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News Release Archive | corporations | Accuracy.Org

Congressional Push for Sachs as Next World Bank Head

March 16, 2012

For the first time in the World Bank’s history, a candidate is openly campaigning for presidency of the institution. Traditionally, the U.S. government has hand-selected the World Bank president, but economist and health expert Jeffrey Sachs has shaken up the process this time by publicly proclaiming his interest in succeeding Robert Zoellick as World Bank president, saying that to date World Bank presidents have been political appointees or bankers — not development experts.

Members of Congress are expected Friday to deliver a letter to President Obama urging him to nominate Sachs, now the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University to be the next World Bank president. A letter initiated by Rep. John Conyers and signed by over 25 members of Congress states: “Professor Sachs is widely considered to be the world’s leading expert on economic development and the fight against poverty. For over 25 years, he has advised dozens of governments throughout the developing world on economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation, and globalization. He has twice been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders.”

MARK WEISBROT, DEBORAH JAMES, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net
Weisbrot is co-director fo the Center for Economic and Policy Research. James is director of international policy for the group. Weisbrot has written several pieces about the World Bank including “Why Jeffrey Sachs Would Make a Better World Bank President.”

James said today: “Folks in the U.S. who care about ending the suffering of the world’s poorest, have an opportunity to do something about it over the next week by demanding that President Obama nominate Jeffrey Sachs, probably the world’s best-known development leader, instead of current front-runner Larry Summers, who would just continue to use the Bank to push disastrous neoliberal economic policies and U.S. elite interests. Unfortunately, no developing country leaders have been nominated; however, many developing countries have already nominated Sachs. In addition to being a world candidate, he should also be the candidate of the U.S. After so many decades of damaging policies, we need someone at the World Bank who is deeply committed to a multidisciplinary, practical approach to eradicating poverty while living within the earth’s natural systems to prevent climate collapse.”

Weisbrot said today: “Sachs’ campaign for the World Bank presidency has already succeeded in highlighting the secretive, corrupt, and anti-democratic process by which the president is normally selected, as well as some of the major failings of the Bank itself. It is especially encouraging that a number of countries have been willing to confront the Obama administration by nominating or supporting him.

“President Obama wants to appoint a crony who will do what Treasury and Wall Street (pardon the redundancy) want the Bank to do. Sachs, on the other hand, wants the Bank to do more to help poor countries fight disease and poverty, and has a track record of doing this: including through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, the Millennium Villages Project, the Earth Institute, and other research and practical projects. He has also been a strong advocate for debt cancellation for developing countries and for stronger measures to combat climate change.”

Sachs has himself written an op-ed in the Washington Post: “How I Would Lead the World Bank” and has received the backing of numerous other individuals, from the prime ministers of Kenya, Namibia and Haiti, to noted economists such as Nouriel Roubini.

Filed Under: Tagged With: corporations, economy, World Bank,

Business Leaders Want Big Corps to Pay More, Not Less

February 23, 2012

SCOTT KLINGER, scottklinger at businessforsharedprosperity.org
Klinger is director of tax policy for Business for Shared Prosperity. He said today: “President Obama’s tax framework spotlights some very important themes, including closing corporate tax loopholes and curtailing the abuse of offshore tax havens, but the devil is in the details. Until the President proposes a rate for his global minimum tax, we remain concerned that this positive idea could be turned into a permanent tax break for tax-dodging U.S. multinational corporations. Moreover, the tax framework places too much emphasis on lowering the corporate tax rate and not enough on raising corporate tax collections from their historically low levels. U.S. corporations pay far less toward the cost of public services and infrastructure than they did in decades past and less than their foreign competitors pay in their countries today. The reality is that large U.S. businesses, as a whole, are undertaxed, not overtaxed. In 2011, total corporate federal taxes fell to just 12.1 percent of domestic profits and corporate taxes accounted for just 7.9 percent of all federal revenue. Moreover, as a percentage of U.S. Gross Domestic Product, the corporate tax share was just 1.2 percent. All these levels are historically, irresponsibly low.”

