Category: Business

Corporate news from all over

Tyson Foods Corporate Criminal

Seth Anderson0 comment

Chickens Being Grilled
Chickens Being Grilled

Don’t you love how corporations want to be accorded the same rights as people in some areas, but not others? Able to donate unlimited cash to lobbyists and their politician lackeys, yet able to wantonly break the law without consequence. Sort of a rigged system, isn’t it?

For instance, Tyson Foods:

The issue of the payments resurfaced in November 2006, and this time, Tyson did what it should have done two years earlier: it retained an outside law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, conducted an internal investigation and, under a government program intended to encourage voluntary disclosure of white-collar crime, turned the results over to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The government’s investigation ended this February, when Tyson was charged with conspiracy and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Tyson agreed to resolve the charges with a deferred prosecution agreement in which it “admits, accepts and acknowledges” the government’s statement of facts, and paid a $4 million criminal penalty. The company paid an additional $1.2 million and settled related S.E.C. charges that it maintained false books and records and lacked the controls to prevent payments to phantom employees and government officials.

But what about those at Tyson responsible for the bribery scheme?

Corporations may have assets and liabilities, but they don’t commit crimes — their officers, executives and employees do. And the 23-page letter agreement between Tyson and the Department of Justice, the criminal information, and the S.E.C.’s public statement of facts all withheld names, identifying the participants only as “senior executive,” “VP International,” “VP Audit” and so on.

It would seem self-evident that if Tyson engaged in a conspiracy and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, then someone at Tyson did so as well. The statute specifically provides for fines of up to $5 million and a prison term of up to 20 years for individuals, as well as fines of up to $25 million for companies.

I assumed the names were withheld because the investigation was continuing and further charges might be forthcoming. I was wrong.

When I called this week, press officers for both the Justice Department and S.E.C. said the investigation was over and no one would be named or charged. This seems to reflect the belief that the deferred prosecution agreement, penalty and S.E.C. settlement largely achieved the government’s objectives, which were to stop the illegal conduct at Tyson and deter future instances. The decision not to pursue cases against individuals seems also to reflect budgetary constraints at both agencies (cases involving foreign witnesses can be especially costly) and, for the Justice Department, the burden in a criminal case of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But surely bribery, not to mention other forms of corporate wrongdoing, would be more effectively deterred if someone was actually held accountable for it.

(click here to continue reading Tyson Foods Agrees It Made Illegal Payments, but No One Was Charged – NYTimes.com.)

I think Tyson shouldn’t be able to evade penalty for their crimes, no matter what their and the SEC’s excuse.

Cigarette Makers Could Recoup $2 Billion From States

Seth Anderson0 comment

Smokers Always Welcome
Smokers Always Welcome

Such a strange settlement in the first place, but 1998 is a lifetime ago, and tobacco attorneys have been billing millions of dollars in the ensuing years. State budgets in 1998 were a lot more robust as well.

Big cigarette makers could recoup $2 billion under a proposed deal with state attorneys general to resolve a long-running dispute over payments required by the landmark 1998 tobacco settlement.

Negotiators for Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA and other tobacco companies have reached a tentative deal with officials representing the 46 states that signed the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, say people familiar with the matter.

The accord would allow big tobacco companies to keep part of the money they have withheld from states or otherwise disputed under the 1998 pact, under which they agreed to pay more than $200 billion to help states recover the costs of treating sick smokers.

States and the companies have battled over $7.1 billion that the companies argue they shouldn’t have to pay on sales from 2003 through 2010. The dispute revolves around the companies’ contention that they have lost business because states haven’t adequately sought payments from smaller competitors not party to the 1998 pact.

The bigger companies say some of those rivals enjoy cost advantages that allow them to sell cigarettes at lower prices, luring more customers in a sluggish economy. The states maintain that their authorities have done what is required under the 1998 pact.

Under the new deal, cash-strapped states would collect several billion of the disputed dollars. The deal also would rewrite rules related to how states collect fees and taxes from smaller companies that haven’t joined the 1998 settlement.

…

 

If it goes through, the biggest loser could be Native American cigarette companies, which have become strong competitors with their low-priced brands. The deal would require states to adopt rules forcing these companies to start paying state excise taxes and fees for sales on tribal lands, which could force them to boost prices. Lawyers representing Indian cigarette interests are threatening legal challenges.

 

 

(click here to continue reading Cigarette Makers Could Recoup $2 Billion From States – WSJ.com.)

Butts
Butts

The orthodoxy of the article

Seth Anderson0 comment

Evening Newspapers at Monument Station

While I’ve never been a journalist1, I know plenty practitioners of the form; am descended from journalists, and related to others. Thus, Jeff Jarvis’ argument resonates with me.

He begins:

When I say the article is a luxury, I argue that using ever-more-precious resources to create an article should be taken seriously and before writing and editing a story we must assure that it will add value. Do most articles do that today? No. Go through your paper in the morning and tell me how much real value is added and how much ink is spilled to tell you what you already know (whether that is facts you learned through Twitter, the web, TV, radio, et al or background that is reheated more often than a stale slice in a bad New York pizzeria).

How many articles are rewritten from others’ work just so a paper and a reporter can have a byline? How many predict the obvious (every story about an upcoming storm, holiday, press conference, or horse race election)? How often do you see a local TV story with any real reporting and value instead of just someone standing where the news happened 12 hours ago telling you what you and he both read online already? Too many articles passing themselves off as professional journalism are crap and I say we can’t afford to do that anymore. I say we should treat articles with veneration as a luxury.

 

Second, I am also promoting rather than devaluing background when I say it is best linked to. The background paragraphs in an ongoing story generally do one of two things: they bore and waste the time of people who have followed the story or they underinform the people who have not been following the story. Background graphs were a necessity of print but online we can improve background immensely, investing the effort in truly valuable and long-lasting content assets that give richer and more helpful background on a story. I’ve worked with smart folks at news companies imagining how we could provide multiple paths through background: here’s the path to take if you’re coming to the story as a virgin; here’s a track to take if you’ve missed a week; here’s a track from one perspective; here’s one from another. If someone else did a great job explaining the story or elements of it, we should link to them. Filoux calls that oursourcing. I call that linking. We do that nowadays. This is why I’m eagerly watching Jay Rosen’s project in creating explainers, which is an even richer form of background.

Third, in this entire discussion of the article, I am valuing reporting higher than repetitive retyping. As our resources become ever-scarcer, I say that we must devote more of them to reporting than to articles that add little: asking the questions that haven’t been asked and answered, finding people who can add information and perspective, fact-checking.

 

(click here to continue reading The orthodoxy of the article, part II « BuzzMachine.)

Journalism, especially print journalism, has to change, drastically, and soon. Or else the profession will be relegated to the warehouse that holds telegraph operators, carriage horse cabbies, and sword polishers. Actual reporting will not be replaced by current2 trends and practices: Twitter, cellphone video, and so on, but it could and should be enhanced by it.

People's Friend, People's Journal, Sunday Post, Dundee Courier

oh, and Mr. Jarvis’ original article, for the record.

Footnotes:
  1. being a blogger since 1999 doesn’t count – much different aims, no editor – obviously – and so on [↩]
  2. and future [↩]

Not All $12 an hour Jobs Are The Same

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Wisconsin countryside

To wit: working in a hot, dusty field on your knees is not as much fun as making copies at Kinko’s…

Cynthia Tucker reports:

I’m going to let you in on a big secret, a closely-held and dirty truth about Georgia’s farmers: They depend on immigrants, some of whom are here illegally.

What’s that? You knew that already? Not such a secret?

Well, Georgia’s agri-business leaders are posing and posturing as if it is. They dare not admit that they need the sweat and toil of migrant laborers so much that they are not always fastidious about searching for legal documents.

But the gut-busting pressures of a harsh new Georgia law targeting illegal immigrants — modeled after a controversial law in Arizona — may force farmers to speak the truth out loud. At the very least, it may force them to campaign openly for a broad immigration reform proposal that grants legal status to illegal laborers.

It’s not looking like a good year for many of Georgia’s farmers, who were already struggling with a warming earth. As drought conditions worsen in some portions of the state — upgraded from moderate to severe — searing heat and stingy rainfall are yellowing leaves and stunting crops.

Now, some of those lucky enough to reap bountiful harvests may be forced to leave fruits and vegetables in the fields for want of enough hands to pick the onions and tomatoes, beans and watermelons. Farmers have complained that some of their seasonal workers from Mexico, Guatemala and other points south have failed to show up, frightened away by the new law, which takes effect July 1, and its promise of increased scrutiny of those with Spanish surnames.

Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable

Growers Association, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that some migrant workers are skipping Georgia because they fear harassment. “People are just saying, ‘I am not going to Georgia. The law is terrible. We are going to get in trouble there. Let’s just go on.’ They have options. And what they are saying is, ‘Georgia is not the place to go,’ “ he told reporter Jeremy Redmon.

For what it’s worth, the labor shortage casts doubt on the old canard that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from hardworking American citizens, a reliable set-piece in arguments from nativist diehards. Even at an average wage of $12.50 or so an hour, native-born Georgians aren’t eager to take the work the fields offer — dirty, joint-maiming, miserably hot and impermanent. Once you’ve picked one crop, you must move to another state for a different harvest.)

(click here to continue reading Georgia’s big secret: State needs illegal workers | Cynthia Tucker.)

Mango, Orange, Plantains, Oh My!

Bottom line, expect fruit and vegetable costs to rise dramatically as the cost to pick them rises

Vienna Beef Sues Grandson of Founder

Seth Anderson0 comment

Vienna Pure Beef Hot Dogs Polish Sausage

Scott Ladany must have really been causing Vienna Beef trouble behind the scenes for a long time, or else they wouldn’t have reacted this way.

Chicago hot dog maker Vienna Beef has a beef with a grandson of one of the 118-year-old company’s founders.

Vienna says the grandson, Scott Ladany, is trying to make consumers think hot dogs made by his newer, separate company are the same as theirs.

In a suit filed Monday in federal court in Chicago, Vienna Beef says that Ladany “has embarked upon a deliberate, multi-faceted campaign to promote [his] products” by trying to convince hot hog vendors to sell his hot dogs by misrepresenting them as Vienna hot dogs — or by telling vendors that his company’s hot dogs are made with Vienna’s original recipes.

The suit claims Ladany and his company, Red Hot Chicago, are guilty of trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition.

Ladany was a Vienna Beef employee and shareholder, the suit notes, until 1983. At that point he sold his entire 10 percent interest in Vienna, resigned his position as a salesman and left the company. He signed employment and severance agreements that acknowledged, among other things, that Vienna’s recipes were trade secrets that he would never use or divulge.

In 1986, after his non-competition agreement with Vienna ended, Ladany opened Red Hot Chicago (RHC), headquartered at 4649 W. Armitage, to sell hot dogs and other products.

Vienna Beef says “for more than 25 years, Ladany and RHC made few inroads into Vienna’s position of dominance of the hot dog stand market. Vienna’s reputation among consumers was simply too strong. … Accordingly, Ladany and RHC recently decided to take a different tack: they decided they would avoid the enormous long-term expense associated with building their own brand. Instead they would lay claim to Vienna’s recipes, pretend to be Vienna, and sell their products by misappropriating the enormous power of the Vienna name and reputation among consumers and vendors.”

Vienna says Ladany, of Highland Park, and RHC have “made numerous false and misleading statements in their print and Internet advertisements and marketing materials” that intend to mislead the public into thinking that RHC and its products are affiliated with Vienna and its products, the suit states.

“Among other things, Defendants state in these advertisements that RHC’s products are made with Vienna’s family recipes. If these statements in their advertisements are true, then Defendants are admitting that they have stolen and are using Vienna’s trade secrets. If RHC is not in fact using the Vienna family recipes, as stated in their advertisements, then Defendants’ advertisements are false.”

(click here to continue reading Vienna Beef suit: kin of a founder misrepresenting his new company – Chicago Sun-Times.)

Give the Gift of Chicago

Obama administration seeks stricter limits on mercury pollution

Seth Anderson0 comment

Tales of the Towering Dead

The smart energy companies are already upgrading their smokestacks – making them more efficient, more modern, better for their investors – but the old guard will fight innovation every step of the way, even if it means reducing life expectancy of humans on earth…

the Obama administration is pushing stringent limits that by 2015 would force every power plant in the nation to capture 90 percent of the mercury in the coal it burns, a standard many plants already are meeting. The proposed rule also would impose tougher limits on lung- and heart-damaging soot and other “air toxics,” including arsenic and chromium.

On Tuesday, industry lawyers, environmental groups and public health advocates will converge in Chicago for a daylong hearing on the administration’s proposal, which has prompted an intense lobbying effort from some power companies that are trying to delay or kill the rule.

