Today's Teamster News 07.27.14

Trade
GOP congressman rips Chamber of Commerce and gives back award  Washington Post   ...The Chamber of Commerce is beholden to special interests and has long since forgotten the main street businesses that struggle everyday to make payroll and keep their company afloat,” said Bentivolio. “It is with great pride that I reject their award, and call on them to stand on the side of America, instead of on the side of China and corporate interests seeking to exploit people for profit....”
State Battles
ALEC Picked Up Tab for Texas Lawmakers' Junkets Common Cause ...Five Texas lawmakers have accepted more than $7,600 in corporate-funded “scholarships” to cover the cost of air fares, hotel rooms and other travel expenses to attend meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC), a corporate lobbying group, according to new research by Common Cause...
Right-to-work may get new life next year WMUR ...Right-to-work, a measure that allows workers to get union benefits without joining or paying dues, could come up again in the Legislature next session, depending on what happens in the November elections...
Ohio tries to diffuse controversy over charter-school whistle-blowers Akron Beacon Journal ...he four former teachers, who worked at Horizon Science Academy Dayton from 2004 to 2013, alleged at the July 15 state school board meeting that sexual games were played by students and condoned by other educators, and surveillance footage captured students having oral sex at a school function...
Koch brothers’ new racial gambit: What’s really behind a quiet battle with AFSCME Salon ...“The Koch brothers want a government-free society,” Saunders says. “Public service has enabled African-Americans to move into the middle class, but the Kochs are trying to dismantle that...”
State to pay nearly $1.7 million to identify buildings to sell Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ...The idea has been controversial, with critics saying they fear the state could make a short-term gain but a long-term loss. They fear getting rid of the heating and cooling plants could be costly because state prisons and University of Wisconsin campuses would have buy heating and cooling on the private market...
War on Workers
Federal regulators let utilities gouge customers David Cay Johnston ...Now the first in a raft of cases asserting that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is letting utilities gouge customers by setting egregiously high rates of return may finally get a hearing...
Private Equity's Free Pass New York Times ...But while private equity firms often operate like Goldman and Morgan Stanley, they are not uniformly subject to the same broker-dealer regulatory regime...
The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less New York Times ...The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation...
NLRB ruling further expands 'micro unions' Washington Examiner ...In a case involving a Macy's department store cosmetics counter, the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday further expanded its recent precedents allowing for so-called "micro-unions." The ruling will make it easier for unions to organize individual parts of an employer's workforce...
WHY THE ECONOMY SUCKS: Because American Companies And Their Owners Are Greedier Now Than At Any Time In History Business Insider ...Five years after the recovery began, unemployment remains high. And the Americans who are lucky enough to be working are getting paid less as a percent of the economy than they ever have in history. Meanwhile, America's corporations and their owners have never had it better...

