A corporate power grab is underway, so where’s the media?

If you need a good, doable New Year’s resolution, try this: “I resolve to do my part this year to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
The what? Most people never heard of the TPP, but everyone who cares about good American jobs, an unpolluted environment, food safety, and other fundamentals – especially including our basic right to be a sovereign, self-governing people – should take a peek at this big nasty of a global trade scam. You’d find that the so-called 12-nation “partnership” actually has little to do with trade and everything to do with enthroning a plutocracy of global corporations over us. Rep. Keith Ellison has warned that TPP is the “largest corporate power grab you never heard of.”
One reason we commoners don’t know about it is that the corporate and governmental elites of the 12 nations have been negotiating this momentous deal in strict secrecy, not only keeping us in the dark, but also Congress. Another reason, however, is that the mass media has been shockingly silent, apparently even incurious about what clearly is a huge story with historic consequences.
FAIR, the excellent watchdog group that tracks media coverage, found that ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC have offered the American public practically zero news stories about TPP. Even though the looming power grab has now spawned protests around the world, generated a major coalition of some 500 grassroots groups in our country loudly opposing the ripoff deal, and has produced an odd-bedfellow, a rare bipartisan alignment of opponents in Congress, there’s been a TV blackout. Could it possibly be that the global conglomerates that own our so-called “news” networks don’t want us knowing what’s up behind TPP’s closed doors? Surely not.
To learn what the corporate powers are up to… and what we can do about it, go to www.StopTheTPP.org.
“TPP-’The Largest Corporate Power Grab You’ve Never Heard Of,’” www.fair.org, March 1, 2014.
“TPP TV Blackout,” www.fair.org, April 24, 2014.

Wall Street And Congress perform legislative acrobatics

Congress, which has been so tied up in a partisan knot by right-wing extremists that it has been unable to move, suddenly sprang loose at the end of the year and put on a phenomenal show of acrobatic lawmaking.
In one big, bipartisan spending bill, our legislative gymnasts pulled off a breathtaking, flat-footed backflip for Wall Street, then set a dizzying new height record for the amount of money deep-pocketed donors can give to the two major political parties. It was the best Scratch-My-Back performance you never saw. You and I didn’t see it, because it happened in secret, with no public hearings, debate, or even a vote.
The favor was huge – allowing Wall Street’s most reckless speculators to have their losses on risky derivative deals insured by us taxpayers. Such losses were a central cause of the 2008 financial crash and subsequent unholy bank bailout. Which led to passage of the Dodd-Frank reform law to spare taxpayers from future Wall Street bailouts. But with one, compact, 85-line provision inserted deep inside the 1,600-page, trillion-dollar spending bill, Congress did a dazzling flip-flop on that Dodd-Frank reform, putting us taxpayers back on the hook for the banksters’ high-risk speculation.
In this same spending bill, Congress also freed rich donors (such as Wall Street bankers) from being limited to under $100,000 on the donation that any one of them can give to political parties. In a spectacular gravity-defying stunt, lawmakers flung the limit on these donations to a record-setting 15 times higher. So now, bankers who are grateful to either party for letting them make a killing on taxpayer-backed deals can give $1.5 million dollars each to the parties.
It’s always an amazing sight when Wall Street and Congress get together – especially when they get together out of our sight.
“Democrats Put Spending Bill Into Jeopardy,” The New York Times, December 12, 2014.
“More Cash in More Party Pots? Senate Language Could Help Parties – and the Very Rich,” www.opensecrets.org, December 10, 2010.

Let workers vote on CEO’s pay

One difference between top executives and worker bees, is that those at the top can lower the pay of those down below, while simultaneously raising their own pay. If you wonder what’s causing America’s rapidly-widening income gap, there it is.
Technically, CEOs do not set their own pay levels, supposedly leaving that to the board of directors. The typical board, however, is a CEO pushover, largely made up of other highly-paid CEOs and brothers-in-law of the corporate boss. But in response to public disgust at the grotesque excess in the platinum paychecks of top bosses, corporations have added a new level of “pay police” to oversee the process – “compensation consultants,” they’re called.
These specialists are hired to analyze industry-wide data to advise corporate boards on the going rate for top dogs, thus assuring an impartial assessment on pay that can calm public furor. Really? Ha! Surely you joke. Guess who hires the consultant? Astonishingly, the board often delegates that delicate assignment to the CEO!
But even when the board runs the process, the chief’s pay keeps going up, up, and away. One reason is that board members like to brag to their country-club peers that they have the hottest of hotshot CEOs, and you don’t prove that by paying chump change. CorporateWorld measures everything by money, so its cultural ethic dictates that a top-notch top dog is defined by a spectacular level of pay, and the “best” is the one who commands the most.
The contrived, self-serving corporate dogma that multimillion-dollar executive compensation is determined by the invisible hand of the mysterious marketplace is pure P.T. Barnum – Elmer Gantry – Wizard of Oz hokum. A truer system of establishing a CEO’s worth would be the old pirate system – let every worker on the corporate ship vote on it.
“More Transparency, More Pay for C.E.O.s,” The New York Times, November 11, 2014.