Echoing claims made during past debates about antipollution measures, opponents say tough national standards on mercury and other toxic air pollution will force dozens of coal plants to shut down, costing jobs and making the nation’s electrical grid less reliable.

But some power companies already have moved to clean up their coal plants. And supporters note that recent power auctions guarantee there will be enough electricity to meet demand for years after the rule takes effect, even if some older plants are shuttered.

“It is disappointing, irresponsible and coldhearted for the power companies that are operating these plants not to make the sensible, relatively easy and inexpensive changes the (Environmental Protection Agency) is requesting,” said Mary Gade, a Chicago lawyer who served as President George W. Bush’s regional EPA administrator.

Coal-fired power plants are the biggest man-made source of mercury contamination, one of the last kinds of pollution to be targeted for limits under the federal Clean Air Act. Uncontrolled for years, the pollution is so pervasive that Illinois and 43 other states advise people, especially women of childbearing age and young children, to avoid or limit eating certain types of fish because they often are contaminated with high levels of the toxic metal.

(click here to continue reading Air pollution: Obama administration seeks stricter limits on mercury pollution from power plants – chicagotribune.com.)

 

Spam Can Be Cut by Blocking Card Transactions

Seth Anderson0 comment

Erected and Enlarged

Of course shady banks are involved in the worldwide spam scourge, otherwise there wouldn’t be any money generated for the spam-meisters sending their poorly crafted herbal viagra emails. What’s interesting is that there are so few banks involved.

For years, a team of computer scientists at two University of California campuses has been looking deeply into the nature of spam, the billions of unwanted e-mail messages generated by networks of zombie computers controlled by the rogue programs called botnets. They even coined a term, “spamalytics,” to describe their work. Now they have concluded an experiment that is not for the faint of heart: for three months they set out to receive all the spam they could (no quarantines or filters need apply), then systematically made purchases from the Web sites advertised in the messages.

The hope, the scientists said, was to find a “choke point” that could greatly reduce the flow of spam. And in a paper to be presented on Tuesday at the annual IEEE Symposium (PDF) on Security and Privacy in Oakland, Calif., they will report that they think they have found it.

It turned out that 95 percent of the credit card transactions for the spam-advertised drugs and herbal remedies they bought were handled by just three financial companies — one based in Azerbaijan, one in Denmark and one in Nevis, in the West Indies.

The researchers looked at nearly a billion messages and spent several thousand dollars on about 120 purchases. No single purchase was more than $277.

If a handful of companies like these refused to authorize online credit card payments to the merchants, “you’d cut off the money that supports the entire spam enterprise,” said one of the scientists, Stefan Savage of the University of California, San Diego, who worked with colleagues at San Diego and Berkeley and at the International Computer Science Institute.

(click here to continue reading Study Says Spam Can Be Cut by Blocking Card Transactions – NYTimes.com.)

Thomas S. you dropped your Cialis

And you probably already realized this, but there is a lot of spam sent out, cluttering our email boxes with come-ons for boner pills and Cialis rip-offs…

Spam has proved notoriously difficult to defeat over the years, despite sophisticated filtering technologies and legal investigations and convictions. Seven years after the famous prediction by Bill Gates, then chairman of Microsoft, that spam would be eradicated in just two years, about 90 percent of all e-mail is spam.

An earlier study undertaken by the scientists showed that a single commercial spam e-mail campaign generated three messages for every person on the planet. That same study revealed that to sell $100 worth of Viagra, a spam provider needed to send 12.5 million messages.

Union Advocates Accuse GOP Of Interfering In Boeing Dispute

Seth Anderson0 comment

Boeing Logo

The GOP wants the Obama administration to be Republicans, and negate the legal process. Not going to happen…

Labor allies are defending the White House from attacks by South Carolina Gov. NIkki Haley (R) and other Republican lawmakers over a union dispute with Boeing, accusing them of interfering with an independent federal agency.

At the Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, Haley and other Republicans called on President Obama to condemn the independent National Labor Relations Board, which is tasked with enforcing labor laws, for suing Boeing over a production line in South Carolina that it says constitutes illegal retaliation against unionized Boeing workers in Washington State. Obama has no direct control over the agency, but does choose its members, and Republicans have sought to block appointments they consider too pro-labor.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a statement accusing the GOP of an “overly dramatic response” to a “routine unfair labor practice charge.” He added that it was unfair to target the White House when it has no say in the NLRB’s lawsuit.

