Curiouser and Curiouser! on corruption

Capatilists without a clue

Sun, 14 Jul 2002 20:28:46 +0100

Capitalists without a clue. Once all-seeing captains of industry, America's CEOs are now playing the Sgt. Schultz dumbo card, braying "I know no-thing, no-thing!" [Salon.com]

» Hmm... sounds a lot like the Big tobacco defence to me...

Citizen spies reporting for duty

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 18:25:18 +0100

1. US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies - smh.com.au (53.8 points). US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies [( blogdex : recent )]

» I think this is a fantastic idea. Everybody living withing a mile and a half of a senator, congressman, local polician, law enforcement officer, or corporate chief should sign up today. Then immediately start a whispering campaign against their neighbour.

Heck I wish they'd bring it in over here in the UK.

Where do I sign up!?!

Tom gets it dead right again

Mon, 05 Aug 2002 22:42:40 +0100

This Modern World. They're kidding about handing that contract to Halliburton, right? [Salon.com]

» I love this cartoon!

This just in, Shrub and friends dirtier than expected

Tue, 06 Aug 2002 20:51:50 +0100

19. The Consortium (7.4 points). Do you remember 1968? [( blogdex : recent )]

» Dear god you elected this guy president?

Well actually, no, you probably didn't. But enough of you did that he slimed his way in anyhow.

Is this national news in the US? Or even page 4? I'd really like to know...

This is my line of death. You cross this line, you die!

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 14:35:54 +0100

Okay I've had a belly full of reading about the DCMA, the SSSSCA and the new EUCD. I despair about the politicians of whom the most charitable thing that can be said about them is that they are clueless. I despair that so many of them are on the take from big business. I despair that vested interests are so rife and make me feel so helpless.

When the day comes that I have to get the software that runs on my computer approved by the Disney Corporation I shall turn it in. I shall bury my computer in a hole in the ground and go do something else instead.

Regulation vs. BIG/GAS

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:48:54 +0100

Bob Lewis nails it again. On the current round of accounting scandals and the regulation backlash to come...

As we sit in the rubble of Enron, ImClone, WorldCom, Tyco, AOL, and other, as-yet-undiscovered or unpublicized corporate implosions, it's worthwhile to wonder which is the egg: the lack of accountability resulting from more than two decades of business deregulation, or the corrupt perspective of the corporate elite who acquired the resulting additional power.
Lord Acton notwithstanding, I think the corruption came first.
Without regulation, those businesses that resort to any tactic to win have the advantage over those that restrict their behavior to conventional codes of ethics.
Consequently, ethical CEOs should welcome government regulation, not fight it.
The goal of an ethical CEO would be efficient regulation, not deregulation.
For more than two decades we've been subjected to unrelenting propaganda from the BIG/GAS (Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid) contingent decrying any and all regulation as a fundamentally bad idea.
Regulation, we've been assured, prevents American businesses from being competitive in world markets, harms productivity, and hampers profitability.
The business community no longer has the credibility to be part of the process.
Their goal will be minimizing any chance of new abuses, unfettered by considerations of how hard or easy it will be to comply.
Every new regulation will result in reporting requirements, every reporting requirement will require new information technology, and nobody is going to care how hard it is to build.

Blair tells Bush, 'back off UK plc'

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 13:30:22 +0100

This is about a piece in the Observer news paper at the weekend that reported how Blair was trying to get Bush to give UK companies an exemption to the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. This is the new regulation of federal securities bill that has everyone hopping up and down. I'm hoping Bush says 'get lost' because I'm not a believer that we are any better off here, fraud wise.

What caught my eye in the article was the posturing about the effect the new regulations would have on non-executive directors. Quoting from the Business & Media from Page from the Observer, Sunday 11th August 2002:

"A number of leading City organisations are worried that the law raises the prospect of criminal proceedings being taken against innocent directors who fail to detect frauds perpetrated by their colleagues."

and

"At a time when we want the best-quality people to be non-executive directors, the threat of still penal and legal consequences is a major deterrent to the very people we're trying to attract. They'll just say it's not worth the risk." -- Peter Wyman, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants

To me this is just proof, from the horses mouth, that the whole idea of non-execs regulating companies doesn't work. If the good ones are afraid they can't spot fraud what's the point in having them there?

Greed not for the few

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 09:24:51 +0100

In greed we trusted. Robert Bryce's Enron book entertainingly chronicles fraudulent excesses and office sex. But was Enron a fluke -- or capitalism taken to its logical extreme? [Salon.com]

» Don't worry. When Bush is proclaimed Emperor by the Senate he'll be able to root out all the people talking about these kind of abuses and excesses. Now back to your regular programming...

War and peace in Big Oil

Sat, 12 Oct 2002 10:34:20 +0100

The Economist. Firms and countries are already starting to divide up Iraq's oil. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

» What a lovely picture of the world this piece paints.

In case you'd forgotten...

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 07:47:50 +0000

about domestic issues what with your upcoming war and it being thanksgiving 'an all...

(posted with the kind permission of Tom Tomorrow)

If you like Tom's work browse the archives or support the Salon.

We're lying to you, but at least we're honest about it!

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 15:52:51 +0000

Corporations claim the 'right to lie'. From Common Dreams:

"While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation. Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same 'free speech' right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, 'The check is in the mail,' or, 'That looks great on you,' then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns."

[Ming's Metalogue]

The idea of corporations being able to enjoy the rights of 'free speech' strikes me as utterly revolting. Indeed, upon what basis does a corporation enjoy any rights at all?

The price of freedom

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:31:46 +0000

Comain.

So I just learned that this is the first political poster released under a Creative Commons license. Good poster too. Gets CC licensing in front of more folks, especially politicos.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

The poster and the idea are good. I'm definitely in favour of banning political campaign contributions and financing such things via the state. It won't waste as much money as people think, because we don't have to give them much. This will force politicians off the TV, where advertising is expensive, and onto the road where they might actually be forced to meet the people they are claiming to represent. In particular, if a man is to be president of the United States, then let him walk (or drive) some good proportion of it on his way there.

Now I don't believe that just banning contributions will stop the corruption, it's too well entrenched, but it will redress the balance somewhat and that's still a good thing.

Another way forward is to do something about the revolving door between business and government. The UK government is littered with hapless execs who have taken a couple of years out from their boardroom careers to milk some opportunities out of government for them & their business chums. Is it any different in America?

I agree that government, if it is to be efficient, needs a knowledge of business methods and good practice. You'll get no argument from me there. But public service should be about "serving the public" and not "helping one's self," and "lining the pockets of one's friends."

Here is my proposal, make of it what you will:

I would like to see the formation of a full-time corruption monitoring agency. It should be state funded with oversight by the Public Accounts Committee. The agency should be headed by a senior judge who serves a 3 year term and should be elected by the public (from a free list) and not appointed by politicians.

Other full-time members of the agency should be drawn from all walks of life including pensioners, business, the press, the judiciary, the police, and members of parliament. There should be strict controls in place to limit the power of interest, i.e. members of one industry shielding their friends. Important investigations should have oversight by a jury, drawn at random from the public.

The agency should have oversight over all aspects of government business and that includes the prime ministers office, the department of defence and the foreign office. It should have the power to call anyone to answer, from me right up to the Prime Minister, with refusal carrying the same weight as refusing to appear at the house of commons.

Decisions about whether a report is made public or not should be made by the full investigating committee (including the jury if there is one) with the default being that publishing is in the public interest. The agency should provide access via the web to all materials that are not held to be secret and the head of the agency should publish an annual report.

As a final protection this agency should not be directly controlled by parliament. In particular, changes to it's constitution and it's funding should be ratified by public referendum.

All this will cost many millions of pounds to set-up properly but, in the long term, I think it will be worth it.

The price of freedom is never free.

sssipping cocktails on your government-subsidized yachts

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:47:18 +0000

The Snake is Back

Disclaimer: I, Pesky the Rat, hereby register my absolute disgust at my agent Susan the Human's insistance that I allow Janet the Snake space on my weblog for "balance". This ungrateful, slithering future fashion accessory has dirtied my page far too much in the past, and I am horrified she is to be allowed back for another go. I simply ask that you think no less of me for this transgression.

