Why We Let White-Collar Criminals Get Away With Their Crimes

Chris Hedges: How Corporate Tyranny Works

The Golden Age of White Collar Crime

(...) And this clubbiness has human costs. Tax evasion, to pick just one crime concentrated among the wealthy, already siphons up to 10,000 times more money out of the U.S. economy every year than bank robberies. In 2017, researchers estimated that fraud by America’s largest corporations cost Americans up to $360 billion annually between 1996 and 2004. That’s roughly two decades’ worth of street crime every single year. As the links between corporations and regulators become increasingly incestuous, the future will bring more crude-soaked coastlines, price-gouging corporate behemoths and Madoff-style Ponzi schemes. More hurdles to suing companies for poisoning their customers or letting bosses harass their employees. And more uniquely American catastrophes like the opioid crisis and the price of insulin. (...)

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says China’s coronavirus ‘will help’ bring jobs back to U.S.

 Red_Dragon wrote:
 
If you want some details about the example sited in the article....go here...  https://argo-sos.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Argo-Righting-The-Ship-4.30.2019_vFINAL.pdf

Start on page 13.

Off the radar: U.S. CEOs' jet perks add millions to corporate tax bills

 R_P wrote:
 
I get that, but if you could A) provide a safe product and 2) easily prove that your competition's product is unsafe, why wouldn't you? Why doesn't someone bottle clean water and share the results when they test all the competition? 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
 
Indeed:

Many consumers buy bottled water on the assumption that it’s safer than what flows out of their tap. That has helped fuel the growth of the bottled water industry, which reached $31 billion in sales in 2018. Forty percent of Americans believe bottled water is safer than tap, a recent CR nationally representative survey found, and about 1 in 6 don’t drink their home tap water.

The issue is that your local bottler might have (had) a similar problem, like the examples given for multiple companies, but you'd never know. You might if it's e. coli (or not, because perhaps instead you thought you ate something bad or whatever), but if it's arsenic or some of the other contaminants mentioned, it's not so easy/much harder.

 R_P wrote:
 

This is a kind of weird thing. There are maybe two reasons why people buy bottled water. 1 is convenience and hey welcome to America. But the only other reason is product safety. If the water bottler in my town left the door open like this company did, there's a small competitor trying to get in, and they'd sweep in pretty easily. It's hard to imagine competition not crushing this company like a bug, long before the FDA grinds into action. In fact, I'd do my own in-store QC and publish the results, knock that co. right out.

The FDA Knew the Bottled Water Was Contaminated. The Public Didn't.

The Best People™
Cushy ambassadorships go to donors, so now a chiropractor is handling the fallout over Greenland

When relations with a traditional U.S. ally hit a rough patch, it is always good to have a capable ambassador on the scene to attempt to smooth things over. One who has extensive experience in dealing with subluxation, for instance, can help get the bilateral relationship realigned in no time.

Wait. What?

Well, if it’s as some chiropractors believe and a subluxated spine is the root of all illness, couldn’t it also perhaps be the key to working out a diplomatic spat? One has to hope, as the let’s-buy-Greenland brouhaha in the United States’ relationship with Denmark is being left to an ambassador whose résumé is devoid of governmental or international experience. She did, however, work as a chiropractor before marrying a now-deceased multimillionaire — and as a soap-opera and B-movie star. Who can ever forget her role in “Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell”?

Ambassador Carla Sands, whose generous donations to Donald Trump no doubt brought her to the attention of the White House Personnel Office after his election, is not unique in her experience. Her predecessor, appointed by President Barack Obama, had been a Hollywood actor and had his own reality TV show as ambassador. In fact, of the 20 men and women who have served as our ambassador in Copenhagen over the past 60 years, only two of them were career diplomats. The Danes are used to envoys with, to put it diplomatically, interesting backgrounds.

The selling of certain ambassadorships is as much a time-honored tradition entrenched in both political parties as it is thinly veiled corruption. Even Congress’s explicit intervention — a 1974 law saying ambassadorships should go to non-career diplomats only in exceptional circumstances and never with regard to political contributions — didn’t dismantle it. Before the law, noncareer appointees made up about 31 percent of the ambassadorial nominees. After it was enacted, the figure dropped to 30 percent. (...)

Jim Mattis rejoining General Dynamics board of directors

Mussolini’s birthplace cashes in on the surge of far-right tourism

 R_P wrote: 
seems like the sauds are buying weapons from everyone these days

i thought i read where spain and canada are selling to them too

what the hay?

The Trump Administration Is Declaring a Fake Emergency to Sell Weapons to Saudi Arabia

Under the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, the State Department must notify Congress 30 days before concluding an arms sale, which gives Congress the chance to vote on halting the weapons transfer. Under the rarely used provision, however, the president can certify that “an emergency exists” and that an immediate transfer is necessary for “the national security interests of the United States.”

 R_P wrote:

Corporations also are not immune to pressure for change emanating from stockholders and the general public. For example, “ethical investing” is a significant phenomenon with a real bottom-line effect; according to The Wall Street Journal, over the last three years $20 billion flowed into so-called sustainable equity funds in the United States, which invest with a social, political, or environmental purpose in mind—an evident reaction to the 2016 presidential election and its runup. This represents a 25 percent increase from 2014, and inflows in this category significantly outstrip those into traditional mutual funds. Saudi Arabia has been affected by growing pressures to divest from its stock market due to concerns about its behavior, with foreign investors dumping a little more than $1 billion in Saudi stocks in one week of October—among the biggest selloffs since the Kingdom admitted foreign investors in 2015. Improving corporate governance, a growing concern of investors, implicitly encourages the maintenance of a good business reputation, which can be leveraged to take into account human rights concerns in international business dealings.

The private sector has not always acted as a good global citizen. There are certainly many examples where it has not. But corporations are not, in the end, entirely unaccountable. By means of a variety of actions—whether driven by governments, investors, or public opinion—the private sector can be encouraged to do more to support free societies and free peoples.

the huge problem with authoritarian governments is that the people can't say no

they can't or aren't allowed to disagree with authoritarians and their supporters/benefactors

really bad ideas/dogma are postured and violently enforced in the name of the greater good/god

currently you and i can still say no or disagree with our rulers on some stuff

businesses/vendors exposed to markets have to put forth a good product at a fair price or we can say no and move on to someone/products we agree with

regards

How the Private Sector Supports Authoritarians in the Arab World

 siriuss wrote:
 
Sure, but don't forget to fold twice before...

 R_P wrote:
 
But butt but can I still wipe with my newspaper /

Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder