Blog Archives
Corporate “Social Responsibility” – An Alibi For Perilous Deregulation
“These business leaders from the companies Salco-Brand, Ahumada and Cruz Verde were in fact convicted” – (Juan Pablo Ortiz)
SANTIAGO – After four long years in court, the 10 Chilean pharmaceutical executives prosecuted for colluding to raise the prices of 222 medicines can breathe easy.
These business leaders from the companies Salco-Brand, Ahumada and Cruz Verde were in fact convicted, but the sentence amounted to a meager fine — the equivalent of $445,000 to be paid as a group — and an order to attend 30 hours of business ethics classes.
It’s an insulting punishment for executives who padded the profits of their respective companies by millions at the expense of sick people. But unfortunately in Chile, sanctions are light for businesses and executives who commit financial crimes.
Sentencing the 10 guilty executives to attend business ethics classes is absurd. How can they redeem themselves in a country that pushes them to cheat, and where personal success and profit, at any cost, are the driving forces of the economy?
As an alternative to government regulation, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has evolved here as a form of self-regulation. Companies are supposed to monitor and guarantee their compliance with legal and ethical requirements. But CSR is in clear opposition to the pressures and demands of the economy. As long as no rules, regulations or sanctions exist for those who abuse their economic power, CSR will remain mere window-dressing, duping society and benefiting only the richest 1% and their profit margins.
The Chilean economic model has renounced all regulation. Indeed, all obstacles to the flow of productive and speculative capital have been eliminated. Unionization and the right to strike have been restricted, and collective bargaining is almost non-existent; natural resources can be freely exploited; regressive taxes hurt taxpayers while large businesses are granted exemptions; education, health and social systems have been converted to business models; and the state’s responsibilities have been reduced to a bare minimum. In summary, Chile has created a society designed around a tiny fraction of its wealthiest citizens.
CSR simply cannot counteract the overwhelming neoliberal ideology. In fact, it is making matters worse. It is used to justify less regulation, which means fewer checks and fewer preventative measures. Businesses fiercely defend their right to self-regulation, including their right to self-regulate their CSR, because they think that rigid national regulations would dampen competitiveness and, in the long term, lead to financial losses.
In the name of my free market
And businesses insist on self-regulating not just their relationships with other companies and consumers, but also their interaction with local communities, the environment and the global market. CSR is therefore directly responsible for the relocation of industry to countries with globalization, competition and lower overhead. CSR will never modify the rules of the game to attribute greater importance to decency and respect for citizens.
Businesses are using it in the name of the free market to justify reducing the role of the welfare state and eliminating anything that hinders generating maximum profit in the most minimum timeframe possible.
But ethics must never be forsaken. They should be present throughout society, and especially within the economy and politics. But if we want to see socially guided behavior from businessmen, we need to start by giving the state back to its citizens and creating a regulatory system that favors ethical competency and harshly condemns crimes against consumers, workers and the environment. In particular, if the education system forgets its love affair with profit and starts to teach civil decency, our culture may finally begin to value social solidarity.
Aristotle believed that political and economic decisions have an unavoidable moral connotation. But Machiavelli thought that economics and politics are far from moral, that ethical values have no place in the pursuit of power achieve power. Though it repulses us to acknowledge it, economic and political power, independent of the common good, have become dominant in today’s world. We are unfortunately much closer to Machiavelli than Aristotle.
The way in which economics governs everyday life is not helping us to achieve a more ethical outlook. In Chile, like much of the world, the size of the economy and the power of those who control it have grown. Instead of compensating for the inequalities inherent in modern financial markets, politics and the state have grown weaker, becoming instruments used to increase financial power. Economics 1 – politics 0. Though they have been elected by the people, politicians regard their ability to channel the public’s desires as limited. The nation’s sense of community is weakened by the overbearing power of the economy and the fragility of the state.
The case of pharmaceutical collusion, just like the La Polar accounting fraud case, is emblematic of the assault being committed in Chile against consumers. And this is allowed to happen because the state is so weak. By focusing on growth and employment, it has placed the need for a healthy balance between business and society into a distant second place. Until that changes, justice in Chile will continue to be biased, and ethics classes certainly won’t make a difference.
via Corporate “Social Responsibility” – An Alibi For Perilous Deregulation – All News Is Global |.