Janet the Snake,
SuperSexy Reptile Pundit,
defends tax cuts for the rich

Hello there my dear little readersss, Janet the Snake here, at your ssservice, ready to dish it out faster than that puny little rat can take it. Ssso today's topic is: why are those little rodents so upset about tax cuts for the rich? What on earth isss their problem?

I've got two words for all you whiny little lemmings out there: Food Chain.

Rich people, of which I am one, thanks to my bessstselling book, "Slander: Rodent Lies about Animals that Eat Rodents", are rich because we deserve to be. Because we have worked hard for what we have, unlike the unwashed minor mammilian massssssses who sspend their days thinking about poetry and eating granola barss. We are at the top of the food chain because we have big, shiny fangs and we aren't afraid to use them.

I mean, let's look at my dear friend, Georgie, out there in the White Houssse. Georgie's family has basically gotten themselves where they are today through a long series of deliciously sneaky business deals, not all of them entirely legal. That's the sort of initiative that gets you ahead in thisss world, let me tell you. If the rest of you weren't smart enough to track down the right loopholes, why should I have to pay for it? After all, I'm going to eat you in the end, anyway, ssso why does it really matter?

96% of the taxesss in this country are paid by the richest half of Americans. The ressst of you, clearly, no longer have any incentive to work. You prefer to lounge about in the lap of luxury, taking home hundreds of dollarsss--hundreds! a month in unemployment or welfare, sssipping cocktails on your government-subsidized yachts while the rest of us toil away, counting our dividend checks, dutifully sorting through our trust-fund money, looking for ways to enrich thisss great country of ourss.

You have forgotten your place, rodentsss. You have forgotten that asss ssoon as you are born into this world, your purpossse is to feed usss. If you are allowed a week on this glorious planet, it is a gift from ussss. We give more generously to some than others, but make no missstake, the clock belongs to usss.

[Pesky the Rat]

News you can trust

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 12:21:54 +0100

Tech writer iced for expressing opinion. Not 'objective' [The Register]

The story is probably going to become typical as the days go by. Corporate ownership of the press is an ugly business only overshadowed by state ownership of the press.

I found the Reporters sans frontières worldwide press freedom index quite interesting. The USA languishing at #17 didn't surprise me but the UK being at #21 did. I hadn't realised that things were actually worse here! I doubt anyone in Italy will be surprised by their showing at #40. Thank you signor Berlusconi!

Is it time to can unrepresentative democracy?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:21:34 +0000

Just been reading a story from Ed Fosters Gripe Log about a proposed new act in the US (H.R. 4127, the Data Accountability and Trust Act) that is intended to override state laws on disclosure of privacy violations (e.g. ChoicePoint, CardSystems, and the newly brewing scandal). The key attribute of the US DATA law:

Rather than emulating California's privacy law, the DATA act would preempt SB 1386 and similar privacy laws enacted in other states. It would also essentially leave it up to the company that suffers the data breach to decide if the risk is great enough to warrant disclosure to the public.

Leave it up to the company. Right... I guess it's fitting that, a year ago today, I wrote about the ChoicePoint scandal. How likely is it that we would have heard anything about that if US DATA had been on the books. How can any responsible person think this is a good idea? I don't think they can. I think the only way this could happen is because government is corrupt and politicians collude with business to further their own political and/or financial ambitions.

In the short-term it is cheaper for companies to ~~bribe~~ lobby those few policians who can bend the laws to their advantage than it is to put their houses in order. And the short term is all most CEO's care about these days. Who cares about the long term?

This is yet another inditement of the system of representative democracy. A system whose heyday is long past and, if it ever was representative, is no longer so today. Indeed I find the very idea of representative democracy ridicuolous. How can one person even attempt to represent thousands of others on a range of issues? And, criticially, why should it be necessary?

I can imagine how in days past, where education was rare and communications slow and unreliable, our system of government may have seemed viable. But I wonder whether representative democracy was seen as the best way forward, or whether those conditions simply made it easier for the better educated, richer, men to grab power and create a system of patronage to keep themselves and their friends wealthy and powerful,

Whatever the true origin people need not be uneducated today and communications have reached the point where nobody should lack for information on any subject. What is required today is discernment, judgement, and a willingness to question.

