufficient staff. Although President Obama signed the largest overhaul of America’s food safety regimen in 70 years into law in 2010, officials are concerned that the planned changes won’t become a reality without more appropriations.

“Simply put, we cannot achieve our objective of a safer food supply without a significant increase in resources,” warned the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, Michael Taylor, in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. “We will continue our efforts to make the best use of the resources we have, but I can say with absolute certainty that we cannot do all that is asked of us without additional resources.”

Funding cuts to food safety agencies have continued despite the fact that the number of foodborne illnesses has actually increased over the last several years. Cuts included in the federal budget sequester are expected to reduce the number of food inspectors at meat and poultry plants by about 600 people.

This is new

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Minimum Wage Rally

The New York Times points out the financial interests behind the fight against a minimum wage increase. Of course, they still do their “both sides do it” routine, but it’s a change in emphasis worth mentioning:

The campaign illustrates how groups — conservative and liberal — are again working in opaque ways to shape hot-button political debates, like the one surrounding minimum wage, through organizations with benign-sounding names that can mask the intentions of their deep-pocketed patrons.

They do it with the gloss of research, and play a critical and often underappreciated role in multilevel lobbying campaigns, backed by corporate lobbyists and labor unions, with a potential payoff that can be in the millions of dollars for the interests they represent.

“It is the way of Washington now — and that is unfortunate,” said John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who has helped run several presidential campaigns. “Because if it’s not dishonest, it’s at least disingenuous.”

In this case, the policy dispute is over whether increasing the minimum wage by nearly 40 percent to $10.10 an hour by next year would reduce poverty or further it.
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Sen. Warren to Obama: Stop nominating corporatist judges

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts.

She gives me hope. Via Talking Points Memo:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Thursday called on President Obama to nominate fewer judges who have represented corporate interests and more with backgrounds working for public interest groups.

“Power is becoming more and more concentrated on one side,” she said at an event organized by the left-leaning Alliance for Justice. “Well-financed corporate interests line up to fight for their own privileges and resist any change that would limit corporate excess.”

Warren pointed out that after the Senate voted to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees, it could be easier for the Senate to confirm such judges.

“[I]t’s unsurprising that the president and a majority of the Senate gravitated to nominating corporate lawyers…that most conservative senators could not object to,” she said. “We have an opportunity to…fight for something that balances the playing field in the other direction.”

Alliance for Justice released a report Thursday on the President’s judicial nominees. Seventy-one percent of the judges he nominated primarily represented corporate interests.

The ‘used-to-haves’

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

CIMG0226

A freelance writer on Huffington Post:

We “Used-to-Haves” all used to work in the corporate world for big, wealthy companies. We were discarded in layoffs. I’ve been told, as my employer du jour let me go, what a positive difference I made and the value of my contributions. I agree. I know I made my bosses look brilliant. Fully aware that my contributions built the company’s brand image. Yet, I was expendable.

As a new “Used-to-Have,” I denied my slide. “I’m not poor!” I nervously chuckled to myself. But as I slid more, the smartest thing was finally acknowledging poverty and applying for the benefits available. I’d never been poor before. I didn’t know how to be poor. But finally, I learned. The magnitude of my shame and embarrassment is unspeakable. It’s impossible to explain to people who aren’t poor — “The Haves.” When I’m beseechingly desperate for a check owed to me, the check writer inevitably has no concept of how frighteningly desperate I am for that money. They say, “Next week? or “The accountant says two weeks.” I plead, nicely, sincerely, “Is there no way you could just write me that check?” And the answer is “no.” It’s just putting a pen to paper, but for “The Haves,” I’m just a pain in the neck.

Despite the disappearance of the middle class and the proliferation of the “Used-to-Haves,” Corporate America is as cavalier and unfeeling as they were when I was laid off. I remember working overtime for a New England financial firm on weekends, holidays and New Year’s Eve. Getting my arm stuck in a copier while fixing a paper jam. Wearing matching t-shirts as we moved boxes from one location to another. You name it, I made every sacrifice to keep my job in Corporate America.

