David Sirota "Hostile Takeover"

lg Brandon. a longtime Republican donor. has many weapons at his disposal. Since 1997. Domino's has given the Republican Party more than $100.000.

Then there was Betsy DeVos, of the billionaire family that controls the retailing giant Amway. As chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party in 2004, she issued a press release claiming "most of the economic problems in Michigan are a result of high wages." (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back" 2006 p.54-5)

That is why those trade pacts are hundreds of pages long: they are teeming with very specific limitations to protect Corporate America's bottom line. but barely a single enforceable word about protecting average people.

Look no further than Robert Rubin for proof of this reality. In 2005, CNN reported that in the name of "free" trade, the former treasury secretary was urging "Congress to set aside environmental and labor concerns in supporting free trade agreements." ..... Yet "free" trade was nowhere to be found .... prevented American seniors from importing lower-priced (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.60-3)

President Clinton's chief trade-negotiator-turned-corporate-lawyer Mickey Kantor is Exhibit A. ......

And then there was, once again, former Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin. As mentioned previously. CNN reported in 2005 that he told Congress to set aside wage/labor concerns in supporting “free" trade agreements.'“ Now head of Citigroup, Rubin has an interest in making sure capital can flow anywhere it wants. Even so. his brazen willingness to shill for corporate profits at the expense of workers' wages is shocking. In a 2005 speech. he actually argued against including (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.66-7)

WHEN THE Bush administration was criticized in 2003 for helping companies cut overtime pay for workers. its choice of a front man on the issue was illustrative of just how cozy our government is with Big Business. and how comfortable our officials are lying to ordinary Americans about their paychecks.

"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank, promising that government wasn't helping companies slash wages. He might have been believable, except for the fact that before taking his government job, Frank was the top spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) -- the major business group that pushed for the overtime rollback in the first place. ......

This brazen insult to workers was quickly followed up with an equally brazen lie. Sensing that ordinary Americans might not like being flipped off, the White House put Labor Secretary Elaine Chao in front of the cameras to claim President (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.82-5)

In reality, experts estimated that Big Business contributed between $50 and $100 million to politicians and lobbying efforts to ram the deal through Congress. NAFTA opponents mustered just $10 million. Clinton, in fact, did make “the very easy political choice”: he stood with Big Money.

Daley today works as a high-priced executive for JP Morgan and serves on the board of directors of Merck Pharmaceuticals. No doubt his colleagues there are very thankful for his time in public service pushing a trade policy that served their private interests. From the crisp, filtered air of their executive suites and corporate jets, Daley and his friends can laugh off the disastrous effects of the trade policy he pushed. But the rest of America can't.

NAFTA may have created some export ...... (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.88-9)

Crowley's “efforts were made easier in the absence of official opposition" from other House Democratic leaders. (And yet. remarkably. these same Democrats wonder why most Americans don't think they really stand up for average people.)

Thus, we are left with officially sanctioned theft. Companies now charge up to 650 percent annual interest rates on low-income citizens, driving people further and further into debt. They pilfer billions in fees and control politicians with millions in ...

Now. when you sign up for a credit card. you are forced to agree to pages of microscopic fine print where companies cement their ability to fleece you in stone. As one standard Visa contract says. “We reserve the right to change the terms at any time for any reason."

Thus, the bait and switch is born. Companies send out 3 to 5 billion credit card solicitations a year -- many of which promise super-low interest rates from 0 to 4 percent. But from the moment you sign on. they can ...

As with Reagan's welfare queens, the bankruptcy queen stories are not representative of reality. According to Harvard University researchers, 90 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to illness, medical bills, job loss, death in the family, or divorce.47 These are by and large not cases of people living large under bankruptcy protections. In Grassley's own state of Iowa, 6,000 out of the 12,000 bankruptcies that occurred in 2004 were the result of medical bills alone, with more than ......

But that didn’t stop Corporate America from getting its way when it came to rewriting bankruptcy laws. Egged on by piles of campaign cash, lawmakers publicly parroted the bankruptcy queen language to justify voting down proposals to preserve bankruptcy protections for those who go broke paying off catastrophic medical bills. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.110-3)

During the debate over limiting citizens' bankruptcy protections, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) said the legislation was needed because "wealthy debtors are walking away from debts they can repay."75

The problem is that while the bill does crack down on low-middle income debtors. it has all sorts of exclusive escape hatches for those “wealthy debtors" Frist claims to be concerned with. Here are just a few:

- Anyone who is classified as having primarily business debts isn't subject to the new bankruptcy crackdown. .....