Yet we continue elect representatives to take part in a corrupt system of government, divesting ourselves of our own power and with it, seemingly, our responsibility for what these people do in our name. Afghanistan? Iraq? Iran? We didn't do it, our politicians did. But we conspire to make them what they are.

This is the terrorists message "There are no innocents." We may not have personally gone to Iraq and shot people but we conspired to make it possible. We just don't learn. "Hey, next time let's time let's vote for the guy on the left!"

I don't know what the answer is. I tend towards the idea that our democracy really should be "one man, one vote." That we should represent ourselves and our own interests. A pessimist might wonder about just how horrible such a world could be: mob rule writ large. But could we really live with it?

Exposure to the consequences of such a system would surely teach us sorely needed wisdom, wouldn't it? If we could survive the first years wouldn't we necessarily learn to take responsibility for our decisions? Wouldn't we gradually become a better and more enlightened people? Isn't this the kind of path we must follow if we are to have a future?

Or would you rather continue to be ruled?

Wakeup

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 01:35:14 +0100

If you live in the US you really need to wake up and smell the coffee right now:

Now, if you're a little confused as to why Congress would be so attracted to the idea of replacing effective state laws on identity theft with weak federal ones, then you just haven't been paying much attention to how your government works. It is of course the banks, databrokers, and other financial institutions whose indifferent security practices keep exposing our personal information that don't want to have to notify us when it happens. And it is of course the credit bureaus, credit card companies, etc. who don't want us to be able to freeze our credit files just because identity thieves might have our information. So we're talking about a lot of big companies with a lot of influence -- i.e., money -- that they can spread around our nation's capital. -- Ed Foster

All kinds of bad legislation gets passed by US law makers on a seemingly daily basis but this one looks set to cause misery on a new scale. And of course by making sure that nobody hears anything you can expect that misery to go on for a long time.

Summoned to Rome

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:55:38 +0100

On top of my previous reading I could have done without this piece by Chris Floyd:

Well, that didn't take long. Two weeks ago we wrote here that the "lockstep, lickspittle" U.S. Congress would scurry to give their approval to the dictatorial powers asserted by President George W. Bush after the Supreme Court struck down those claims in the Hamdan case earlier this month. And lo and behold, last week Republican Senator Arlen Specter introduced a bill that would not only confirm Bush's unrestrained, unconstitutional one-man rule – it would augment it, exalting the Dear Leader to even greater authoritarian heights.

A more slavish piece of work – and a more abject surrender of Congressional authority – can scarcely be imagined. And the implications are profound. Besides providing what amount to ex post facto cover for Bush's clearly criminal domestic surveillance programs, the measure is a stinging confirmation that there is no crime the Bushists can commit that the craven rubberstamps in Congress will not countenance. Aggressive war, torture, rendition, indefinite detention, "extrajudicial killing" (i.e., murder), monumental corruption, spying on citizens, megalomaniacal assertions of tyrannical power – it's all good for the corporate bagmen, gormless goobers and extremist cranks now polluting the chambers on Capitol Hill.

But the reverberations go even further. Specter's bill also represents a message from the American Establishment, giving its imprimatur to the codification of presidential dictatorship as the new form of government in the United States, replacing the constitutional republic established in 1789. The bill explicitly embraces the core of Bush's claim to authoritarian rule: that the president cannot be restrained by any law or court ruling in his arbitrary actions on any "matters pertaining" to national security – and of course it is the president who will decide, in secret, what pertains to national security and what does not.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Specter's obsequious offering "bolsters the President's theories of unlimited executive power beyond Dick Cheney's wildest dreams." And Deadeye Dick has been dreaming of Oval Office tyranny since his days as an errand boy in the pay of Beltway crime boss Richard Nixon. As you recall, Nixon went down for a technicality – covering up a two-bit break-in –rather than for, say, murdering hundreds of thousands of people in the illegal bombing of Cambodia. Yet even that narrow avenue of redress has been closed off now. Obviously, Bush, like Nixon, was never going to be brought to justice for a war crime in which the entire Establishment was deeply complicit; but under the new dispensation, a renegade leader can no longer be removed even for a "lesser" infraction – like eviscerating the liberty of American citizens – because the president has been placed beyond the law. Whatever the Leader does is lawful and right, no matter what the legal statutes say.