Today's Teamster News 03.04.13

(UPDATES with item about White House seeking fast track authority.)
Obama renews offer to cut entitlements to end budget cuts  Reuters   ...Possible reforms to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security are being offered by President Barack Obama as part of a compromise to end automatic budget cuts that began Friday...
GOP’s Largest Campaign Contributor Admits To Bribing Foreign Officials  ThinkProgress   ...Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who spent as much as $150 million on independent expenditures to bolster Republicans in the 2012 election, has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that his Las Vegas Sands Corporation “likely violated a federal law against bribing foreign officials.”...
Surprise: Studies Show Rich People are more Unethical than Poor People  AllGov.com   ...a team of five researchers that conducted a set of seven psychological experiments confirmed Fitzgerald’s opinion, specifying that the rich behave more unethically and greedily than lower-class individuals...
“Pervasive” Fraud by our “Most Reputable” Banks  New Economic Perspectives   ...the banks that fraudulently sold fraudulent mortgages did have “skin in the game” because of their reps and warranties.  The key is that the officers who control the banks do not have skin in the game – they can loot the banks they can control and walk away wealthy...
Swiss Voters Approve Limits on ‘Fat Cat’ Executive Pay  Bloomberg   ...The proposal gives shareholders an annual ballot on managers’ pay. It eliminates sign-on bonuses, as well as severance packages and extra incentives for completing merger transactions. The initiative also includes rules punishing executives who violate the terms with as long as three years in jail...
White House says it will seek "fast-track" trade authority  Reuters   ...The White House on Friday said it would work for approval of politically contentious legislation that would ease the way for new trade deals, as it tries to wrap up talks on an Asia-Pacific free-trade agreement this year...
S'pore to host TPP free trade talks from Monday  Asia One   ...SINGAPORE will host the 16th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade negotiations from Monday with expectations high that the grouping is on track to wrap up talks by the end of this year...
Railroads emerge as alternative to Keystone XL pipeline for moving oil sands from Canada  Washington Post   ...While TransCanada has been trying to obtain a U.S. permit to build the 875-mile northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian and U.S. railroad companies have been busy installing new track and loading facilities to carry the oil sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries in the United States and Canada...
Backers, opponents debate liquor privatization  The Tribune-Democrat   ...even before Republicans fully unveil the latest legislative proposal to dismantle the liquor monopoly, critics are warning that the math just may not add up in a way that bodes well for (Pennsylvania) shoppers or taxpayers...
Hagler, Koster whip up Democrats with calls to protect workers, farmers  St. Louis Beacon   ...Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, who is expected to run for governor in 2016, delivered a verbal broadside Saturday night to Republican legislative leaders, as he accused them of being out not only to cripple labor but to destroy the state’s middle class...
Fine print in Scott Walker's tax proposals draws criticism  Wisconsin State Journal   ...Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget plan promises a few dollars a week in middle-class tax relief and a crackdown on tax evaders, but the document’s fine print also would widen tax loopholes for businesses, and deliver indefinite amnesty to certain serial tax cheats...

Today's Teamster News 01.22.13

Obama's second term foe - China: Column  USA Today   ...roughly 30% of American manufacturing job loss since 2001 can be tied to the China PNTR decision...
Hilda Solis, Outgoing Labor Secretary, Reflects On Economic Recovery, Right-Wing Attacks  Huffington Post   ...Although mine safety reform has stalled in Congress, Solis said the department has worked to make improvements, including a new rule issued this week that would make it easier for the government to shut down mines with a history of safety violations...
Investigation ordered after Spanish politicians got ‘salaries’ from private companies  AFP   ...senior members of the party, which Rajoy has led since 2004, had received undeclared salaries, mainly from private companies, over a 20-year period...
Back down on austerity, Osborne urged as Britain slips towards triple-dip  The Guardian   ...A second negative quarter, from January to March, would mark the onset of Britain's third recession in five years...
$240 billion amassed by 100 richest people enough to end extreme poverty four times over: Oxfam  Raw Story   ...The report found that the richest 1% had increased their incomes by 60% in the past 20 years, with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process...
Cayman Islands to Disclose Tax Shelter Companies  The Progressuve   ...After decades of secrecy, the tax-haven country is considering a public database that will make the names of thousands of previously hidden companies and their directors, public...
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Gets 75 Percent Raise: Report  Huffington Post   ...Lloyd Blankfein made $21 million last year, including a $2 million salary and a $19 million bonus...
Goldman bankers get rich betting on food prices as millions starve  The Independent   ...Goldman Sachs made more than a quarter of a billion pounds last year by speculating on food staples, reigniting the controversy over banks profiting from the global food crisis...
Analysis: 201,000 in Florida didn't vote because of long lines  Orlando Sentinel   ...The long Election Day lines around Florida may have turned away more than 200,000 frustrated would-be voters who gave up and went home before they cast ballots — or else saw the lines and elected not to join them...
Sanitation workers march for union rights in DeKalb Co.  My Fox Atlanta   ...DeKalb County sanitation workers marched in downtown Atlanta on Monday in an effort to have their union recognized by the county commission. They had the support of two retired sanitation workers who marched in Memphis nearly 45 years ago just before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr….
Turner and Leach are supporting attempts by DeKalb County sanitation workers to get the county commission to recognize them as members of Teamsters Local 728...
More Bad News From Private Prison  City Beat   ...Since the end of 2012, four have been arrested and charged with smuggling. Another four were arrested Monday and police suspect they were in Conneaut for a smuggling job... the four suspects arrested Monday were only caught due to the increased police presence outside the Lake Erie prison...
Virginia Senate Sneaks Through Gerrymandering Bill While Country Watches Inauguration  ThinkProgress   ...the move could potentially eliminate at least one Democratic seat, the 25th district, which currently belongs to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sen. Creigh Deeds (D)...