“That’s what this all comes down to: powerful corporate interests are pressuring public officials to interfere with an independent agency, rather than let justice run its course,” Harkin said. “And we should not tolerate this interference. Instead, we should turn our attention back to the issues that really matter to American families – how we can create jobs in Washington, South Carolina, Iowa, and across the country?”

(click here to continue reading Union Advocates Accuse GOP Of Interfering With Independent Labor Agency | TPMDC.)

And a little back-story on the dispute:

An ugly spat between a huge corporation, organized labor, the White House, and a Tea Party governor whose union-busting rhetoric would make Chris Christie blush, is becoming the next national flashpoint in this year’s ongoing war on unions.

The dispute centers around a planned Boeing airplane production line for its 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina using nonunion labor. The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint earlier this month looking to halt operation of the new plant after members of the International Association of Machinists at Boeing’s Washington state production line claimed the decision to expand outside the state was retaliation for previous strikes. The NLRB is demanding that Boeing open a second production line in labor-friendly Washington state.

Boeing responded that because the corporation is not closing its Puget Sound plant, the retaliation claims are “legally frivolous.” Boeing recently issued a further statement claiming it would have opened its South Carolina line regardless of labor conditions in Washington state. The case will come before an administrative law judge in June and Boeing can appeal that decision in federal court if it doesn’t go its way.

Given that the NLRB languished under the Bush administration — at one point the AFL-CIO called for it to be shut down — the NLRB’s complaint represented a coming out party of sorts for the revamped agency.

 

(click here to continue reading South Carolina Emerges As Next Labor Flashpoint In Boeing Dispute | TPMDC.)

Ghostery

Seth Anderson7 Comments

Daily News

Within a couple of minutes after reading these paragraphs, I had installed and configured Ghostery to block cookies from over 500 advertising-related tracking sites.

The recent iPhone location-logging controversy caused quite a stir in the media. But as I noted on Twitter a couple weeks back, many of the people upset that their phone keeps track of nearby GPS towers and WiFi access points are oblivious to the fact that their Web-browsing habits are being tracked—often with far more detail—every time they go online.

For example, pretty much any blog or news site you visit (yes, including Macworld.com) uses scripts and tiny (or invisible) images—often called bugs—to track your online behavior and, usually, provide that information to ad networks and other Web-usage trackers. Whereas prior to iOS 4.3.3, someone with access to your iPhone’s backup could get a general idea of where you’ve been, chances are numerous companies have detailed profiles that include the kinds of sites you visit, which topics you find interesting, and possibly even specific items you’ve purchased.

Ghostery’s notification panel Some will say this is just part of using the Web. But if, like me, you’d rather not make it so easy for companies to build a profile of your ‘net activity—or if you’d at least like to be able to know when that activity is being tracked—check out Ghostery, a Safari extension (also available for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer). With Ghostery installed, whenever you visit a Web page that uses such tricks to track, you’ll briefly see a box listing all the services that are tracking your visit to that page.

 

(click here to continue reading Evidon/The Better Advertising Project, Inc. Ghostery 1.0.0 for Safari Web Browser Review | Macworld.)

I allowed Google Analytics, and SiteMeter, because I don’t mind letting webmasters knowing I visited their site, but why should DoubleClick get my data? Or worse, why should a company like Right Media or Facebook be able to profit off of me? I realize that if every browser blocked advertising cookies, some websites might vanish, or switch to a pay-to-view model, but I don’t care. Would my life really be less enjoyable if I couldn’t visit ESPN to check NBA scores? Or read about the latest vapid pop-culture meme at the Huffington Post?

So if you use Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, or if you are stuck using Internet Explorer, you should go ahead and install Ghostery. Simple, and useful. You don’t even have to automatically block cookies, you can just decide as you encounter them, or allow them from certain websites if you wish1

Footnotes:
  1. like mine, for instance. Though I don’t care if you do block the ads that help pay for my site, I just ask that you allow SiteMeter and Google Analytics access so I can fritter away time contemplating my site traffic [↩]

iTunes Royalties and the End of Corporate Media

Seth Anderson0 comment

Hard to be sympathetic to music label corporations – they’ve made many artists suffer through the years, and don’t have many friends in the industry.  They used to have vertical integration all sewn up: if you were a touring musician, there was no way to survive without using the clout of a music label for distribution of your music. But that era is vanishing, and quickly.Sunset 7 3680

Last year, global revenues from recorded music fell by 8.4%. A Universal Music Group insider recently told me that its owner, French media group Vivendi, has ordered the label to cut costs by $100m this year, meaning we’re likely to see more redundancies. No wonder the label is trying to downplay the implications of a recent US supreme court decision to turn down its appeal of a verdict stating that Eminem and the producers who helped him achieve success should get 50% of all revenue from iTunes downloads – around three times more than what the label has paid them so far.

