-Caveat Lector-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>
> Subject: The Price We Pay: The 10 Worst Corporations of 1998
> Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 14:47:30 -0500
> From: Robert Weissman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Multiple recipients of list CORP-FOCUS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> What did we learn in 1998?
Speaking of the clammoring for "documentation" and "citations" and "URL's" for
everything contrary to what the brain-dead liberals believe where is the
documentation for all of this?
Hawk
>
>
> Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates' net wealth -- $51 billion -- is
> greater than the combined net worth of the poorest 40 percent of Americans
> (106 million people).
>
> Hundreds of hospitals are "dumping" patients who can't afford to pay.
>
> The feds are criminally prosecuting big tobacco companies for smuggling
> cigarettes into Canada. (Never mind addicting young kids to smoke and thus
> condemning them to a certain, albeit, slow, death -- can't criminally
> prosecute them for that.)
>
> There's a bull market in stock fraud.
>
> Prescription drugs may cause 100,000 deaths a year.
>
> Two Fox-TV reporters in Florida are fired for trying to report on adverse
> health effects associated with genetically engineered foods.
>
> The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposes that genetically engineered
> foods be labelled "organic."
>
> Coal companies continue to cheat on air quality tests as hundreds of coal
> miners continue to die each year from black lung disease.
>
> The North American Securities Administrators Association estimates that
> Americans lose about $1 million a hour to securities fraud.
>
> Robert Reich says that megamergers threaten democracy. Corporate crime
> explodes, but the academic study of corporate crime vanishes.
>
> Three hundred trade unionists around the world were killed in 1997 for
> defending their rights.
>
> Corporate firms lobbying to cripple the Superfund law outnumber
> environmental groups seeking to defend it by 30 to one.
>
> Down on Nike? Chinese political prisoners allegedly make Adidas products.
>
> Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois is a corporate criminal. Chemical
> companies are testing pesticides on human beings.
>
> Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, questions whether the Pentagon's
> financial controls have suffered a "complete and utter breakdown."
>
> Environmental crimes prosecution are down sharply under Clinton/Gore.
> Bush/Quayle had a better record.
>
> Bell Atlantic buys Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are
> illustrations to sell telephone products.
>
> Companies that have workers die on the job continue to be met with fines.
> Criminal prosecutions still rare.
>
> This is the price we pay for living in Corporate America. Wealth
> disparity, megamergers and the resulting consolidation of corporate power,
> commercialism run amok, rampant corporate crime, death without justice,
> pollution, cancer and an unrelenting attack on democracy.
>
> The 1998 market run-up might make plugged-in America feel good about
> itself, but big business is eating out the democratic foundation of the
> country, and when the empty shell crumbles, what kind of chaos might we
> anticipate?
>
> If you have justice on your mind, herewith for the tenth consecutive year
> is Multinational Monitor's effort to pinpoint those responsible. It is,
> admittedly, a short list -- the Ten Worst Corporations of 1998. But it is
> a representative list, and as the damage becomes more apparent, as the
> outrage at, and contempt for, our fearless leaders grows, surely the list,
> too, will grow.
>
> The Ten Worst Corporations of 1998 are:
>
> * Chevron, for continuing to do business with a brutal dictatorship in
> Nigeria and for alleged complicity in the killing of civilian protesters.
>
> * Coca-Cola, for hooking America's kids on sugar and soda water. Today,
> teenage boys and girls drink twice as much soda pop as milk, whereas 20
> years ago they drank nearly twice as much milk as soda.
>
> * General Motors, for becoming an integral part of the Nazi war machine,
> and then years later, when documented proof emerges, denying it.
>
> * Loral and its chief executive Bernard Schwartz, for dumping $2.2 million
> into Clinton/Gore and Democratic Party coffers. The Clinton administration
> responded by approving a human rights waiver to clear the way for
> technology transfers to China.
>
> * Mobil, for supporting the Indonesian military in crushing an indigenous
> uprising in Aceh province and allegedly allowing the military to use
> company machinery to dig mass graves.
>
> * Monsanto, for introducing genetically engineered foods into the
> foodstream without adequate safety testing and without labeling, thus
> exposing consumers to unknown risks.
>
> * Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, for pleading guilty to felony crimes for
> dumping oil in the Atlantic Ocean and then lying to the Coast Guard about
> it.
>
> * Unocal, for engaging