.....

—The bill preserves the so-called homestead exemption—a provision that allows people to shield their houses from creditors when they go bankrupt. ... to keep his $20 million mansion, even though he owes workers millions.

— The bill actually goes out of its way to preserve protections for huge companies while punishing small business. Any business with more than $2 million in debt gets the previous Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections. But small businesses that owe less than that are out of luck. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.118-9) ??

asked Minnesota senator Mark Dayton (D) as he fought to keep bankruptcy protections on the books.92

No, especially when you consider that even under the old protections, "most of the credit cards that end up in bankruptcy proceedings [had] already made a profit for the companies that issued them," bankruptcy expert Robert R. Weed. “That's because people are paying so many fees that they've already paid more than was originally borrowed.“93 Credit card industry analyst ... (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.123)

But our apathy is mystifying when the catostrophe is unfolding right here at home. The health care crisis in this country can only be called a full-blown catastrophe—one in six citizens have no health insurance at all. That's no small matter: as The New Yorker reported in 2005, “the death rate in any given year for someone without health insurance is 25 percent higher than for someone with insurance," which is why experts agree thousands of Americans die each year because they are uninsured.

... Matt Blunt would be eliminatiung health care coverage for roughly 90,000 of his states most destitute citizens. .....

He told the New York Times his group believes “you have to put the moral dimension first“—as if his organization was just a dogooder group looking out for the average American. ...

In recent years, a spate of news stories has been written about how thousands of Wal-Mart workers and their families are forced to apply for meager government health care assistance, thanks to the company's refusal to provide adequate health care benefits. But instead of improving employee health benefits, Wal-Mart has done exactly the opposite, publicly denying its nefarious behavior and trying to further shaft workers. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.154-7)

According to the American Journal of Public Health, 889,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African-Americans had received, on average, the same health care as whites. To put that in perspective, that's like experiencing the same number of deaths every two weeks as occurred on 9/11—for nine ...

The mind reels at how someone like Frist could claim the government does not have enough money to deal with health care. His comment, after all, came just a few years removed from his family being forced to pay $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for trying to rip off Medicare while running the nation's largest for=profit hospital chain, HCA. .....

"In 2003 its costs of building a midsize car in Canada were $1,400 less than building the identical car in the United States" wrote former Washington Post reporter Morton Mintz. now head of the Investigative Journalism Fund. "Such savings are no mystery. Canadian companies pay far less in taxes for health coverage for everyone than the premiums they would pay" to private health insurance companies in America. In fact. if our country doesn't (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.162-5)

The Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2005 that the number of malpractice claims per doctor has actually declined over the last twelve years. In fact. even the industry-funded American Tort Reform Association-whose sole goal is to limit citizens' legal rights—was forced to admit that the much ...

The state of California passed a series of laws in 1975 that capped damages victims of medical malpractice could receive. Thirteen years later, insurance companies were charging doctors 450 percent more for malpractice coverage. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.168-9)

Though drug companies deny they profiteer, they have inadvertently admitted their price gouging ways. In 2004, Novartis pharmaceuticals, one of the worlds biggest drugmakers, actually sent a memo to its own employees asking them to refrain from using their health insurance to purchase brand-name medicines. .....

Bush made an Eli Lilly lobbyist the White House's top health policy adviser, who then let the pharmaceutical industry write sections of the administration's Medicare bill ....

And Bush even appointed Eli Lilly's former CEO, Randy Tobias, to be the State Department's Global AIDS coordinator, heading up the new $15 billion fund to fight AIDS in the developing world. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.182-5)

But to politicians who don't think the drug industry's 18 percent profit margin is enough, money trumps everything. House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) bragged to reporters about allowing industry lobbyists to set up a "war room" in his Capital office to make sure the final Medicare bill was exactly what the drug companies wanted. ... They will also line the pockets of people like Tom Scully, who left his position as Medicare administrator to become (surprise!) a lobbyist for the drug industry right after the bill was signed. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.188-9)

Remember, this is an agency whose chief counsel until 2004 was Bush appointee Daniel Troy, a former Pfizer lawyer. According to sworn affidavits, Troy held at least fifty round table meetings at FDA with drug industry executives to tell them it was FDA's goal not to help warn citizens of safety threats, but instead to "cpontrol the flow of risk info" to the public. ...