The manager of FBT Productions, who first signed Eminem and continues to collect royalties on his music, told the New York Times that this means Universal owes the company $17-20m in back-payments. Considering that downloads of music Eminem (who was not party of the suit but stands to earn millions from it) keep selling, it could cost the label an extra $40-50m in the next five to 10 years. But it doesn’t look like Universal’s headache will end there. The estate of the late funkster Rick James has already filed a federal class action against the label, inviting other artists to join in, claiming that it should also have been paid 50% of all sales of digital downloads and ringtones.

At the centre of these lawsuits is the question of whether a download is a licence or a sale. A normal record deal today would usually give an artist 12-20% of revenue from sales depending on how successful they are at the point of signing (only the bigger artists get anything close to 20%). But if a song is licensed to be played in, say, a TV show or a film, they receive 50% of revenue. Buying a download on iTunes may make you feel like you own it, but the fact is that you’ve just bought the rights to play it. And so the court agreed with FBT that the Eminem downloads counted as licences.

Universal argues that it was simply the wording of Eminem’s specific contract that resulted in them losing the case, and it’s true that standard contracts have changed since the advent of iTunes and now clearly state that download sales count as sales. But thousands of artists signed their deals way before iTunes. If they did so before 1980, chances are they’re on a sales royalty rate that is lower than 10% – some artists from the 60s and 70s were on 4%, minus packaging deductions – which means they can up their digital royalty rate more than tenfold. It’s common that bigger artists, who are still signed to the same label, renegotiate their deals throughout their careers. Those artists will most likely have a clause about digital downloads in their contracts.

…

A series of successful claims could spell a much bigger problem for Universal than cutting $100m out of their budget: it could feasibly bankrupt every record label.

(click here to continue reading Behind the music: Why Eminem could spell major trouble for the major labels | Helienne Lindvall | Music | guardian.co.uk.)

 

Rupert Murdoch and Phone Hacking

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Pippen Peruses the Newspaper

Good! Rupert Murdoch, or someone else in his corrupt organization should go to jail over this criminality. They’ve so far avoided arrest because of their wealth and political power, but justice is supposed to be impartial1.

LONDON — The story so far: Clive Goodman, a journalist for Rupert Murcoch’s English tabloid, the News of the World, was sent to prison in 2006, along with a private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, for hacking into the voice mail messages of Prince William and Prince Henry. News International, the U.K. newspaper-owning subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corporation, has consistently claimed that the phone-hacking was confined to a single rogue reporter, but evidence uncovered by the Guardian and New York Times has suggested otherwise.

Last Friday, James Murdoch told PBS’ Charlie Rose that News International had defused a reputation crisis over allegations of widespread illegal phone hacking at the News of the World newspaper: “You talk about a reputation crisis—actually the business is doing really well. It shows what we were able to do is really put this problem into a box.”

But the lid has not stayed on the box and the contents have spilled over the sides. Rupert Murdoch has now tried to put that box into yet another one by issuing a blanket apology and offering a compensation fund for a select number of victims. Again, the lid does not seem likely to stay put.   News International’s announcement of the apology on Friday amounts to a complete reversal of policy by Rupert Murdoch and his top brass. Until now the management of News International has always argued that a single rogue reporter had been engaged in phone hacking. But the recent arrests of a former senior News of the World executive and the paper’s chief reporter—both of whom have been bailed till September pending further developments—and a court order requiring the release of internal e-mails has given the lie to that strategy.

The former Labour minister Chris Bryant, who is suing News International, said that it is “a pretty extraordinary moment . . .  when a national newspaper, which has been saying for years and years that there was just one rogue reporter, that it was all very regrettable, and that there were very few victims, owns up to a massive degree of criminality at the newspaper.”

(click here to continue reading Murdoch’s Attempt to End Phone Hacking Scandal Unlikely to Succeed.)