FRANK KNAPP, sbchamber at scsbc.org,
President and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce and vice chair of the American Sustainable Business Council, Knapp said: “Small businesses are tired of big businesses not paying their fair share. The President’s proposal puts the cart before the horse. Rather than starting with a lower corporate tax rate of 28 percent — and an even lower rate for manufacturers — we should start by establishing a fair and responsible share of corporate taxes as a percent of our economy that is competitive with our major trading partners, and achieve that through a combination of closing loopholes and adjusting tax rates where warranted. Then we can meet three important objectives: ending loopholes and breaks that reward large U.S. corporations for disguising their domestic profits as ‘foreign’ earnings and shifting investment and jobs overseas; leveling the playing field among big and small businesses; and raising the revenues we need for the modern infrastructure, education, research and other public investments that underpin an innovative, healthy, job-creating economy. Austerity plans, like those that are causing riots in Europe, are wrong for America. Big businesses and the wealthy have to pay their fair share.”

See “Post Calls Obama a Corporate Hack” by Dean Baker.

Tagged With: corporations, economy, Frank Knapp, Scott Klinger,

The .0000063% Election

February 16, 2012

ARI BERMAN, ari at thenation.com
Berman just wrote the piece “The .0000063% Election: How the Politics of the Super Rich Became American Politics,” which states: “At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation — drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99% — electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.

“These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, or unions for the purpose of supporting or opposing a political candidate. In theory, super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with a candidate, though in practice they’re just a murkier extension of political campaigns, performing all the functions of a traditional campaign without any of the corresponding accountability. …

“The Wesleyan Media Project recently reported a 1,600 percent increase in interest-group-sponsored TV ads in this cycle as compared to the 2008 primaries. Florida has proven the battle royal of the super PACs thus far. There, the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, outspent the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, five to one. In the last week of the campaign alone, Romney and his allies ran 13,000 TV ads in Florida, compared to only 200 for Gingrich. Ninety-two percent of the ads were negative in nature, with two-thirds attacking Gingrich, who, ironically enough, had been a fervent advocate of the Citizens United decision.

“With the exception of Ron Paul’s underdog candidacy and Rick Santorum’s upset victory in Iowa — where he spent almost no money but visited all of the state’s 99 counties — the Republican candidates and their allied super PACs have all but abandoned retail campaigning and grassroots politicking. They have chosen instead to spend their war chests on TV.”

Berman wrote the piece for TomDispatch.com and is a contributing writer for the Nation magazine and author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Ari Berman, corporations, democracy,

iEmpire: Apple’s Labor in China Even Worse than NYT Reports?

February 9, 2012


ARUN GUPTA, ebrowniess at yahoo.com
Gupta just wrote the piece “iEmpire: Apple’s Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think,” which states: “Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series’ biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

“It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months’-long ‘internships’ in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, ‘the Chinese hell factory,’ treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

“To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.

Gupta is a founding editor of the New York City based Indypendent and also helped found the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

Tagged With: Arun Gupta, Asia, china, corporations, economy,

More Cuts — Or Make Rich, Corporations Pay Up

March 2, 2011

RICHARD WOLFFHistorical tax rates for the highest and lowest income earners
Wolff just wrote the piece “How the rich soaked the rest of us,” which states: “The richest Americans have dramatically lowered their income tax burden since 1945, both absolutely and relative to the tax burdens of middle income groups and the poor.”

Wolff is author of the book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. He is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program for International Affairs at the New School University in New York City. See video of his talk “Capitalism Hits the Fan.”

CHUCK COLLINS
Collins recently wrote the piece “Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers,” which states: “Instead of cutting state and federal budgets, the United States should crack down on the corporate tax dodgers thumbing their noses at us.

“Across the nation, states are making deep cuts that will wreck the quality of life for everyone to close budget gaps that total more than $100 billion.

“But there’s a more sensible option. Overseas tax havens enable companies to pretend their profits are earned in other countries like the Cayman Islands. Simply making that ruse illegal would bring home an estimated $100 billion a year. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: corporations, rich, taxes,

Return of Ma Bell? FCC Net Neutrality Order a “Squandered Opportunity”

December 22, 2010

Save the InternetCRAIG AARON, via Jenn Ettinger
Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron said today: “The new rules are riddled with loopholes, evidence that the chairman sought approval from AT&T instead of listening to the millions of Americans who asked for real Net Neutrality. These rules don’t do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the Internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination. No longer can you get to the same Internet via your mobile device as you can via your laptop. The rules pave the way for AT&T to block your access to third-party applications and to require you to use its own preferred applications.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Tagged With: corporations, internet, media, net neutrality,
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