Working Life

In the horror of the collapse of the garment factory building in Bangladesh, I’m left to thinking how many people have died over many years of exploitation in garment factories and others factories in places like Bangladesh — and the unfortunate reality that the people most responsible for those deaths will never be held accountable: CEOs of U.S. corporations.

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At what point will shills for corporate greed ever say, “hey, you know, we can’t continue to lie about corporate taxes”. Seriously, will it be when every CEO can each buy a villa on the French Riveria — those that don’t already have one? Will it be when say the death rate for seniors who can’t afford food anymore because Medicare has been cut because of the rampant, mindless budget-cutting mania driven by deficits — deficits partly driven by corporate robbery of the Treasury — reaches say 10,000 people a week? When? Because right now there seems to be no boundary for the lying.

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Goldman Sachs is one of the great predators in modern day society. I’m still waiting for the day when Goldman’s top executives face criminal indictments over the financial crisis scam — and I suspect I will keep waiting since the Obama Administration shows no inclination to go over the big bankers and Wall Street people who finance modern-day campaigns. But, as a side scam, Goldman is fleecing every taxpayer in America — and helping close schools and destroy the social safety net.

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I’m not weeping over this. Max Baucus was a corporate mouthpiece who screwed workers left and right — from voting for bad trade deals to pimping for every corporate tax break that drained the Treasury of billions of dollars. Good riddance.

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I pointed out a few days ago that there was zero — and I mean ZERO — mention after the explosion in West, Texas that the plant was not unionized. And it points to a deeper problem: when it comes to workers’ deaths, the media just doesn’t really care.

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It’s the unsaid word: union. It’s not that an explosion can’t happen in a plant that is union. But, it’s less likely if there are health and safety standards — and a union is most likely to make sure that these standards are adhered to.

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I’ve made this point in the past but it’s always worth repeating — corporate taxes in the US are not high. In fact, compared to the rest of the OECD countries, the US corporate tax burden is quite low. Despite what the whiners at the Chamber of Commerce would like the people to believe.

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Down there in the bottom of the pond, the scum, are the trafficker in human beings. It’s a bit unfathomable to contemplate how people are able to exploit other humans and sell them and imprison them for work — until you consider that in the world of the so-called “free market” where everything is for sale — water, education, health care — it’s probably not that big a stretch. The Middle East weighs in with 600,000 people who are in forced labor.

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This is no surprise. It reminds us what a despicable group of immoral people were in high office for many years. But, to take away the emotion, the more important question is: when will those people be held accountable? And what does this mean about the legality of the on-going drone war?

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Performance goes down, pay goes up. That is the formula in the hedge fund world. And it just keeps going and going and going…

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Often times, you probably see a piece of information and think, “wow, that’s new and outrageous”. Well, when it comes to corporate behavior and greed, there isn’t much new.

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First things first: I am not at all shocked or surprised by the stupidity flowing from the White House. If you are, you have not been paying attention for the past 5-6 years, or you’ve engaged in willful denial. But, the moronic, and immoral, proposals on Social Security do give us a wonderful moment of clarity about politics and the press.

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People know something is wrong. They feel the country is coming apart. We know we have been robbed. People across the political spectrum are right to be angry: they’ve been ripped off. Not by our “socialist” president and “government” but by the relentless belief in the so-called “free market” which has been a clever cover for the plundering of our nation’s wealth by a handful of people.

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It’s not hard actually to sum the book in a couple of pages, a primer if you will — just in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing, or you want a little cheat sheet to carry around.

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Ok, so, you want your money to do the right things? This is easy—if we stop being blinded by the “crisis” mantra.

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They failed. Throughout the debate over the phony fiscal crisis, the transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) were, day
after day, a disgrace to any standard of journalism I ever learned.

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