"Te FDA agents came on the bus like Gestapo agents," said sixty-eight-year-old Dick Johnson, who was on the trip. Despite concerns about border security in the post-9/11 world, the authorities weren't looking for terrorists or chemical weapons -- they were hunting down lower-priced medicines, as if that was a true national security threat. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.196-7)

Despite this troubling reality, our laws actually encourage more and more energy consumption, in large part because of rhetoric like DiBona's is peddled as truth by lobbyists and bankrolled politicians in the halls of power. .... For instance, Pat Wood, who chaired the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during the Enron crisis, was given his position after Enron CEO submitted his name to the White House. Where have the Democrats been, you ask? Some of them have tried to cry foul, but all too often the party's top leaders are in bed with the industry. For example, when details of the Enron scandal came out, Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman (D) was heading the committee that was to investigate the matter. ..... his former chief of staff was an Enron lobbyist. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.206-9)

increase their consumption of oil that auto dealers around the country began a special advertising blitz about the windfall. One advertisement from Dugan & Lopatka, an accounting firm in Wheaton, Illinois, read, “Write-Off 100% of Your New SUV? Yes, If It's Under $100,000!” 107 Now, it's true—even Congress can be (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.222-3)

In 2003, The Labor Department chose chocolate tycoon Milton Hershey for induction into the Labor Hall of Fame. According to historians, Hershey's managers were famous for organizing antiunion gangs to beat “with clubs, pipes, blackjacks and fists" strikers who were fighting to form a union at his factory.

It was the equivalent of someone giving Jayson Blair a Pulitzer Prize for accurate reporting, ...

One of his orders prohibited government agencies from targeting federal contracts to companies that employ union workers .... Another permitted corporations to hide expenditures they make on secret campaigns to intimidate workers who are trying to form a union. And another repealed a regulation prohibiting your taxpayer dollars from going to companies that repeatedly violate labor laws. ...... There are countless examples of this persecution, but what happened in New York City in the winter of 2005 is perhaps the best and most recent display of open animosity toward unions by those in power. The New York City in the winter of 2005 .... But instead of realizing the value of union workers ... billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg .... called the union "selfish" and said it was acting "thuggishly" (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.234-5)

..... In 2005, for instance, one of Wal-Mart's top executives claimed that he was given a half million dollars of company money to fund antiunion activities that he said included illegal spying and threats.

That kind of money has created its own cottage industry of white-collar thugs who specialize in persecuting workers. The New York Times reported in 2003 that there now exists "a little known but thriving business in which law firms and consultants work with corporations to beat back unionization efforts."The national law firm Jackson Lewis, for instance, actually describes itself as "committed to the practice of preventive labor relations." That's a euphemism for gangster-like behavior. As the New York Times reported in 2004, one company under Jackson Lewis's tutelage was forced to pay millions in damages for gross violations of labor laws during a union drive. In the court proceedings, the whole business of "preventive labor relations" was shown to be nothing more than bare-knuckle intimidation, including sanding unmarked envelopes of cash to buy the services of thugs who threaten pro-union workers.

Technically much of their behavior is illegal. But you wouldn't know it if you looked at the government agency that is supposed to be enforcing the law. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been packed with antiunion appointees traight out of Corporate America's ranks, and the agency is now a laughing stock. ....

The politicians are even worse -- they aren't just unresponsive, they openly hurl insults at workers. For instance, then-secretary of education Rod Paige actually called the nations biggest teachers' union "a terrorist organization." Similarly, after 9/11, House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) said unions present "a clear and present danger to the security of the United States at home and the safety of our armed forces overseas." He didn't care that many of the police, firefighters, and emergency workers who died during the terrorist attacks were card-carrying union members. What he cared about was trying to paint workers who fight for their rights as enemies of America.

