"Citizens mobilized against corporate abuses in the 1960s
and 70s. It can happen again now."
June
25, 2023
Most
heads of giant corporations are drunk with their own power. These corporate
CEOs push the envelope in ways that harm defenseless people. They believe they
can get away with anything, and they do, with few exceptions. The few corporate
crime prosecutions keep declining from Obama to Trump to Biden, due to a
settlement-obsessed Department of Justice staffed by lawyers readying to join
the lucrative major corporate crime defense firms.
Corporate
law firms, which deserve far more scrutiny by the media, have over the decades
built a wall of immunity and impunity around these giant firms and their
self-enriching CEOs. These CEOs now make an average of $14,000 an hour, while
employing workers who are lucky to make $20 an hour. Greedy CEOs have surpassed
the lords of medieval feudalism in the disparity they impose on workers.
Corporate
law firms find Congressional lawmakers receptive to their campaign
contributions and services in drafting legislative loopholes. These law firms
place business executives and their own law partners in high executive branch
positions (See, Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the
Corruption of Justice by David Enrich, 2022).
Corporate
law firms specialize in creating an edifice of secretive, anonymous corporate
registries that attract a majority of big U.S. corporations to charter in
Delaware. Companies register hundreds of shell companies (LLCs) for evasive
purposes. Delaware law firms write the corporate law of Delaware for the rubber
stamp state legislature. Ironically, these corporate capitalists disempower
their own shareholders. Wall Street firms, credit card companies and tax
escapees love Delaware. (See, What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First
State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal – and How It Costs Us All by
Hal Weitzman, 2022).
New
outrages that swell the corporate crime wave are disclosed daily. Most exposés
go nowhere, due to a lazy Congress (about ready again to take off most of the
summer until after Labor Day) and to patsy regulators and meager, inadequate
enforcement budgets funded by the corporate Congress.
One
regular, no longer so patsy, is the tiny Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with an
annual budget of $430 million. FTC Chair Lina Khan has just sued giant Amazon
(annual sales of $524.89 billion) in the words of New York Times reporter,
David McCabe “for illegally inducing consumers to sign up for its Prime
services and then hindering them from canceling the subscription…”
The
FTC charged that “Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring
subscriptions without their consent’ ‘… duped millions of consumers … [and
with] manipulative, coercive or deceptive’ design tactics on its website.”
Amazon’s lawyers, of course, deny everything.
On
other matters, corporate lawyers are going berserk flexing their obstructive
muscles. They sued the state of California for passing a law mildly protecting
children from social media-produced harm. Susan Linn in her new book, “Who’s
Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children” documents
the abuses perpetrated by high predators.
Not
to be outdone by their peers, corporate lawyers for the drug industry just
filed a frivolous lawsuit against the U.S. Government that was finally
authorized by Congress to allow ripped-off Medicare officials to negotiate drug
prices with the overcharging Big Pharma. (The VA and the Pentagon already have
the power to negotiate with the drug companies.) Presumably, having U.S.
taxpayers continue to pay by far the highest drug prices in the world through
Medicare—charged by subsidy-coddled U.S. drug companies—suits the “pay or die”
Big Pharma CEOs.
Moreover,
U.S. drug companies are happy to offshore to China the production of
antibiotics. Our country produces virtually no antibiotics – a national
security peril I wrote about to President Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd
Austin, that received no response to date. (See: Letter to President Joe Biden
– June 2, 2023).
ProPublica
has exposed the giant Cigna health insurance company for rejecting millions of
patients’ claims through its hired doctors who instantly deny coverage “on
medical grounds” without opening the patient file.” (See,
https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims).
This report, based on corporate documents and interviews with former Cigna
physicians, has not led to any prosecutions either by state or federal
officials. This is an egregious example of CEOs pushing the envelope and
getting away with it.
A
New York Times investigation by Sarah Kliff et al. revealed that a wealthy
nonprofit hospital network – Allina Health – in the Midwest has been denying
regular health care for patients who have unpaid medical bills. They have cut
off patients, “including children and those with chronic illnesses like
diabetics and depression.” Canadians, with their universal Medicare system, are
stunned when they learn that many hospitals in the U.S. aggressively sue
indebted patients, garnish their wages and seize their tax refunds. This is
worse than debtors’ prisons where those incarcerated might receive health care.
Anyone
who thinks corporate crimes are committed by just a few bad apples in the
barrel can read my book Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It
Together to Win (2011). Getting Steamed is an enraging compilation of
documented corporate crime and criminogenic behavior – resulting in the loss of
life, injuries and money from consumers and workers. One of the best public
corporate crime databases is Violation Tracker, a project of Good Jobs First.
Violation Tracker has over half a million entries that include civil and
criminal actions against corporate wrongdoing. (See, https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/). In addition, visit the Corporate
Crime Reporter website https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/ to see
highlights of crime in the suites each week.
Earlier
this month, the Justice Department, which after decades of declining to have a
comprehensive public corporate crime database, finally launched a modest
database. (See:
https://www.justice.gov/corporate-crime/corporate-crime-case-database).
Why
don’t the American people rise up and tell their legislators and law enforcers
that they will no longer accept the terrible corporate harm inflicted on them
daily? This harm includes dangerous products (Opioids), detrimental services
(medical negligence leading to 5000 deaths per week, according to a John
Hopkins School of Medicine peer-reviewed report), toxic pollution, workplace
casualties, endless cheating of consumers ($350 billion in health industry
billing fraud a year) and other intolerable abuses. (See Malcolm Sparrow’s
website: https://scholar.harvard.edu/msparrow).
Most
corporate crooks are above the law. They think that collectively “We the
People” are a nation of sheep – unable and unwilling to take their demands,
often supported by large majorities, to Congress and get some strong law and
order legislation enacted. Polls show huge majorities (left/right) want jail
time and restitution from wealthy corporate outlaws.
Public
Citizen, which lobbies against corporate crime, wants to hear from you (visit,
https://www.citizen.org/). PC’s president Robert Weissman, together with former
PC president Joan Claybrook, have a new book coming out next month. It’s called
“The Corporate Sabotage of America’s Future: And What We Can Do About It.” Read
it and generate a rumble all the way to your congressional senators and representatives
who are about to head home as Congress goes into recess for most of the summer.
Citizens
mobilized against corporate abuses in the 1960s and 70s. It can happen again
now when the corporate overlords in the context of demonstrated crises –
climate, pandemics and powerful unregulated technologies – are acting far worse
than they have in recent times.
The
awakened power of dedicated, informed people cannot be overcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment