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For The Trees
Who is our economy FOR, anyway? About the Authors: Dave Johnson John Emerson Richard Reich Thomas Leavitt
Recent Posts: BEST OF STF: Dave's: Articles not at STF: The ATLA Speech on building a progressive infrastructure Lowering the Bar The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors On the Right and their communications infrastructure: Why Republicans Win Win or Lose The "Conventional Wisdom" Machine Some History of the Conservative Movement HOW TO FIGHT BACK An Amplifier Of Our Own Don't Blame the Democrats How They Do It 1 2 3 4 Getting Rolled Other: You're Gonna Get Drafted Scalia and Self-Government Who is Our Economy For? Voting Machine Story Link Collection What's Wrong with this Picture? (Voting Machines) Like Meat in the Supermarket Get Active Thin Line 1 2 3 Fixing Social Security Seeing the Forest I, II, III "Incredibly Positive News" The Breadth of It The Republican Crony Club Moon Bush Ralph Nader is a Scab John's Best Of: Kerry Smear Page Bandar Bush 9/11 Commission Report Damages Bush -- if you read it Florida Goon Squad Intimidated the Supreme Court The Use and Abuse of George Orwell Zizka's Archives (John's previous identity) Zizka Sampler News Sources: AlterNet BuzzFlash Common Dreams Cursor Drudge Retort Information Clearing House Smirking Chimp TruthOut What REALLY Happened Links to Other Weblogs: |
 7/31/2002 Who Is Our Economy For? William Greider has a piece in The Nation talking about the "cult of the CEO" and what to do about it. It's long but he has some interesting observations and I urge you to read it or perhaps bookmark it for later. "The fundamental perversion is a doctrine that encourages managers to squeeze the other constituent contributors to a corporation's success--taking away real value from employees, suppliers, supporting communities and even customers--in order to reward the absentee owners. That twisted logic explains the internal destruction familiar to those who work for many (though not all) major corporations, from the researchers to middle managers to assembly-line workers. If this false doctrine survives reform, then CEOs may no longer be ripping off the shareholders so boldly, but society's larger long-term interests will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of "shareholder value." My thoughts? The government should require that representatives of the public be given seats on corporate Boards of Directors. Let me pose a question: Who is our economy for? I think it's a dangerous question that leads to lots of useful places. We should get more people asking who is our economy supposed to be for, anyway? --- Posted at 7/31/2002 06:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post  
Crucified in the Blogosphere Nathan Newman wants all of us webloggers to beat up Bush for backing off from the corporate crime law within hours of signing it. As he puts it, "Bush should be crucified in the blogosphere for this." --- Posted at 7/31/2002 03:13:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/30/2002 What Bush Says Now - What Bush Did Then Today President Bush SAID, "Every corporate official who has chosen to commit a crime can expect to face the consequences," he said. "No more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard time." NYTimes version here. This is what President Bush previously DID about corporate criminals. "The Bush administration Friday ordered the suspension of a Clinton rule that would have significantly strengthened the government's ability to deny contracts to companies that have violated workplace safety, environmental and other federal laws." A good story about this can be found at Mother Jones. "The government continues to award federal business worth billions to companies that repeatedly break the law. A Mother Jones investigation reveals which major contractors are the worst offenders." --- Posted at 7/30/2002 07:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Pension Problem - "at least 50 WorldComs" I've been writing about corporate pension funds, the "other" accounting problem (here and here). Today Paul Krugman in the New York Times talks about the issue, "As the current issue of Business Week explains, the pension time bomb involves large numbers; I'd say it's the equivalent of at least 50 WorldComs." From the Business Week piece, "Amid the wreckage of the worst bear market in at least three decades, hemorrhaging corporate pension plans are rapidly becoming Wall Street's biggest new worry. They have lost hundreds of billions of dollars, and now companies face the end of their long-running holiday from writing checks to the plans. Over the next 18 months or so, companies ranging from General Motors to United Technologies face having to pump billions into their plans to comply with federal laws to protect pensioners." "The squeeze on U.S. pension funds has the potential to be the defining U.S. financial crisis of the 2000s, like the savings and loan squeeze of the 1980s," says Bob Prince, director of research and trading at money manager Bridgewater Associates." --- Posted at 7/30/2002 07:53:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/29/2002 Well Worth Reading Dick Cheney's Brilliant Career - From the Toronto Star. "There was nothing illegal about the decision by Cheney and four other Halliburton insiders to dump their shares in the company in August, 2000, about two months before Halliburton stunned investors with news that its engineering and construction business was spiralling downward, and that a grand jury was investigating charges it had