A few years later, Georgia Congressman Charlie Norwood (R) on-upped DeLay. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, he is supposed to be defending American workers and making sure their rights are protected. Instead, he authored a 2005 op-ed calling unions "enemies of freedom and democracy" who supposedly support the same “tyranny that Americans are fighting and dying to defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Seeming to rationalize physical violence, he said unions' support for this tyranny is a "justification for why we still need the Second Amendment" allowing Americans to own guns. ...

You might be wondering how lawmakers can get away with such vitriol, especially when we are led to believe unions are ultrapowerful political puppeteers that use huge amounts of money to control politicians. .....

.... then-Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-FL). He appeared on CNN in 2000 to decry unions for supposedly "being able to steal money from employees." A newspaper later reported that local politicians had put wording in one Florida county's legal code "that says unions would not help workers, and the county would oppose unions by any lawful means." (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.238-41)

“Federal, state and even local laws give special legal privileges to labor union officials,” said Stefan Gleason, of the National Right to Work Legal Defense ...

Corporate America has cut through all that flesh and is now down to the bone, sawing into the most basic, minimum legal protections for workers who want to organize into a collective unit.

... Big Business's ranks, effectively transforming it into the scalpel that helps Big Business completely amputate all of our union rights. For instance, Bush appointed Robert Battista chairman of the NLRB, despite Battista's record as management attorney for the Detroit newspaper chain that had become infamous for union busting in the 1990s. He also appointed William B. Cowen, the former chief attorney for Insitutional Labor Advisors, a company that advises corporate clients on how to put the squeeze on unions. And he appointed Michael Bartlett, who was the labor specialist at the notoriously antiunion U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Bartlett is so opposed to the existence of unions, he bragged to one newspaper that the merciless firing of unionized air traffic controllers in the 1980s was a good example of an employer "standing up for their rights."

Under this leadership, the NLRB has gone out of its way to crush unions. In 2003, the agency formerly endorsed a lawsuit brought by Bartlett’s old employer, the Chamber of Commerce, that would strike down a California law preventing companies from using your taxpayer dollars to bust unions. Specifically, the legislation prohibited companies that do business with the state from using the taxpayer money they pocket to intimidate, persecute, or otherwise harass workers who want to organize.

By 2005, the New York Times reported that the NLRB had “made it more difficult for temporary workers to unionize and for unions to obtain financial information from companies during contract talks.” The agency also “ruled that graduate students working as teaching assistants do not have the right to unionize at private universities, and it has given companies greater flexibility to use powerful antiunion weapon – locking out workers – in labor disputes.” (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.246-7)

Labor Board's Critics Seea Bias Against Workers 01/02/2005

... company that is supposedly going bankrupt is actually sitting on a hidden pile of cash—some of it being used for vicious antiunion activities.

Consider three examples that prove this happens all the time:

- In 2005. Northwest Airlines executives demanded $176 million in wage and benefit cuts from its mechanics union. pleading poverty. Yet when those mechanics reacted by going on strike, the New York Times revealed that in the months leading up to the demand for wage/benefit cuts, "the airline had spent more than $100 million to hire and train 1,500 substitutes" for the striking mechanics -- $100 million that is on activities designed to undermine the union. ..... how did $100 million of company money to throw around for these antiunion activities?

- In 2005, executives at Ford and GM started making it known that they wanted its workers' union to agree to wages/benefit cuts because the companies had hit a financial bump in the road. But buried in a Business Week story like a needle in a haystack was the truth. "Both companies also have huge cash hoards.

“The Bush administration is rapidly expanding audits of the nation's labor unions. citing a need to ferret out and deter corruption.“ the New York Times reported breathlessly on April 17. 2005. “Pointing to embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars. . . Labor Department officials say the number of audits fell too far in the 1990's.” 88

Five days later, the Associated Press reported that the very same Bush administration was "weighing revisions to companies' [financial] reporting requirements" after "legions of companies complained that the rules are too burdensome and need to be eased." By "revisions" it was clear the administration meant weakening post-Enron corporate financial disclosure laws. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.252-3)

In fact, in 2001, Bush actually reduced the amount of public reporting for companies, signing an executive order eliminating existing regulations that made companies tell the public how much they were spending on antiunion activities. As one union leader noted, "If for-profit corporations had to have the same level of disclosure [as unions], there would be a general meltdown on Wall Street."

