News & Articles

On Wall Street, it’s assumed that anything can be bought and sold – from fraudulent investment packages to congress critters.
It’s no surprise, then, that the wizards of Goldman Sachs assumed they could buy an image make-over, turning malicious, money-grubbing narcissists into huggable bankers who only want to serve humanity. Hence, Goldman recently surged into the glorious garden of corporate philanthropy, donating several million bucks to “little people” as a sign of the bankers’ generous character.
But who do the Goldman-Sachers think they’re fooling? First, these banking barons are only putting a pittance into charity – doing a corporate imitation of the old billionaire robber baron, John D. Rockefeller, who went around parsing out dimes to a few street urchins to buff up his sour public image. But, worse, Goldman’s sly executives are not even donating their own dimes! It’s the shareholders’ money that these bankers are doling out. Worse yet, it’s also our money. By ours, I mean that Goldman’s so-called “gifts” are deducted from the income taxes the bank owes, thus, shorting America’s public treasury of funds that We The People need for schools, roads, parks, clean water, and other essentials to advance our society’s common good.

Also, what is “charitable” about funneling $375,000 into one of Bill Clinton’s show-and-tell PR events? This donation to one of Clinton’s Global Initiative Conferences allowed Goldman to emblazon its brand on a panel moderated by Chelsea Clinton. That’s advertising, not charity!

The more that Wall Street bankers try to purchase morality, the less they have. We don’t want their false “charity” – we want honest accountability for their destructive greed, and we want a restructured, decentralized, and ethical banking system based on fairness and common decency.

“Goldman, Buying Redemption,” www.nytimes,com, October 27, 2013.

A milk-carton campaign for “missing workers”

Wall Street analysts, corporate lobbyists, and front groups like the US Chamber of Commerce form an exuberant cheering squad for maintaining the status quo of America’s do-nothing jobs policy.

“Hooray!” they shout to our lawmakers, “The unemployment rate is improving!” Waving pom-poms of campaign cash and doing statistical backflips, the pep squad instructs Congress to forget a national jobs program, raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, etc. “Push ‘em back, Push ‘em back,” they yell!

Well, yes, the official jobless rate has fallen to 7.2 percent, but don’t get giddy, for that’s not the total score. In December 2007, when Wall Street’s reckless greed crashed our economy, the unemployment rate was only about 5%, the average length of being unemployed was half of today’s, and far fewer people were forced into part-time work or had to find multiple jobs to make ends meet. Plus, family income was much higher back then.

But there’s an even more telling statistic that we rarely hear about: “The employment/population ratio.” It tells us the number of working-age adults who’re “in the workforce,” meaning they are employed at least part-time or are looking for jobs. This number has plummeted by five million people since the crash. They’re not working, and they’re not counted as unemployed. That’s five million American workers who – Poof! – have just disappeared. If we added these “missing workers,” as they’ve been dubbed, to the number of unemployed and underemployed Americans, no one could cheer Washington’s do-nothing jobs policy.

We need a national “milk carton” campaign, spreading the photos and names of each of these five million missing workers so widely that even Congress would finally recognize that it must do something to boost jobs and wages in our country.

“Better jobless rate may mask issues,” Austin American Statesman, October 27, 2013.

Get a whiff of “synthetic biology”

It’s always inspiring to see global corporate giants crush small farmers, stomp on nature, circumvent our laws by hook or crook, and deceive and gouge consumers.
Welcome once again to the phantasmagoric world of DNA manipulators. In particular, this branch of genetic engineering wizardry calls itself “synthetic biology.” Yes, that’s an oxymoron meaning “fake life.” But it’s also moronic in this case, for it’s a crude and costly attempt by high-tech alchemists at such corporate powers as BASF and Cargill to genetically modify micro-organisms to produce something wholly unnecessary: Artificial flavorings and fragrances.

One of their “achievements” is to use a powerful form of gene-altering technology to re-engineer yeast and make synthetic vanilla. Hello – of all the world’s needs, why put so much money and scientific energy into something that’s on every grocery shelf, both in a natural and artificial form? Also, this corporate wizardry creates a massive threat to the livelihoods of thousands of small tropical farmers in developing nations. Madagascar, for example, one of the world’s poorest countries, has 80,000 farmers whose only reliable cash crop is vanilla beans. “I really count on that to make a living,” says one.

Well, sniff the faraway synthetic makers, we can do it cheaper. But “can do” is not the same as “will do.” Even though the lab-made vanilla is not as good as nature’s own, corporations will use their political and marketing muscle to capture the market and jack-up prices. Advertising gimmickry is already in play, for the synthetic biology industry is insisting that its fake stuff is a “natural” product, therefore it need not be labeled as a GMO – even though it is.

To get a bigger whiff of this outrage, go to Friends of the Earth at www.foe.org.