overbilled the government." --- Posted at 7/29/2002 08:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Dick Cheney's Brilliant Career - From the Toronto Star. --- Posted at 7/29/2002 08:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Paul Krugman - "If you want to see the smear machine at work..." As I would word it, the Robert Rubin stuff is a tree. See the Forest. --- Posted at 7/29/2002 11:11:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Only 200 Al-Queda? I haven't seen any follow-ups to Saturday's story in which the FBI and CIA said there are really only 200 members of Al-Queda. It seems this should be the biggest story in the news. We're at "war", the government is being reorganized, Constitutional protections are being disassembled, the budget is shot - but it's all about only 200 people, many of whom are already in custody? Can someone tell me what is going on? Maybe this is why Bush feels like he can slip away on vacation for a month. --- Posted at 7/29/2002 10:37:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Stock Market The current PE (Price to Earnings) ratio of the S&P 500 is 23.8. This is where the stock market usually falls FROM, not TO. Click here to see some charts. (Two links at the top of the page: Still Overvalued and Another Perspective.) --- Posted at 7/29/2002 08:37:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/28/2002 Bush Scorecard Scroll down to the item titled "Bush Scorecard" over at the blog called Bush Impeachment Countdown. It's a table listing some of Bush's campaign promises, and how he's doing at keeping them. --- Posted at 7/28/2002 06:02:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/27/2002 More on the Pension Problem Here is a follow-up to my entry a few days ago, "ANOTHER Corporate Accounting Problem?". "Shortfalls in private companies' pension plans soared to $111 billion last year, the highest level ever reported by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp." ""The implications of such massive shortfalls in pension funds are staggering," said Rep. George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee. Miller urged the Bush administration to investigate and ensure that workers' retirement savings are not in danger." --- Posted at 7/27/2002 11:38:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Found Another Report I found a longer more detailed report in the Palm Beach Post. "It includes Al-Qaeda members who are now in custody at Guantanamo Bay." --- Posted at 7/27/2002 11:14:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
WTF?! WTF is going on here? Today's San Jose Mercury News has a very small report on page 8. I'll look for the wire service it came from, and see if I can find confirmation online. This is the entire article: "Fewer Al-Qaida members than reported, FBI says Senior FBI officials believe there are now no more than 200 hard-core Al-Qaida members throughout the world. ``Al-Qaida itself, we know, is less than 200,'' said an FBI official, referring to those who have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That figure, far less than recent media reports suggested were in the United States alone, is based on FBI and CIA reports." If this is an accurate report, I have to ask, WHAT THE F$$$ IS GOING ON HERE? --- Posted at 7/27/2002 10:54:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/26/2002 Funny At SatireWire: BUSH VOWS CRACKDOWN ON CORPORATE CORRUPTION UNLESS IT HAPPENED IN 1990 ""Also, it doesn't count if a person's last name begins with the letter 'B,'" he added." --- Posted at 7/26/2002 08:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
From the Right - The Forest This piece says a lot about why the left needs organizations like The Commonweal Institute to counteract the web or right-wing organizations. The article is about the far-right National Journalism Center, training lots of busy-bee right-wing so-called journalists. It's remarkable how far to the right the prespective of the piece's auther is, even though it's in the supposedly respected The Christian Science Monitor. As I wrote in Seeing the Forest II, "It's a new era. The information business isn't about journalism anymore and you'll be frustrated and disappointed as long as you hold the old-fashioned notions that it is "supposed to" be. That's all gone. Now it's different and the public is only getting one side of the story. The public is getting its information from the likes of Rush Limbaugh. As old and worn-out as this sounds, a few large corporations now own almost all of the sources of information and they are using that power to benefit themselves, not the public. This is the forest." --- Posted at 7/26/2002 03:05:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Moon Bush People are finally looking into Bush's business relationships and turning up all sorts of stuff, from cronyism (Krugman, today's NY Times) and S&L crisis involvement to the notorious bailouts and buyouts of Bush Junior's businesses by Middle East connections involving BCCI (here and here). If this keeps up, maybe people will start looking into the weird connections between the Unification Church - also known as the Moonies - and the Bushes. At first it sounds pretty weird, but if you know about the influence on the "Conservative Movement" of The Washington Times - owned by the Moonies - then you know that the Moonies are a big part of what is going on with the current crop of right-wing Republicans. Somehow the Moonies have TONS of money and they spread it around. Here are some links: Moon background - Detailed background of Moon's organization and an extensive