And that brings us to the real purpose behind the vilifying of unions in the first place. ....

Bill Thomas ...."all we're saying is that ...people whose money is going to be used [for politics] have a right to say whether or not they agree to it."

.....Aren't stockholders entitled to the same "protection" of their money?

Yes, if the goal is to really "protect" average people. No, if the real goal is exclusively to neuter unions by tying up their political resources in red tape ....

Thankfully, these measures were rejected, at least temporarily protecting unions' ability to press their agenda in the public arena. But that hasn't stopped efforts at the state level. In 1998, Grover Norquist of the corporate-funded Americans for Tax Reform led a drive to enact “paycheck protection” bills in state ...

Force corporations to disclose as much as unions. Labor expert Nathan Newman notes that unions today must submit "hundreds of pages listing the salaries and compensation of every union officer and employee, down to the clerical staff." And that was before the Bush administration cited bogus corruption charges to create even more red tape. "Can you imagine what would be said if [politicians] were demanding similar disclosure from every corporation?" he asked. Actually it's not that hard. Just a few years after Congress passed its weak, post-Enron disclosure laws for corporations, the New York Times reported that “business representatives gathered in Washington at an all-day round table discussion held by federal regulators and complained" about the cost of new reporting requirments. They were complaining even though there were "continuing revelations of potential fraud, criminal prosecution of fraud and convictions on fraud charges." Yet, by the end of 2005, the SEC began taking steps to formerly weaken the new disclosure laws. ... (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.256-9)

(David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.256-9)

In 1996, it was Republican presidential candidates Bob Dole who pushed this myth. "These frivolous lawsuits are putting businessmen and businesswomen out of business," Dole said. "There costing millions and millions and millions of dollars and putting people out of business." Now it's George W. Bush, who said in 2002 that honest businesses are “falling prey to frivolous lawsuits, all designed to make trial lawyers even wealthier.” 61

This is all used, naturally, as a justification for limiting individuals' legal rights. There's just one problem: businesses—not individuals—are responsible for most lawsuits.

That's right, despite there being 281 million citizens in America and just 7 million businesses, corporations "file about four times as many lawsuits as individuals represented by trial lawyers, according to a 2004 report by the watchdog group Public Citizen. Corporations, in fact, were 69 percent more likely to be sanctioned ... (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.274-5)

Prevent limits on jury awards-especially punitive damages. Blanket limits on how much juries can award to victims of corporate abuse are obscene. They prevent juries from using discretion in awarding victims what they need to get their lives back in order. It's not as if jury awards are out of control. As previously mentioned. ..... In 2004. some Democrats proposed a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule. If a lawyer is sanctioned by judges three times for filing frivolous cases. he/she would be banned from bringing any suit to court for the next decade.“ That's not a bad start.

Prevent hiding the most important information in court. In 2000, nine-year-old Gus Barber was killed by a bullet from a Remington rifle that accidentally went off because of a problem with the gun's trigger. When Gus's father, Rich, looked into the situation, he learned that Remington had previously settled dozens of lawsuits arising from these problems -- but had forced victims' families to accept gag orders preventing them from talking about the products deadly flaw. In effect, the company could continue producing dangerously defective products because courts were authorizing settlements that his the severity of the problem. That deliberately prevented bigger lawsuits from arising that might have created a financial incentive for the company to clean up its act. Make no mistake about it -- these kinds of gag rules are pushed by corporations and then authorized by courts all the time. So in 2005, the Montana legislature passed a law preventing judges from sealing information about products that have harmed people. It is a good law that leverages the threat of legal action to deter companies from cutting corners and manufacturing dangerous products. It should be replicated all over America. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.278-9)

Corporate America may have always had a wide selection of politicians to pay 011' for a nice quickie. but now Big Business and its political allies are opening the shades so that all can watch the screwing of American democracy.

Perhaps the best example of this crass outlook could be seen during the 2005 indictment of Representative Tom Delay (R) on money-laundering charges. At his first court hearing. DeLay might have considered trying to hide how close he was to the Big Money interests that had bought his votes for so long. Instead, he actually flew to the proceedings in a jet owned by the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company, which had also given DeLay $17,000 for his legal defense. ...