Austerity and what your Government Should be doing for You
If all nations are in debt and all citizens are to be forced into lifelong austerity to pay off “their” creditors then the most important question in the world becomes:
Identifying the creditors and asking why they have precedence over the lives of people who did not create this problem.
Think clearly about this for a moment
“Austerity” means your lives and your children’s lives will be less free for decades. Since all nations are “in debt” then their must at its core a group of private creditors benefiting from this situation.
Government’s everywhere have the moral right as representatives of the people to weigh and balance private citizens rights against those of a small minority of other citizens. . It is moral and right for the governments to identify the core group of private people hiding behind all the debt shell entities who are supposedly “owed” money by these countries citizens.Those citizens likely never voted for the debts anyway.
Austerity for millions is not an acceptable situation for for the ordinary Citizen why should he recognize, take on the ill borrowed, non voted, “debts” of others . Why is it the politicians serve the interests of the “creditors” rather than the people they are purported to represent.
Millions of people should not be forced into a lifelong form of loss of freedom (which is what “Austerity” really means on an individual level for each citizen) as a result of putting false debts unto the backs of their governments.
So folks time to get off your ass and make your Government work for you
Irish Monsanto company pays no tax
Monsanto Finance Holdings Ltd, an Irish-incorporated company with an address on Lower Hatch Street, Dublin, made a profit of €2.5 million in 2012 but paid no tax, according to accounts just filed.
The firm made a profit of €3.69 million in 2011, when it again paid no tax.
Monsanto Finance Holdings is “exempt from all forms of taxation including income, capital gains and withholding taxes as it is tax resident in Bermuda”, the accounts state.
The firm has no employees and its three directors have addresses in Bermuda.
The firm’s balance sheet shows that at the end of August 2012 it had financial assets of €50.8 million. Accumulated profits at that stage were €53.3 million and shareholders’ funds were €103 million. The firm is owned by a Monsanto company based in Switzerland, and is ultimately owed by Monsanto of St Louis, Missouri, US.
via Irish Monsanto company pays no tax – The Irish Times – Fri, Jul 05, 2013.
Property tax hunger striker: ‘I’d say I won’t last too long’
Tony Rochford hasn’t taken food for 11 days – but insists he will not end his strike unless the property tax is repealed.
A MAN who today enters the twelfth day of his hunger strike against the property tax has admitted he does not expect to survive for much longer.
Tony Rochford, who turns 45 next week, has been on hunger strike in opposition to the new tax since last Monday.
Rochford has lost nine kilograms (about 19 pounds) since his strike began – surviving only on water and black coffee – and is continuing to lose weight as he refuses to end his protest.
Rochford borrowed €430,000 to pay for his home in Trim, Co Meath, in October 2008. However, within three months his work – installing marble worktops and features in houses – had dried up.
He believes his home is now worth about €280,000, making it liable for an annual property tax of €495.
He has had a negligible income since then, as he is not entitled to State support because he was self-employed, but had managed to keep his mortgage out of arrears until this week.
He claims, however, that his mortgage lender refuses to enter into any negotiations with him, because he and his wife had already been given a moratorium on their repayments – which has since concluded – and because he has not entered into significant arrears.
“They were very good with the mortgage, but not willing to do any deals until you get into distress… the whole thing is bloody crazy,” Rochford told TheJournal.ie last night.
The great thing about this house for the bank is, if they repossess this in the morning, they’ll only lose €50,000.
He said he has paid off €100,000 of his original loan, leaving €330,000 to be repaid – most of which could be recouped by the bank if it was to repossess and sell.
“I’d love to trade down – gimme a bit of land and I’d build a house myself – but the banks are giving me no options,” he said.
“If I do try and trade down I’m still lumbered with the excess… [because we] kept playing the bloody mortgage for fools. We followed what we were told by the government – do the right thing.”
Other protests were fruitless because while there was broad public opposition to the tax, there were too many fragmented groups against it.
Though Rochford has recently been able to start finding work again, his refusal to pay the property tax means that from next Monday he will be unable to receive a tax clearance certificate – meaning he will be without any income of any kind.
“I’m basically sentenced to death anyway,” he said.