collection of links to other sources. Consortium News with 15 different articles Two Online Journal pieces (One, Two) SpiritWatch An ex-Moonie site with lots of info including Moon links to "conservatives". ABC Australia piece, about Moon in Brazil Assorted pieces here, here, here and here. --- Posted at 7/26/2002 09:24:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/25/2002 The Commonweal Institute There's a new think tank starting up, intending to bring a progressive voice to the general public. It's called The Commonweal Institute. "Commonweal" means the public good. Think of them as a Heritage Foundation for the left. They are starting to raise funds now, and from what I have heard and seen they're going to be a force for progressive ideals. Wish them luck. Help them out. --- Posted at 7/25/2002 09:12:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Arrests Yesterday's arrests of the Adelphia executives made me think of Jay Leno's comment during the 1996 election, after Bob Dole said that drinking too much milk is just as dangerous as smoking, "Sounds like the milk people forgot to mail their check. Maybe these guys forgot to pay their Club dues. --- Posted at 7/25/2002 10:29:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More Breadth Bob Herbert's column in today's NY Times talks about what I wrote about a couple days back. "What we have here is a massive breakdown of the internal controls that are supposed to protect customers and promote confidence in the industry." --- Posted at 7/25/2002 10:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/23/2002 The Other Kind of Corporate Irresponsibility Arianna writes, "We are up in arms -- and rightly so -- about corporate greed that leads to massive shareholder rip-offs, but shouldn't we be even more irate about corporate greed that leads to loss of life? " --- Posted at 7/23/2002 04:51:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Breadth of It I'm amazed by the breadth of the failures of the institutions involved in the stock failures. Corporate executives were supposed to watch the interests of their shareholders. Accountants - well, we all know what they did. The SEC was supposed to be monitoring these companies. Analysts were supposed to be taking a close and careful look at the companies they analyze - not just accept the word of the company but actually look in warehouses to see if the goods are there. Mutual Funds were supposed to manage their holdings and their real value was supposedly in a bear market carefully screening out companies that wouldn't hold their value. Brokers were supposed to watch out for the interests of their clients instead of putting the assets of retired people into tech stocks with PE ratios of 100 in an obviously overvalued market. The Media was supposed to be keeping an adversarial eye on all of these, informing and warning the public.. And The Democratic Party was supposed to be the protector of working families, opposing the moneyed interests. As I look at it I can't think of a single institution that did its job. --- Posted at 7/23/2002 11:21:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Irrational Exuberance Paul Krugman points out that the stock market has now fallen below the level it was at when Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan felt it necessary to warn that it was too high, with his "irrational exuberance" remark. Krugman writes, "Our economic problems are real, but by no means catastrophic. What scares me is the utter inflexibility of the people who should be solving those problems." What would Cinton do? The current PE ratio of the S&P 500 is 22.1. Still high, and the E (earnings) is based on accounting that is not necessarily credible. --- Posted at 7/23/2002 09:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
They're Still At It Read this editorial to remind yourself what Republicans are really like. This is from Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper, just last week. Scaife is the guy who funds many of the Republican "think tanks" and "policy committees" and various activities of the Republicans - particularly the Federalist Society where so many Bush Administration figures and judicial appointments came from. Scaife funded much of the anti-Clinton investigations as well as those nasty magazines that were full of smears (read the editorial and remember). Ted Olson, now Solicitor General, helped run the anti-Clinton activities for Scaife. Ken Starr was associated with several Scaife organizations, and after the impeachment even tried to leave his position as Special Prosecutor to take a Scaife-funded professorship. Read this editorial and ponder that THIS is the crowd that is now running the country. --- Posted at 7/23/2002 08:37:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/22/2002 ANOTHER Corporate Accounting Problem? Because of the stock market drop many corporations are going to have to ante up a bunch of cash into their pension funds to cover stock losses, which is likely to affect their own stock price. Which will, of course, affect any pension funds that are invested in those companies, which could mean ... Get it? ANOTHER accounting problem that might be big news in a few days. Read about it here. "Topping off an underfunded pension plan hurts company profits because it soaks up cash flow that could otherwise be used to pay debt or buy new equipment. But some companies got even more mileage out of their plans' investing success: In the late 1990s, pension-fund holdings grew so lush that companies could properly account for excess fund profits as part of their