The best way to do that is make sure the authorities are anything but impartial—exactly the goal when Big Business convinced the White House in 2005 to nominate Representative Chis Cox (R-CA) to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the chief agency that regulates American business.

The move was like ....... Cox a former corporate lawyer turned politician, is most famous for writing the law that actually permits corporate executives like Enron's Ken Lay to avoid consequences when they mislead their employees and shareholders. Legal experts have called Cox's signature legislation Corporate America's "licence to lie"—and with Cox heading the SEC, you can bet that licence will be used.

....

Don't think for a second that these relatives are hired because of their policy experience—they are hired because of their blood connections and often have no expertise at all. For instance, take Chester Trent Lott Jr., son of U.S. senator Trent Lott (R). He was hired to lobby for telecom giant BellSouth. His experience? “Running a string of pizza franchises and playing polo” and “having earlier dabbled in country music,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Even though BellSouth “already had a stable of seasoned communications lobbyists,” they hired Lott because he could bring something that no one else could: blood loyalty from one of the most powerful ...

experience to the highest bidder.9 The payoff is huge: The Post notes that starting salaries for lobbyists “have risen to about $300,000 a year for the best-connected aides" and can be far higher for former lawmakers.

Louisiana senator John Breaux (D) shows how when lawmakers now leave office, the whole thing resembles professional sports—only instead of players. it's politicians who are being auctioned off. Like an all-star free agent. Breaux hired a high-powered attorney “to negotiate his career options” even before he left the ... ...

Look at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)—the organization that represents some of the largest corporations in America. When a Supreme Court slot opened up in 2005, NAM bragged to the Wall Street Journal about "creating a committee of executives to screen the business rulings of prospective nominees" and forwarding those findings to politicians on Capital Hill who would be voting to confirm the next justice. The Washington Post soon noted that corporations “told the White House that ... ... meant nothing more than a nominee willing to strike down any laws that protect consumers or workers.

When President Bush nominated corporate lawyer John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court in 2005, the fruits of Big Business's efforts were on full display. Here was a nominee to the highest court in the land who had all of two-and-a-half years' experience as a judge. Yet U.S. senators from both parties roundly praised him as well qualified. Why? Because, according to his close associates, Roberts had been Big Business's "go-to lawyer" for years, and according to the Washington Post, "rules that govern conflicts of interests would allow [Roberts] to hear Supreme Court cases involving those same companies" he represented as a corporate lawyer. In an earlier era, that kind of nominee might ahve raised serious questions. (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.284-7)

(David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.284-7)

Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker, 8/22/05. https://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact. Associated Press, 1/14/14. 1/28/05. https://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/14/uninsured.solutions.ap/. Nicole Volhontseff, Columbia Missourian, https://www.columbia-mo.com/news/story.php?ID=11760 6. Elly Wiese, Associated Press http://semissourian.com/story/160032.html (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.332-3)

World Health Organization, World Health Report, 2000, page 200. http://www.who.int/entity/whr/2000/en/whrOO _ en.pdf (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.334-5)

David Moberg, Newsday, 2/4/04. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0204-06.htm Pamela Rohland, Central PA Magazine, 11/02. http://www.centralpa.org/archives/ 02dec3hershey.htm. 3. Eric Brazil, San Francisco Chronicle, 8/28/01. http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file="/chronicle/archive/2001/08/28/BU17298.DTL&type=business ... American Rights at Work fact sheet. http://americanrightsatwork.org/resources/facts/remedies.cfm. 12. Michael Barbaro, Washington Post, 4/9/05. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040905E.shtml. 13. Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, 12/14/04. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121504L.shtml. 14. David Bonior, Center ... (David Sirota "Hostile Takeover" 2006 p.350-1)

A Wal-Mart Legend's Trail of Deceit 04/08/2005 Complete article on International Labor Rights Forum The 6-foot-4 Mr. Coughlin was a Wal-Mart legend -- a protégé and old hunting buddy of founder Sam Walton and for five years the second-highest-ranking executive in a company of more than a million employees. For a man of Mr. Coughlin's means -- his total compensation topped $6 million last year -- the alleged abuses seem surprisingly petty.

