Moyers: How Corporations and Right-Wing Groups Take Aim at Judges Whose Rulings They Dislike

There’s a movement afoot to punish judges for decisions that offend political partisans.

October 15, 2012

When the National Football League ended its lockout of the professional referees and the refs returned to call the games, all across the country players, fans, sponsors and owners breathed a sigh of relief. Fans were grateful for the return of qualified judges to keep things on the up and up.

After the now infamous Seattle Seahawks-Green Bay Packers game, when questionable calls by the replacement refs led to a disputed 14-12 win by the Seahawks, even union-busting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the pride of Janesville, Wisconsin, became – briefly – fans of organized labor, calling for a negotiated peace and bringing the real refs back on the field.

In Baltimore, when the professional referees returned for their first game of the season, fans gave them a standing ovation.  One held a sign: “Finally! We get to yell at real refs! Welcome back!” As the captains of the Ravens and Cleveland Browns met at the center of the field for the coin toss, veteran official Gene Steratore turned on his microphone greeted them with, “Good evening, men. It’s good to be back.” The stadium erupted in a roar.

It was a revealing glimpse into a basic truth of American sports: Without the guys who enforce the rules, everything else is pointless.  READ MORE

Elizabeth Warren: "No, Mitt, Corporations Are Not People"

"CORPORATIONS  ARE PEOPLE MY FRIENDS!"

I like this:

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren took direct aim at Mitt Romney at an Obama fundraiser on Monday, dredging up his remark that "corporations are people."

"No, Mitt, corporations are not people," she exclaimed. "People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick,... they live and they die. Learn the difference.

"And Mitt, learn this: we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people," Warren continued, drawing cheers from the crowd at Boston Symphony Hall.

She should do this, because Scott Brown is doing an excellent job of being the Eddie Haskell of American politics, with half the state of Massachusetts acting as his gullible June Cleaver:   READ MORE

World Bank Supports Harmful Water Corporations, Report Finds

Monday, 16 April 2012 09:36 By Johanna Treblin, Inter Press Service | Report 

Water privatisation has been proven not to help the poor, yet a quarter of all World Bank funding goes directly to corporations and the private sector, bypassing both governments and its own standards and transparency requirements in order to do so, says a new report released Monday.

People in many developing countries often lack access to clean water, but the approach to remedy this problem has shifted in recent years to rely more on the private sector. Yet, as this new report and several other watchdog groups have shown, the change has been more harmful than helpful.

Corporate Accountability International, the U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that published the report, has called on the World Bank to stop funding the private water sector and start redirecting its money to public and democratically accountable institutions.

The release of the report, entitled "Shutting the Spigot on Private Water: Case for the World Bank to Divest", coincides with the start of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's 2012 Spring Meetings.

The World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has spent 1.4 billion dollars on private water corporations since 1993, according to the report.  READ MORE

Supreme Court to Weigh Torture Lawsuits Against Corporations

Famed Nigerian author and environmental activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa at a rally, 1993.
(photo: Greenpeace/AP)

By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times

27 February 12

Can international companies be sued in the U.S. over ties to foreign regimes that commit human rights abuses?

wo years ago, the Supreme Court said corporations were like people and had the same free-speech rights to spend unlimited sums on campaigns ads. Now, in a major test of human rights law, the justices will decide whether corporations are like people when they are sued for aiding foreign regimes that kill or torture their own people.

It would "create a weird paradox" if the corporations are people when funding campaigns but not when they violate human rights, said Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

At issue is an obscure 18th century law unearthed by human rights lawyers in the 1980s and increasingly used against U.S. corporations whose work overseas has entangled them with brutal regimes.

On Tuesday, the justices will hear an appeal of a suit accusing Royal Dutch Petroleum and its Shell subsidiary in the United States of aiding a former Nigerian regime whose military police tortured, raped and executed minority residents in the oil-rich delta. The victims included famed Nigerian author and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.  READ MORE

How two shell companies duped the Pentagon

 

By Brian Grow and Kelly Carr

CHEYENNE/ATLANDA | Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:12am EDT

(Reuters) - Two companies incorporated at a little house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, won Pentagon contracts after their owner took advantage of the state's liberal incorporation laws to create the firms using an alias, and then represented them as minority-owned to win favorable treatment as a military supplier. The firms and their owner were later banned from doing business with the Pentagon for providing knock-off parts.
A Reuters investigation has found that more than 2,000 companies are registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue in Cheyenne, the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business incorporation company that specializes in corporate anonymity.

Among the firms incorporated there is a small subset that make their money from government contracts.
A Reuters review of federal contracting databases found nine firms registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue have been awarded 93 contracts worth more than $1.6 million by a half dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury's Internal Revenue Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 90 percent of the contracts were awarded by the Department of Defense.
READ MORE

Mitt Romney: "Corporations Are People, My Friend"

Well, he's toast!