earnings. --- Posted at 7/22/2002 09:21:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Found a really funny website - Dubya's World - pictures of Bush with funny captions. --- Posted at 7/22/2002 08:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Clinton Did It? In the last few days I've heard Limbaugh, and Hannity, Fox News, the Republican on Crossfire and a few other right-wingers all repeating pretty much the same line, some variation of, "All these corporate crimes we're hearing about happened when Clinton was President. Bush came in and uncovered them" See the forest. It's a safe bet that this has been focus-group and poll tested so it could well work. I wrote about this sort of thing the other day. The Republicans are well able to drown out anything that the other side can put forward. It's time for the Democrats to speak up. Don't let them get away with this one, like they did with the Savings and Loan crisis. --- Posted at 7/22/2002 05:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Republican Crony Club I've wondered what is in it for the big-money Bush supporters. I mean, sure, they get special favors from the government, tax breaks, etc. But when, for example, the government gives Microsoft a pass for their monopolistic activities it increases costs FOR OTHER BUSINESSES! Even the Bush-Backing businesses have to spend almost twice as much for computers and an enormous amount for software like MS Office. It isn't about just being pro-business because Bushism helps some businesses while it hurts others. Bushism helps oil companies but hurts fuel cell, solar and wind-power companies. Those are businesses, too! ALL businesses in California paid a lot more for electricity back when Bush was letting Enron rob the state through price manipulations. Bush supporters had to pay 3 times as much to heat or cool their homes, just like Democrats did. And all of us will suffer from global warming. So I wondered, what real good do they think they are doing for themselves by supporting these corporate Republicans? Now I'm thinking that the attraction is like being in a special club. Cronyism describes the Bush thing so well. If you're in the Republican Crony Club you get bailed out when you need it. You get special tax breaks - like a free pass to move your company to Bermuda to avoid paying American taxes. You get first crack at public resources. You get a pass on being investigated for violating laws - you even get to continue doing business with the government after you've been convicted of stealing from the government! Being in the Republican Crony Club is about what you can buy today with your campaign cash. Never mind that it means the economy is destroyed by it - you can fly away somewhere in your private jet, with your money safely in the Cayman Islands. Whoosh, bye-bye! It's not like you're going to be prosecuted for anything or ever have to give any of the money back. --- Posted at 7/22/2002 03:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/21/2002 Scofflaws I have observed in business circles that two decades of conservative rhetoric delegitimizing the concept of government has created a "scofflaw" atmosphere among executives. Like drivers ignoring speed limits, most executives I encounter see government regulations (and government itself) as an annoyance, an anachronism, a relic of old-fashioned do-gooder days when dinosaur socialist liberals created barriers to efficient business. Republicans delegitimized government, and act surprised when corporate executives act as if government were not legitimate. --- Posted at 7/21/2002 04:48:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
What Would Clinton Do? Consumers and corporations are carrying a high debt load, and the stock market is still sitting at an historically high P/E ratio. I fear that things could take a bad turn when people realize that Bush isn't DOING anything about this economic situation! What would Clinton do? (Jeeze, this is from a YEAR ago!) --- Posted at 7/21/2002 09:30:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Investor Confidence Ebbs as Market Keeps Dropping (New York Times) "The really big risk is that consumers will reawaken to the timeless truth that the best way to save money is to stop spending," said Richard Hastings, chief economist at Cyber Business Credit, a retail advisory firm in New York. "And I think that will impact aggregate demand in a way that has not been seen since the 1930's." Regular people lost their jobs, took pay cuts or had to work extra hours so the execs can get huge paychecks, free loans and stock options. Regular people lost government services to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and will have to pay off the deficits resulting from tax cuts. (In Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips shows how regular people's tax burden greatly increased while the rich and corporations pay less and less.) Recently regular people have seen their retirement savings collapse at the same time as Bush wiped out the Social Security surplus. But they had better go further into debt living way past their means, or the whole economy is going down. It's all their fault! What about raising taxes on the rich or corporations, and maybe getting some of the money BACK from them! Remember what happened to the economy after Clinton RAISED taxes on the rich in 1993? --- Posted at 7/21/2002 09:18:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/20/2002 Here's a good one from John Dean on the history of presidential scandals. --- Posted at 7/20/2002 07:22:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Another