Footnotes:
  1. ha [↩]

Chase Privacy Breach

Seth Anderson0 comment

Lifting Sacks of Money

Nice. This does concern me a bit, as I do 95% of all my company’s financial transactions via Chase Online. We’ll have to monitor this situation closely. Luckily, not much information is contained via email, other than the email account itself, and perhaps a way for a hacker to change the bank password via email.

Chase is letting our customers know that we have been informed by Epsilon, a vendor we use to send e-mails, that an unauthorized person outside Epsilon accessed files that included e-mail addresses of some Chase customers. We have a team at Epsilon investigating and we are confident that the information that was retrieved included some Chase customer e-mail addresses, but did not include any customer account or financial information. Based on everything we know, your accounts and confidential information remain secure. As always, we are advising our customers of everything we know as we know it, and will keep you informed on what impact, if any, this will have on you.

We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. We want to remind you that Chase will never ask for your personal information or login credentials in an e-mail. As always, be cautious if you receive e-mails asking for your personal information and be on the lookout for unwanted spam. It is not Chase’s practice to request personal information by e-mail.

(click here to continue reading Important Information for our Customers.)

 

Tea Baggers Are Now Lobbyists for Big Business

Seth Anderson0 comment

Sketchy ATM Inside

Wow, didn’t even take a year for the Teabaggers to show their true GOP colors.

Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.

The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government.1Yet an examination of the Institute for Liberty shows how Washington’s influence industry has adapted itself to the Tea Party era. In a quietly arranged marriage of seemingly disparate interests, the institute and kindred groups are increasingly the bearers of corporate messages wrapped in populist Tea Party themes.

In a few instances, their corporate partners are known — as with the billionaire Koch brothers’ support of Americans for Prosperity, one of the most visible advocacy groups. More often, though, their nonprofit tax status means they do not have to reveal who pays the bills.

Mr. Langer would not say who financed his Indonesian paper initiative. But his sudden interest in the issue coincided with a public relations push by Asia Pulp & Paper. And the institute’s work is remarkably similar to that produced by one of the company’s consultants, a former Australian diplomat named Alan Oxley who works closely with a Washington public affairs firm known for creating corporate campaigns presented as grass-roots efforts.

 

(click here to continue reading Institute for Liberty – Tea Party Group With Business Agenda – NYTimes.com.)

and I’d quibble with this sentence:

The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government.

That’s the talking point anyway. I’d argue the Teabaggers are not that skeptical of big business, because people like the Koch brothers are such big monetary supporters, and if you scratch the surface of any ten randomly selected Teabaggers, you’ll find nine Republicans and one Independent-Leans-Right.

Monkey King

For instance, Monsanto, the enemy of small farmers everywhere on the planet, is a supporter of the Teabaggers

Last year, the two groups also supported the effort by the agribusiness giant Monsanto to ease federal restrictions on its pesticide-resistant alfalfa. (In February, regulators agreed to do so.) Mr. Langer said he decided “to try out our grass-roots method on that, and frame it as a dairy issue and access to affordable food.”

He got a column published in July in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, talking up Monsanto’s product and asking readers to consider the value of bioengineered foods as they “stroll down the aisle of the supermarket.” The institute’s Web site urged members to speak up, and Mr. Langer filed a petition with the Department of Agriculture.

But a close look at that petition illustrates how a “grass-roots” campaign may be something else entirely. He submitted 8,052 comments he said were collected by telephone. The comments, under different names, were identical and began: “I was recently contacted by the Institute for Liberty and asked if I would be willing to lend my voice in support of moving these types of alfalfa to nonregulated status.” The New York Times examined a random sample of 50 names, and found that three of the people were dead when the comments were submitted. Others said they had no idea their names had been used.

“I vaguely remember responding to a survey as to whether or not the affordability of food for my family was important to me,” said Romeyn Jenkins of Iowa. “But that is far different than setting myself up as an authority on specific genetically engineered crops and authorizing my name for submission on form letters.”

and more data from Matt Yglesias:

The question of what, if anything, differentiates a “Tea Partier” from a conventional Republican has attracted a lot of attention over the past year and a half. Research from political scientist Chris Parker sheds light on one aspect of the situation: Tea Partiers are in the grips of apocalyptic fantasies such that “6 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives believe the president is destroying the country versus the 71 percent of Tea Party conservatives who believe this to be true.”

