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CorpWatch:Citizens United v. America's Citizens: A Voter's Guide

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

CorpWatch - By Charlie Cray - Oct. 22 (News Analysis) - A poll conducted by SurveyUSA, an independent research firm, found that a majority of voters think they have a right to know who is paying for the explosion of anonymous election ads. But this majority – despite believing that the nameless groups behind the “independent” ads don't have Americans’ best interest in mind -- do not appear to be sufficiently outraged to spur structural reforms during the lame duck session that will follow the election. If Republicans retake the House, as most pollsters predict, other popular reforms such as public funding of elections will have little chance of passage, Thus it is likely that a key role in 2012 will continue to be played by corporate-funded front groups and, if recent charges are true, by foreign corporations and other interests alleged to be funneling campaign funds through the Chamber of Commerce and other groups.

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The Looming Crisis at the Pentagon

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Chalmers Johnson - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - Given our economic crisis, the estimated trillion dollars we spend each year on the military and its weaponry is simply unsustainable. Even if present fiscal constraints no longer existed, we would still have misspent too much of our tax revenues on too few, overly expensive, overly complex weapons systems that leave us ill-prepared to defend the country in a real military emergency. We face a double crisis at the Pentagon: we can no longer afford the pretense of being the Earth's sole superpower, and we cannot afford to perpetuate a system in which the military-industrial complex makes its fortune off inferior, poorly designed weapons.

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Carlyle Group May Buy Major CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Tim Shorrock - Mar. 08 (News Report) - The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest private equity funds, may soon acquire the $2 billion government contracting business of consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the biggest suppliers of technology and personnel to the U.S. government's spy agencies.

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The New Business Watergate: Prosecution of International Corporate Bribery is on the Rise

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Philip Mattera - Jan. 16 (Opinion) - The Volcker investigation, the OECD convention, the Sarbanes-Oxley law and other factors together breathed new life into FCPA enforcement. Stricter internal controls mandated by Sarbanes-Oxley have made it more difficult for improper payments to be concealed, prompting numerous companies to self-report FCPA violations in the hope of receiving more lenient treatment. In 2005 the number of FCPA prosecutions started to pick up and reached double digits the following year. This year the number of investigations has reportedly been in the dozens, and the resolved cases have gained higher visibility. Among these have been the following:

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QinetiQ Goes Kinetic: Top Rumsfeld Aide Wins Contracts From Spy Office He Set Up

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Tim Shorrock - Jan. 16 (Special Report) - When Cambone's tenure at the Pentagon drew to a close, shortly after the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld in late 2006, the future course of defense spending had already been set: the big money was going to UAVs and low-orbit satellites for the transmission and sharing of intelligence data. (These projects became more crucial in 2007, when the Space Radar was declared a failure and scrapped by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.) And, in response to the increasingly sophisticated tactics of the Iraqi insurgents, millions of dollars were plowed into robots and other technologies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of homemade roadside bombs, that the military has dubbed improvised explosive devices (IEDs). By joining QinetiQ, less than a year after he resigned from the Pentagon, Cambone has been hired to implement the very policies he helped pioneer at the Pentagon, not as a public servant but as a private businessman benefiting from taxpayer dollars. And with Cambone in the driver's seat in northern Virginia, QinetiQ is set to build on its already thriving business to become one of the premier suppliers of technology to the "intelligence enterprise" that Cambone built.

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THAILAND: Green Groups Will Take GM Crops Issue To Court

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Marwaan Macan-Markar - Jan. 16 (News Report) - Thai environmentalists are banking on the country's courts to overturn a decision by the military-appointed government to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. A court battle is the only way to keep the country free from being contaminated by GM crops say green groups aghast that the government of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont has moved to secure cabinet approval to permit field trials just two days after the Dec. 23 parliamentary elections.

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Many rescued child laborers in India soon back at another dismal job

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Heidi J. Shrager - Jan. 16 (Special Report) - A group of child laborers recently rescued from a dank factory where they threaded sequins onto shirts to be sold by the San Francisco retail giant Gap Inc. finally went home last week. But in a country long desensitized to minors toiling in iron ore mines, fireworks plants and textile factories, the majority of children freed in raids wind up at another job within months of their rescue, according to several children's activists.