Good One In today's LA Times. "It is no wonder that today's corporations do not value "older" workers. They know too much." --- Posted at 7/20/2002 04:59:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Seeing the Forest II In an earlier "Seeing the Forest" piece I wrote about the surprising transformation in the 2000 election of candidate Gore's image to the point where people questioned his character instead of Bush's. (!) The "Love Canal" and "Invented the Internet" stories were trees. The forest is the bigger picture of this transformation. Today I read that Republicans are making the accusation that the "Democrats are willing to hold the economy hostage to help their chances in the November elections." Polls show that more voters say Republicans are better at handling the economy than Democrats. Recent polls show that more people blame Clinton than Bush for what's going on with the stock market. Those are trees. These polls largely reflect the Republican line on issues. Blaming Clinton may sound silly to many of us, but maybe this says something about where the public now gets its information. Have you listened to AM radio lately or turned to Fox News? You hear the same things repeated over and over and over, and then you see it reflected in the polls. This is the forest. It's a new era. The information business isn't about journalism anymore and you'll be frustrated and disappointed as long as you hold the old-fashioned notions that it is "supposed to" be. That's all gone. Now it's different and the public is only getting one side of the story. The public is getting its information from the likes of Rush Limbaugh. As old and worn-out as this sounds, a few large corporations now own almost all of the sources of information and they are using that power to benefit themselves, not the public. This is the forest. --- Posted at 7/20/2002 11:49:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Powerful Robert Hemsley, a machine operator at a paper mill, has written a powerful op-ed piece in today's New York Times titled "Losing My Stake in the Economy". "Free enterprise is a system of risks and rewards. As it now stands, employees suffer most of the risks, while executives enjoy most of the rewards." P.S. When is the last time you saw in the media - ANY media - the words of someone identifying him or herself as a union member? --- Posted at 7/20/2002 11:30:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Hooray for Frank Rich in today's New York Times. "What is the president hiding? Clearly the story here is not merely a hard-to-prove case of insider trading, tardy stock-sale forms and Mr. Bush's knowledge of the sham transaction involving Aloha Petroleum. Most likely it also involves the mystery first raised by The Wall Street Journal and Time in 1991. Back then, their investigative journalists tried to break the cronyism code by which tiny Harken, which had never drilled a well overseas, miraculously beat out the giant Amoco for a prized contract for drilling in Bahrain. They also tried to learn what various Saudi money men, some tied to the terrorist-sponsoring Bank of Credit and Commerce International, may have had to do with Harken while the then-president's son was in proximity." --- Posted at 7/20/2002 11:06:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/19/2002 Still overvalued. Another perspective. --- Posted at 7/19/2002 05:30:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Cliche Item I turned on the cable news channels this morning and every one of them had Bush on, live, giving a speech (mispronouncing much of it). Now the stock market is down more than 300 points. Can't they just keep the guy off the tube for a while before we're all broke? This reads like a cliche, but, jeeze, just get the guy away from TV cameras for a while. --- Posted at 7/19/2002 12:23:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Campaign Finance Reform - Unintended Outcome? After this November's election the Democratic Party is going to have to start asking Democrats for money instead of hitting up corporate Republicans as they have been doing. They are used to getting large chunks of cash from corporations and now they have to raise lots of smaller chunks from actual Democrats. I think the changes they will have to make to tailor their message to actual Demcorats is going to make a huge difference in the message of the Democratic Party. I've been to a few Democratic clubs and other meetings lately and have to say that the mood of the grass roots is nothing like the message that the Democratic Party has been putting out. Grass-roots Democrats are not at all happy with the way House and Senate Democrats have been voting for several years. I think we are likely to see a very strong populist resurgence. --- Posted at 7/19/2002 12:02:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Corporate Culture - It Comes From the Top I wouldn't expect many changes in corporate culture as long the White House insists that President Bush did nothing wrong when he sold his Harken stock just before the company announced a surprise earnings drop. (He sold shortly after he received a "weekly flash report" of the revenue drop). It's called leading by example. He says he was "cleared" by the SEC but refuses to let us see the SEC file. The file will tell us if the SEC was told he had received that "flash report" about the coming earnings drop. And on that other matter - the Aloha Petroleum accounting scam where they sold the company to themselves for an inflated price and recorded the sale as a profit, to move the stock price