I can’t work to provide for my wife, and I won’t be entitled to any welfare payments anyway.The government is effectively sentencing me to death.
He added: “I’m not going to keep feeding money into the Irish Exchequer – when I was in trouble here and had no work or no money, they did nothing for us.”
Asked if there was any prospect of becoming so ill that he would give up his wife, he said: “I’m afraid not. No, there’s not. I’m just that type of stubborn person.”
Rochford is to mount a protest against the property tax outside the Four Courts on Monday morning – the day upon which the tax will formally be charged, and when he will lose his tax compliance – and says only the repeal of the tax will encourage him to end his strike.
via Property tax hunger striker: ‘I’d say I won’t last too long’.
Anglo Irish Bank- News roundup
They gambled all our futures but it was just fun and games for bankers – Independent.ie
‘Fun and games, yeah.” The future of the country is being gambled and it’s all just fun and games for the executives in Anglo Irish Bank. read full article
independent.ieTapes that reveal what really led to national collapse
Fitzgerald asked Bowe how they had arrived at the €7bn figure for the Central Bank. He replied: ‘As Drummer (CEO David Drumm) would say, picked it out of my arse’ read full article
The recording: Key quotes
* Look, c’mere . . . What’s goin’ on?’ read full article
Q&A: What’s in recordings – and why they’re so significant
Q The tapes are fascinating, but at the end of the day, isn’t it just two colleagues having a light-hearted conversation? Why should we care? read full article
Inside Anglo: Listen to the full recordings
Listen to the conversations between Peter Fitzgerald and John Bowe of Anglo Irish Bank. read full article
Two Anglo executives deny misleading Central Bank
The Central Bank was told by Anglo Irish Bank in 2008 that €7 billion in funding was needed to stabilise it – but a senior Anglo executive said to a colleague the true cost would be higher. read full article
Own Our Oil
Own Our Oil is an Irish group of citizens with no political affiliation, who are deeply concerned that deals cut between previous Irish governments and oil and gas exploration companies are depriving people of Ireland of what is rightfully theirs.
Our mission is to change the terms relating to licensing and oversight of Ireland’s offshore and onshore oil & gas. We need (your help) to act now and we need you to be the driving force to bring about change urgently.
Bankers
Their God is Mammon.They dismiss the social consequences and cruelty of their actions and inactions as academic irrelevancies.Suicide ,homelessness ,despair,economic emigration and social breakdown are no more than invconvient bumps on the road under the juggernauts of fiscal policy.Our Governments have tried ,by the sleight of hand of making us shareholders in theses institutions ,to make us all complicit in these barbaridc outrages.
Has anybody complained about these loan companies getting bailed out by the taxpayer then using the bailout to pay mega bonuses to the upper management? No, the government and banking industry want to make it harder for those who depend on the occassional short-term loans to get through any rough patches that come along. This so-called watchdog agency created by Obama should concentrate on the big banks like BofA, JP Morgan-Chase, and Wells Fargo. these companies are trying to foreclose on loans that have been renegotiated through federal programs. Thousands of people are losing their homes because of these companies not keeping track of payments made to their subsidaries which more than a few have gone belly-up and misfiling of paperwork. These mistakes are costing the homeowner billions on top of their homes. Obama’s watchdog should be looking into these breaches of contracts instead of the payday loan industry.
Political accomplishments
The current day accomplishments of Bankers, Business people and politicians is as follows
Digital Art – Denis Dubois
Surreal Collages Redefine Ordinary Objects in a Funny Way
Photographer, graphic designer, and digital artist Denis Dubois uses his multi-faceted skills to produce a variety of satirical illustrations. The intriguing images are filled with humorous undertones that often surreally redefine the purpose of ordinary objects. Syringes and crutches, typically used to aid people, are transformed into a form of artillery through Dubois’ cleverly composed collages.The Granville, France-based artist’s vast body of work touches on a broad range of ideas, though there are the recurring visual themes of weapons and imminent pain at the hand of inconveniently placed sharp blades or an alligator at the end of a quirky, entrapping race. In one image, there is a razor edge at the base of a violin where the chin rest is normally placed while yet another one of Dubois’ assemblages features the neck of a guitar lined with jagged razors.