A Wal-Mart Legend's Trail of Deceit Mr. Coughlin Told Others Bogus Expenses Hid Plot Against Unions 04/08/2005 BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Last November, Thomas M. Coughlin, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s vice chairman, approached a lieutenant with an unusual request. He wanted Jared Bowen to approve around $2,000 in expense payments without any receipts. Mr. Bowen, then a 31-year-old vice president, recalls that Mr. Coughlin briefly mentioned the money had been used for a "union project." Mr. Coughlin told several Wal-Mart employees that the money was actually being used for antiunion activities, including paying union staffers to tell

Former Wal-Mart Exec Sentenced for Theft 08/11/2006 Thomas Coughlin, 57, avoided any prison time, but was ordered also to serve five years probation, and pay a $50,000 fine and about $411,000 in restitution to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Internal Revenue Service.

How Do You Drive Out a Union? South Carolina Factory Provides a Textbook Case 12/14/2004

Ousted executive cites expense of anti-union activity. 04/09/2005 The former head of Wal-Mart's U.S operations, ousted from the board after the alleged misuse of corporate funds, has maintained that the money was spent on anti-union activities such as paying people to identify stores where union leaders planned to recruit, according to a source familiar with the matter. ....... "We are deeply disturbed by these allegations of Wal-Mart's anti-union activity," Bill McDonough, executive vice president of the UFCW, said in a statement. "These are serious criminal offenses and cast Wal-Mart's systematic anti-worker activities on a much more sinister level."

Why are Workers’ Rights Violations So Rampant? 12/09/2004 American Employers Face No Effective Reprisals for Violating Workers’ Rights

The Secretary of Labor Is the Enemy of Labor by David Moberg 02/04/2004

Senate OKs bill dedicating much of athlete tax to stadiums 04/07/2005 Currently, 60 percent of that money is supposed to go to the Missouri Arts Council trust fund, and 10 percent each to the public libraries networking fund, public television broadcasting fund, humanities council and historic preservation. Under the legislation by Sen. Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, 60 percent of an estimated $30 million in the 2007 fiscal year would go to sports facilities, including to pay off the dome where the St. Louis Rams play and improve the stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. Sports authorities and other entities would get a share proportional to what they collect when athletes or entertainers visit their area. (Shifting funds from libraries and arts to sports arenas for private wealthy teams, at a time when Governor Blunt was cutting funds to health care for poor and elderly see p. 154-5)

Panel urges universal health insurance by 2010 01/14/2004 In previous reports, the institute has estimated that the lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths in the United States and costs the nation $65 billion to $130 billion annually.

THE MORAL-HAZARD MYTH The bad idea behind our failed health-care system. by MALCOLM GLADWELL 08/22/2005 "The death rate in any given year for someone without health insurance is twenty-five per cent higher than for someone with insur-ance. Because the uninsured are sicker than the rest of us, they can’t get better jobs, and because they can’t get better jobs they can’t afford health insurance, and because they can’t afford health insurance they get even sicker."

Bush S.E.C. Pick Is Seen as Friend to Corporations 06/03/2005

10 Ridiculously Frivolous Lawsuits Against Big Businesses

Strike Is Called by Mechanics for Northwest 08/20/2005 Northwest immediately said it would replace any worker who participated in the strike, and vowed to keep flying a full schedule of domestic and international flights despite the walkout. In the last several months, the airline had spent more than $100 million to hire and train 1,500 substitutes, many of them licensed mechanics who had worked at other airlines. The airline had also hired and trained 1,100 substitute flight attendants, in case their union stages a sympathy strike.

The War on Workers David Sirota 09/17/2006

Union busters are more prevalent than they seem, and may soon even be at the NLRB 05/01/2017

Union Busting Playbook REAL STORIES OF WORKERS WHO BEAT THEM.

How Do You Drive Out a Union? South Carolina Factory Provides a Textbook Case 12/14/2004

KFF: Medical Malpractice Claims Stable; FTCR Reports Time to Focus on Insurers’ Practices 5/31/2005

Single-Payer: Good for Business But corporate America isn't buying. By Morton Mintz 10/28/2004 p.)

The Hostile Takeover of American Democracy 05/07/2006