...same year, a local Ecuadorian court ruling against Chevron in an $18 billion case over the company’s widespread pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest marked an unprecedented victory in the global fight to hold multinational corporations responsible for their actions. Between 1964 and 1990, Chevron illegally dumped tons of contaminated wastewater directly into the forest, causing the land and water supply to become dangerously toxic. In the case...
Photo from C-SPAN3 In his notable dissent in Ligget Co. v Lee (1933), Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted that corporations “have brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state.” What Brandeis observed in the twentieth century has again become a threat today. Not since the Gilded Age has money in politics become such a corrosive problem. Through the Supreme Court’...
...he details of international tax evasion. The source himself voiced his desire to “let society know how [the offshore banking] system works.” Of course, the practice of massive international tax evasion by major multinational corporations is already more or less an open secret. It should come as a surprise to no one that many wealthy people and corporations keep their money in Switzerland or in one of the many lesser-known countries that qualify...
...inese administrative system that prioritizes green industries in its distribution of grants and permits. As rates of green technology output continue to climb in China, the American media relishes pointing out that U.S.-based corporations are being left in the dust. Efforts by the U.S. government to nurture the growth of its domestic green energy sector pale in comparison to the aggressive track taken by China. Those in the American green technol...
Illustration by Kaela Chambers In 2010, the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that corporations and unions could not be prohibited from broadcasting electioneering communications (ads that mention a candidate) within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary, which had previously been the restriction of the McCain-Feingold Act since 2002. What does this mean for the way campaigns and policymaking a...
...happening? No. Let’s look at some tax policies that may perhaps ameliorate this problem. Adam Davidson of NPR’s “Planet Money” writes that several economists polled “agreed that the overly complex taxation of rich people and corporations … all guarantees that those people and companies will spend an inordinate amount of money figuring out how to game the system rather than come up with new ideas that improve the economy.” Simplifying the tax cod...
...income bracket from around 70 percent down to 30 percent, while simultaneously increasing Cold War defense spending. These neoliberal policies were further cemented under the Clinton administration. With the passage of NAFTA, corporations raked in more and more profit as their liquid capital extended into untouched global markets, and increased outsourcing to newly exploited labor pools to swell the ranks of the unemployed. President Obama’s cont...
...generating profit. These organizations do not distribute their income to shareholders or owners, but rather use it to pursue the group’s goals. While there are many different types of non-profits (such as the government, some corporations, and religious organizations), the most commonly known—and the largest part of the sector—are public benefit corporations. These philanthropic groups provide invaluable services not only to the city, but to the...
...kes precedence over the higher moral ground. The Chiquita case also poses some interesting questions for the future of US foreign policy and the US government’s war on terror. Should the US government bother to bring American corporations that support terrorists to justice when those terrorists do not harm American interests? Since September 11, Americans have realized that terrorism can have grave consequences and that to stop it both the people...
from Wikimedia Commons This week, two Olympics, thousands of miles apart, are being played. Corporations have ruined both. In 1984, a Union Carbide leak killed 15,000 people in Bhopal, India in what has been called the biggest industrial disaster in history. Forty tons of methyl isocyanate gas ravaged the city, leaving 500,000 injured and thousands of unborn children with futures of pain and deformity. Almost thirty years later, hundreds of bro...
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