Watching John Boehner and the Republican Congress during the past few years has been a stunning confirmation of their seeming disregard for the “Used-to-Haves.” As they pull down salaries of $174,000 a year, unparalleled benefits and the option of voting themselves a raise, their selfishness is unrivaled as they barricade health care reform, knowingly shut down the government, cut SNAP benefits and eliminate extended unemployment payments.

Congress doesn’t have the stones to call up their lobbyist buddies and corporate honchos and insist they hire more unemployed Americans for the American companies they celebrate and boast about.

The press calls it “The Great Recession.” It actually was the “Great Theft.” In the wake of this very public, often-glossed-over theft from the middle class, the perpetrators have been revealed. We know the American corporations without the courage, scruples or heart to help us, the ones responsible for the recession and the politicians who put the toxic policies in place. We “Used-to-Haves” aren’t stupid.

As a “Used-to-Have,” I’m beyond angry. I’m not a “Never Had.” I know what it’s like to pay bills on time and have a little left over. I remember vacations and pedicures and going out to dinner. As a “Used-to-Have,” I know exactly what Corporate America, lobbyists and politicians have taken away from me. The “Used-to-Haves” and the children of the “Used-to-Haves” won’t forget. The “Used-to-Haves” are educated. Many of us and our children have amazing talent and academic honors. We know how to get things done. And though all of the odds appear to be against us, we must refuse to give up hope.

H/t Ben Mann.

Comcast hearings in Philadelphia

~ susie

Kabletown - 30 Rock

Via the Media Mobilizing Project:

Have something to say to Comcast? From concerns about your cable prices to demands that they pay their fair share, now’s our chance to be heard.

Every fifteen years, the City of Philadelphia and Comcast negotiate special contracts called “franchise agreements” in order to provide cable services in Philadelphia, America’s fourth biggest cable market (1). In exchange for their right to provide cable access and earn massive profits from our communities, the franchise agreement requires Comcast to “give back” a portion of their profits to support the public.

Comcast’s previous franchise agreement expires in 2015. The City has begun to collect public input on what Philadelphians want from Comcast in order to inform their negotiations and craft a new franchise agreement.  If we want a deal that truly benefits the people of Philadelphia, we need to tell the City what our communities need to thrive.MMP has created a guide to help you understand this process – so we can provide the City with input that will make an impact.

Click here to read the guide, and tell Philadelphia what our communities demand from Comcast.

Comcast has outsized power in a Philadelphia still suffering under economic crisis. The company earned over $64 billion in revenues in 2013 (2), while they lobbied to stop hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians from getting access to paid sick days (3).  Comcast joined Governor Corbett and the Chamber of Commerce on a push to shutter and privatize Philly’s public schools (4).  The ratio for CEO pay to average employee pay at Comcast is 370:1 (5). And they pay little in a city and state that needs much – a nationwide corporate-income tax rate of only 3.4% in a state where our average rate is 9.99% (6).  
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Critique

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

Political Finger-Pointing

Of what Obama said about education in his SOTU speech, and his comparing our results to South Korea’s:

No matter that according to OECD data, South Korean kids are the unhappiest in the world, and according to many studies, have high suicide rates.  US parents should be just as demanding more of their kids, even if their happiness and mental health be damned.

I’ve written before about Duncan’s misplaced envy of the South Korea, where 20% of the average family’s disposable income is spent on private tutoring, and even the Prime Minster has warned us against emulating their educational system. Many Korean families in fact move to the United States in order to  save their children from the horrible pressures of their system.  But now Duncan and the President appear to have taken this fixation even further.

Graciously, Obama started his State of the Union praising teachers: “today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it and did her part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest levels in more than three decades.”  But then he went on to say:

“Race to the Top, with the help of governors from both parties, has helped states raise expectations and performance. Teachers and principals in schools from Tennessee to Washington, D.C., are making big strides in preparing students with the skills for the new economy — problem solving, critical thinking, science, technology, engineering, math.  Now, some of this change is hard. It requires everything from more challenging curriculums and more demanding parents to better support for teachers and new ways to measure how well our kids think…”

Good he and Arne have changed their line – at least temporarily – by saying that teachers need more support.  But now they are accusing parents of not having high enough expectations.  Can’t we get over this blame game?  Or am I being too sensitive?