up - Bush told reporters to look in the Minutes of the Board Meetings to learn whether he was involved. And of course, now he refuses to make those minutes available. --- Posted at 7/19/2002 11:13:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Stock Market I hate to refer to this extremely pessimistic opinion piece about the stock market, but its numbers look accurate. Remember, it describes a worst-case-scenario. The market is still way overvalued. It does have a wonderful line, at the end, "It is vital to remember that, during a financial panic, just preserving what you already have is a wonderful investment." --- Posted at 7/19/2002 11:01:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Today's Google Experiment - S&L Crisis, Insider Deals and Redwoods If you are wondering how the current "Corporate Responsibility Crisis" could turn out, let's revisit the Savings and Loan Crisis of the early 90's. This is a two-part experiment today. For background, go to Google and search using these keywords, "savings and loan crisis". Or, just click here. Once you've refreshed yourself on the events, get ready to get angry, and go to Google and search using these keywords, "savings and loan Hurwitz Maxxam Pacific Lumber Company". Or, just click here. That's right, this guy not only got away with looting $1.6 billion from an S&L, he used the proceeds to buy Pacific Lumber, with much of the remaining old-growth redwood forest acreage in the West, and started cutting it all down as fast as he could. To slow this down the government PAID HIM $380 million to save just the Headwaters old-growth acreage from clear-cutting. I'll be doing some research and will try to post some figures on just how many S&L looters went to jail, and how many of them had to even pay any of the money back. The S&L bailout was another huge transfer of taxpayer money to the very rich, and the selling off of the acquired assets to the well-connected for pennies on the dollar. The outcome of the S&L crisis will not leave many of us feeling optimistic about the outcome of the "Corporate Responsibility Crisis". I doubt that that ANY corporate execs are going to go to jail, or even have to pay any of the money back. Certainly no one from Enron has been charged with anything yet, or has given any of the money back. It's more likely that the public outrage will be engineered into a situation where even more of our money will be channeled to the very wealthy. --- Posted at 7/19/2002 08:59:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Today's Homework - Beef, Corn, Health, Environment and Economics In March the New York Times Magazine had a story about beef. This extremely informative article talks about how the cattle are raised, what they're fed, and how all of this affects our health, the economy and the environment. For example, in nature cattle eat grass, which converts sunlight into food. But we feed them corn, which is grown using fertilizer, tractors and other products that use fossile fuel. So we've taken a SOLAR source of fuel and turned it into a PETROLEUM consumer. And the cows can't digest corn, so they get sick and we have to feed them antibiotics. They're miserable and we're making the germs resistant to antibiotics. There's so much more in the NY Times Magazine article... And the article's author has a follow-up op-ed piece in today's NY Times, talking about the effect on the Federal Budget of our focus on growing corn. "The problem in corn's case is that we're sacrificing the health of both our bodies and the environment by growing and eating so much of it." --- Posted at 7/19/2002 08:07:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
KPIG Off the Web It's a sad day in webland. KPIG has been forced to shut down their webcast because of the new Copyright Office fee structure. Corporate radio has succeeded in knocking out more of our choices. Read more at their website. --- Posted at 7/19/2002 08:01:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/18/2002 Address Change If you're reading this, you're at the right address. --- Posted at 7/18/2002 01:52:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Great Column by Ralph Nader Ralph Nader has a great op-ed piece in today's Washington Post. It's a "must read." Thanks, Ralph! (Usually these days when I say that I mean something entirely different.) --- Posted at 7/18/2002 08:39:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/17/2002 More bribery and backscratching with the Bushes! Have you been filled in on the Texas Rangers' land deal that made Bush Junior rich? If not, go do your homework and read Joe Conason's Harper's Feb., 2000 article. (alternate source) According to the article the lucrative land deals were set up by Mayor Richard Greene of Arlington, Texas. Well it turns out that while Mayor Greene was working against his constituents to set up a public land grab that made Junior rich he was being sued by Bush Senior's Resolution Trust Corporation! (That's the organization that was set up to handle the Savings and Loan bailout.) What a coincidence! He's getting sued by Daddy so he starts handing public land to Junior! I bet I can guess how the suit turned out - probably a lot like how Dad's SEC investigation of Junior's insider trading scam did. ;-) Read about it here at Salon (Premium, pay up). (Go to page 2 to read about Mayor Greene.) Then refer back to page 6 of Joe Conason's article to read about how Mayor Greene handed the loot to Bush. Maybe now we know why. --- Posted at 7/17/2002 05:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Today's Google Experiment Today we will