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CHILE: Copper Boom - Cui Bono?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By Daniela Estrada - Jan. 11 (Special Report) - Caputo complained that private mining companies made profits of nearly 20 billion dollars in 2006, which according to his calculations were equivalent to 17 percent of the country's GDP, 75 percent of the national budget, and twice the combined budgets of the Health and Education Ministries. In his view, the specific tax on mining approved in 2005 is too low. For 2007, it brought in revenues of approximately 670 million dollars, which are to be spent on technological innovation and development.

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U.S. high court declines to review Can. company pollution ruling

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CorpWatch - By John K. Wiley - Jan. 07 (News Report) - "As the case now stands, the courts have ruled that the U.S. has jurisdiction over Teck Cominco under the United States' Superfund law for the pollution it created in the U.S." The Columbia has been polluted for a century with heavy metals and black slag leaching downstream from Teck Cominco's lead and zinc smelter complex in Trail, British Columbia, 10 miles north of the U.S. border and about 135 miles north of Spokane.

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Domestic Spying, Inc.

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:13:09 -0800

CorpWatch - By Tim Shorrock - Nov. 27 (Special Report) - ... a proposal being reviewed by Congress, [establishes] a National Applications Office (NAO) to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. ...The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

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Fencing the Border: Boeing's High-Tech Plan Falters

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:09:35 -0700

CorpWatch - By Joseph Richey - Jul. 09 (News Report) - Legal System Overwhelmed Apart from problems with the contracting model, many critics of current policy question what they see as over-emphasis on securing the border without either addressing the causes of undocumented immigration or developing a comprehensive strategy for dealing with it. Particularly worried are Arizona law enforcement officials, who sometimes have to handle more than 250 immigration-related cases a day, and have been overwhelmed with issues around illegal immigration.

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Soaring Executive Pay Attacked by Shareholder Activists

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:53:44 -0700

CorpWatch - By Sam Pizzigati - Jun. 26 (News Report) - "Our resolution asks shareholders to join us in questioning why it takes our lowest-paid employees a full year to earn what Mr. Tillerson earns for an hour on the job," Goodridge said, "... because we believe it is fiscally irresponsible for a company to put so much of its resources into a single individual. "High company profits do not justify outrageous CEO compensation."

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CHILE: Chile Must Pay US$5.4 Million to Aricans Living Amid Toxic Waste

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:25:38 -0700

CorpWatch - By Mike Hager - Jun. 01 (News Report) - In a landmark case, Chile's Supreme Court ruled this week that the state must compensate 356 residents of two slums in the northern mining city of Arica for health problems brought on by years of exposure to open deposits of toxic waste. Promel, the Swedish company responsible for the importation of the toxic materials, cannot compensate the plaintiffs because the company no longer exists.

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Mystery of the Missing Meters:

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:06:59 -0700

CorpWatch - By Pratap Chatterjee - Mar. 22 (Special Report) - Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT - has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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Human Rights Commission May Examine Violations at La Oroya, Peru

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:33:45 -0700

CorpWatch - By Earthjustice Legal Fund, CIEL - Mar. 21 (Special Report) - Public health and environmental organizations from throughout the Western Hemisphere today announced the filing of a petition with the human rights division of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. The petition accuses the Peruvian government of doing little to halt contamination from a metallurgical complex that is impacting the lives and health of the citizens of La Oroya, Peru.

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US: Senator calls for more aggressive investigation of war profiteering

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:14:46 -0700

CorpWatch - By Elise Castelli, Federal Times - Mar. 20 (News Report) - The Justice Department isn't moving aggressively enough against contractors who have bilked the government out of billions in Iraqi reconstruction dollars, a top Senate Democrat said Tuesday. Despite more than 70 open investigations into contracting waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq by the special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Justice has brought only eight criminal cases to court, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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AFGHANISTAN: BearingPoint Lands Afghanistan Project

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:22:06 -0700

CorpWatch - By David Hubler, Washington Post - Mar. 19 (Special Report) - BearingPoint of McLean has won a five-year, $218.6 million contract from the Agency for International Development to help modernize and upgrade ministerial, private-sector and educational services in Afghanistan. The Afghans Building Capacity Program contract is one of USAID's largest individual awards for economic reform and private-sector development since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

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