CEO's $15M heist from Hewlett-Packard

Looking for evidence that today's CEOs exist to loot decaying corporations?

Look no further than Meg Whitman,  Hewlett-Packard's chief executive since September 2011. She took $15.4 million from the company's coffers last year, when HP lost money, its share price fell 39 percent and it made plans to lay off between 25,000 and 30,000 workers.

(That, by the way, brought the total targeted job cuts at HP to as much as 123,105 in the past decade.)

Whitman's plunder was only 70 percent of what it would have been had HP, you know, actually made money.

As Gaius Publius likes to say,

Modern corporations serve one function only — to make the CEO class obscenely rich

That is all.

It's the CEOs, stupid!

Thanks to hikingartist.com for the image.

Blogger Gaius Publius argues that money flows through a corporation to the CEO's pockets the way beer flows through you on a night of drinking to -- well, you know where it goes.

He believes the role of the corporation changed from making shareholders moderately wealthy to making CEOs obscenely wealthy. In a recent AmericaBlog post, he writes,

Modern corporations serve one function only — to make the CEO class obscenely rich, even at the expense (that’s a Bain link) of the corporation itself (yes you, Carly Fiorina). Thanks to the incentives in the post-Reagan tax code and the capture of Boards of Directors by the CEOs themselves, controlling the modern corporation — being the Jack Welsh of your world — is a straight path to big-league power and wealth. You’ve arrived. 

As I’ve said many times in a number of ways:

Corporations loot the nation.
CEOs loot the corporation.
CEOs then buy everything on earth they want or need.

In the western world, the corporate controlling class lives higher than the kings and presidents who serve them.

Read the whole thing here.

Fix the Debt is full of crap

Fix the Debt, a front group for billionaires and CEOs, says their goal is to cut the federal deficit.

It isn't.

They don't give a rat's ass about the debt. But they're lobbying hard to cut your Social Security.

The CEOs who are part of Fix the Debt want tax breaks, government contracts and freedom to plunder the middle class.

Take Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money Goldman Sachs. Blankfein says working people will just have to get used to receiving fewer of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits that they earned.

Fix the Debt actually says it's concerned the U.S. is risking another economic crisis. If that's so, we don't understand why they let Blankfein into their club. Goldman Sachs' recklessness and dishonesty was a major cause of the last economic crisis.

Here's how much Goldman Sachs is willing to share the sacrifice of fixing the debt: In the latest budget deal signed into law on Jan. 2, Goldman Sachs got a sweetheart tax deal for its fancy new headquarters in New York. And Goldman Sachs paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes in 2008, the year that it got $800 billion -- yup, with a "b" -- from the Federal Reserve.

Or take Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing. Boeing wouldn't exist without government defense contracts or the government-run National Air Space. Of course cutting defense spending isn't on Fix the Debt's agenda, though cutting Social Security is. And as Public Accountability Initiative points out, 

38 Fix the Debt leaders have ties to 43 companies with defense contracts totaling $43.4 billion in 2012. Fix the Debt leaders profiting from defense spending include the group’s co-chairs, steering committee members, and CEO council members; they have ties to these companies as board members, executives and CEOs, and lobbyists.

Finally, if the Fix the Debt hypocrites really cared about the deficit they'd be working to create good jobs. As the peerless Dean Baker points out, 

There are no businesses that are going to hire additional workers because the government laid off school teachers or firefighters and we cut back spending on food stamps. Businesses hire more workers when they see more demand for their product. All of these actions that reduce the deficit, either on the spending or tax side, translate into less demand and therefore less employment. In short, those who want to cut the deficit now are lobbying for fewer jobs and higher unemployment.

Salon brings us five "Fix the Debt" CEOs who destroyed 108,000 U.S. jobs in the past five years. They are:

• Randall Stephenson, AT&T, destroyed 54,000 jobs
• Lowell McAdam, Verizon, 30,000 jobs
• David Cote, Honeywell, 4,000 jobs
• Kenneth Frazier, Merck, 13,000 jobs
• Terry Lundgren, Macy's, 7,000 jobs

So there you have it. Fix the Debt is nothing more than a poster child for hypocrisy and greed.