examine a page in the history of corporate responsibility. Go to Google and search using these keywords, "union carbide bhopal." Or, just click here. --- Posted at 7/17/2002 01:33:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush Says Probe Will Clear Cheney and Bush Defends Cheney in Face of SEC Probe. I'm sorry, but this is really inappropriate. Bush is the guy at the top, the boss of everyone involved in the probe. So what's he doing describing the probe's conclusions before the probe starts? Can you imagine being on the team that's looking into this, after getting this subtle hint from the boss? And, meanwhile, Cheney led the transition process that gave jobs to everyone who will now be probing his activities. And, by the way, Bush is still refusing to let the SEC release the file on his father's "investigation" of his insider trading scam. --- Posted at 7/17/2002 01:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Seeing the forest Recent polls show that the public is blaming Clinton for the business scandals, and Bush's popularity remains astronomical. That's a tree. Let's see if we can see the forest. Look back to the 2000 election. Step back and look at the candidates. The Democrat's candidate was a well respected, well liked, extremely experienced, Vietnam vet, former seminary student, character beyond reproach, faithfully married family man, foreign policy expert, with many accomplishments including being the person in the Congress most responsible for advancing the Internet... The Republicans ran a foul-mouthed thoroughly inexperienced scandal-ridden (Harken oil, Rangers stadium, recipient of bribes directed at his father) failed businessman, continuously bailed out of jams by his father's connections, draft-dodger (worse, he got into the Nat. Guard through connections and then played hooky!), former drunk, probable drug-user, kids constantly in trouble, with a campaign entirely financed by large corporations obviously looking for favors. But by election time the only issue was “character”, and the character in question was the Democratic candidate’s! That's the forest. Issues like the "Love Canal story" and "I invented the Internet" were trees. The forest was how they pulled it off - the smears, the propaganda blitz, the way they spread their message and the way people hear messages these days. With this weblog I'll be writing about this issue, seeing the forest for the trees. --- Posted at 7/17/2002 09:18:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
7/16/2002 Rebecca Knight has an excellent accounting of the things Republicans did to block Democratic attempts to reform accounting and other business practices in their Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act of 2002. It's at Southern Style. "Democrats have attempted several times to enact legislation to eliminate or restrict corporate corruption, but the Republicans voted them down. Now Bush is proposing many of the same ideas. " Look about halfway down the page for the list. --- Posted at 7/16/2002 02:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Good one today from Robert Scheer! "Cheney's Grimy Trail in Business" "Cheney's business behavior could serve as a textbook case of much of what's wrong with the way corporate CEOs have come to play the game of business." --- Posted at 7/16/2002 12:58:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Where did Junior get his Money? Joe Conason wrote a great article (alternate source) detailing President Junior's business background. --- Posted at 7/16/2002 11:29:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bribe Senior through Junior The White House is still refusing to release the SEC files from the investigation of Bush's insider sales of Harken stock, as well as the minutes of Harken Board meetings. We need to see the SEC files to see whether it was just a cover-up of the President's son's illegal activities. Isn't it obvious this is the reason they aren't being released? I think those Harken Board minutes are likely to show that Bush was not particularly involved in decisions on the Aloha Petroleum scam - but not for innocent reasons. I think that perhaps Bush's involvement with Harken in the first place was part of a bribe to his father and had little to do with Bush himself. The company gives the President's son all this money (and salary) for no reason, then it starts getting contracts with countries like Bahrain (more bribes to Dad - hire Junior's company). Junior takes off to Washington and isn't involved. Just collecting his checks. But I really don't think that Harken was particularly interested in having Junior around and involved in making any important decisions. I mean, really, would you? --- Posted at 7/16/2002 10:57:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Ralph Nader is a Scab In the union movement we learned the hard way that the only way to fight the moneyed interests is to stick together. It's called SOLIDARITY. It's what "union" MEANS. When unions are in a fight the members stick together, and those crossing the lines are called "scabs". In the 2000 election it was the usual fragile Democratic coalition fighting the usual moneyed interests. Ralph Nader broke the solidarity, divided the coalition, and lost us the election. Ralph Nader is a scab. --- Posted at 7/16/2002 09:55:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
WelcomeWelcome to Seeing the Forest, a Blog for political (and occasionally other) commentary.--- Posted at 7/16/2002 08:52:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
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