In ordinary times, you might think that an over-the-top grassroots base would be restrained by party elites. But Tea Party millennialism is reinforced, not constrained, by key conservatives. Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard published a long article this week accusing liberals of “paranoid” dislike of the billionaire Koch brothers, who have emerged as the leading money-men of the American right. But according to Continettit’s own reporting, it’s the Kochs who seem paranoid. David Koch said to Continetti, “He’s the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation,” he said, “and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had.” Koch attributed this to Obama’s admiration for his father, who, he explains “was a hard-core economic socialist in Kenya.”

 

(click here to continue reading The Policy Apocalypse.)

Footnotes:
  1. well, says the talking points. I’d argue the Teabaggers are not that skeptical of big business, because people like the Koch brothers are such big monetary supporters [↩]

The Fox Cycle of Lies

Seth Anderson0 comment

Fat Blak n Happy

Fox News is happy setting the agenda, especially if the agenda smears the left, and especially if the smear is not factually based. If I was in charge of the airwave spectrum, I’d revoke their broadcasting license, along with NBC’s. If corporations really want to be treated like people, there should be penalties. Let them buy back their license, if they really want them, help the national debt.

Yesterday, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility released the findings of its investigation into allegations that the Obama DOJ allowed racial and political considerations to affect its handling of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. According to OPR, there was “no evidence” that race or politics impacted the case and the DOJ “did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately.”

This represents the final step of the Fox Cycle: the mechanism by which bogus right-wing attacks become mainstream news. The central allegation of the New Black Panther controversy — that the Obama DOJ dismissed charges against the fringe extremist group in accordance with a policy of racial preference that privileged African Americans — has been debunked by the OPR investigation. That debunking, however, comes months after the frenzy of media coverage that wrongly tarnished the reputations of credibility of the attorney general and his subordinates.

The taxpayer dollars are irretrievably wasted, and the damage is already done. And that was the point all along, from the moment this ridiculous claptrap was dreamed up.

(click here to continue reading The Fox Cycle: The New Black Panther Endgame | Media Matters for America.)

 

NBC is never critical of General Electric

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Just in case you thought Fox was the only corporate media organization with a credibility problem, NBC has, once again, omitted criticizing its parent, GE. NBC pretends GE only does good things on earth, distributes puppies and the like, and isn’t one of the worst corporations on the planet. Of course, facts are troubling things…

Electricity comes from other planets

It’s the kind of accountability journalism that makes readers raise an eyebrow, if it doesn’t raise their blood pressure first. General Electric Co., reported the New York Times last week, earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last year, including $5.1 billion in the United States — and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes.

The front-page story drew widespread commentary in newspapers and on many Web sites. ABC News and Fox News, among others, were all over it.

But the story was conspicuously absent from the reportage of one news organization: NBC.

During its Friday broadcast, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” had no time to mention that America’s largest corporation had essentially avoided paying federal taxes in 2010. Or its Saturday, Sunday or Monday broadcasts, either.

Did NBC’s silence have anything to do with the fact that one of its parent companies is General Electric?

NBC News representatives say that it didn’t. “This was a straightforward editorial decision, the kind we make daily around here,” said Lauren Kapp, spokeswoman for NBC News. Kapp declined to discuss how NBC decides what’s news or, in this case, what isn’t.

But to others, NBC’s silence looks like something between a lapse and a coverup. The satirical “Daily Show” on Monday noted that “Nightly News” had time on Friday to squeeze in a story about the Oxford English Dictionary adding such terms as “OMG” and “muffin top,” but didn’t bother with the GE story.

Ignoring stories about its parent company’s activities is “part of a troubling pattern” for NBC News, said Peter Hart, a director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal media watchdog group that often documents instances of corporate interference in news. He cited a series of GE-related stories that NBC’s news division has underplayed over the years, from safety issues in GE-designed nuclear power plants to the dumping of hazardous chemicals into New York’s Hudson River by GE-owned plants.

What’s more, Hart notes, NBC News has covered corporate tax-avoidance stories before — that is, when they didn’t involve GE. All three networks’ news divisions, according to Hart, have become reliable sources of publicity for their parents’ other corporate interests, doing news stories about upcoming sporting events or new TV shows carried on their own networks.

(click here to continue reading On NBC, the missing story about parent company General Electric – The Washington Post.)

 Solve Danger