You think this is an exaggeration? Not a whit. Bush's own top legal minions have asserted this royal prerogative in sworn testimony before Congress – after the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan. Last week, Deputy Attorney General Steve Bradbury told the Senate Judiciary Committee – chaired by none other than our old friend "Spineless" Specter – that "the president is always right" in his interpretation of judicial rulings. Even when, as in the case under discussion, Bush was publicly lying by stating that the Court's decision had approved the establishment of his concentration camp in Guantanamo, when of course the justices had not even addressed that issue. But who cares? After all, the "president is always right" – even when he lies, even when he breaks the law, even when he orders torture, even when he rapes a nation in an unprovoked war.

Continue reading...

I am a big fan of the 1976 mini-series I, Claudius. If it wavers somewhat from the excellent books by Robert Graves (I, Claudius and Claudius the God) I think that can be forgiven for Graves too has been critcised for playing fast and loose with the evidence in places and, well, it's just so good.

For those unfamiliar with them I can recommend all three. I've read the books twice and have watched the (approximately 10 hour long) mini-series probably yearly since about 1996. I just finished watching it again this week and it's as compelling to watch now as it was that first time.

The cast includes Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, George Baker, the excellent Sian Phillips, John Hurt, and Patrick Stewart (with hair no less), Stratford Johns, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hepton, Charles Kay, ... the list goes on and on. It's pretty much a who's-who's of British acting talent from the mid seventies. None of them have given better performances and the whole thing is so well put together (despite it's budget) that you always feel like you're right in among the intrigues.

I, Cladius plots the downfall of the Roman Republic ostensibly laid at the door of civil war but largely the result of the scheming machinations of the ruling family. The Senate hands supreme power to Augustus and names him "Emperor". Big mistake. During his reign the mechanism of government is increasingly the use of executive power and patronage. If August was, arguably, a benovelent dictator he nevertheless paved the way for his successors.

By the later part of the reign of Tiberius the Senate was no more than a rubber stamp for the Emperors whims. Roman politics becomes a cesspool and those who oppose the ruling family find themselves poisoned, banished, or executed on trumped up treason charges. The state is preserved, for the most part - the legions see to that - and the people are distracted enough.

Perhaps you can imagine then just how it strikes me to read of the craven way that the U.S. congress is kowtowing to Bush the Younger. Successive presidents have, following the ignoble example of Lincoln, asserted their authority over the constitution claiming that executive authority trumps all. Bush's "the Commander in Chief is above the law" routine is just the latest and most pernicious example. In complementary fashion a parade of ever more spineless congressmen and senators have conspired to make it possible. The Specter act is just the latest and most heinous example.

The secret prisons, the torture, the star chamber trials, the mass wiretapping, and the perversion of the courts. All this could come straight from the pages of Graves description of the later rule of Tiberius through his notorius (and ill-fated) commander of the guards, Alias Sejanus.

Sejanus: Sign it.
Gallus: What is it?
Sejanus: A confession.
Gallus: To what?
Sejanus: Your conspiracy with Drusus to subvert the armies of the Rhine. Sign it.
Gallus: You wrote it, you sign it.

Perhaps this is all fanciful thinking, a storm in a tea cup. Perhaps the heart of the U.S. republic beats as strong as it ever did. Perhaps Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and the rest wouldn't be up in arms, perhaps...

But the ill-wind blowing from ~~Rome~~Washington seems to me as ominous as it is foul smelling. Scratch the surface and look fingerprints of the Bush family and their friends all over the empire. Look how they thrive and tell me there is no Livia working hard for her Tiberius. Look at the cronies surrounding Bush, the troops stationed in new provinces, the money going to old friends. Look at all this and tell me all's well. Keep on saying it when Jeb or (lord help you all) Jenna get hold of the seal.

Cladius dreamed of restoring the republic by showing Rome what a sewer her government had become. He made the sewer before he died but was cheated of his republic:

The frogpool wanted a king,
Jove sent them Old King Log
I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log
Violent disorders call for violent remedies
Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log
I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool
Let all the poisons lurking in the mud hatch out

It all makes one glad to live in the provinces.