Category: Corruption

BREAKING: South Carolina State Senator Ted Vick (D) Resigns from ALEC

SC State Rep. Boyd Brown

On Monday, April 23, 2012, State Rep. Boyd Brown of South Carolina sent an email to all SC state legislators in which he urged his fellow legislators to leave the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Brown called ALEC a Koch-funded special interest group that wields too much power and causes legislators to neglect their constituents. Brown wrote that money continues to “be the cancer on the body politic, and with ALEC it has taken over.” He called “scholarships” through which ALEC funds legislators’ trips to conferences at fancy resorts a “pay-for-play scheme.” Brown’s plea had an effect. Today, April 24, South Carolina State Rep. Ted Vick (D) announced he is resigningfrom ALEC. In a public statement regarding his decision, Vick wrote in part, “Over the years, ALEC has steadily drifted to the right and away from its original purpose . . . I have found myself voting against their legislation more and more . . . Recent revelations concerning ALEC’s funding sources from radical elements

SC State Rep Ted Vick

have proven to be the final straw for me. ALEC has become too partisan and too extreme. . . . ALEC has become part of the problem and I can no longer be a member of this organization.” In press releases on its website, ALEC maintains that it has been the target of an organized intimidation campaign and harassment tactics carried out by “liberal front groups” that are simply attacking ALEC’s free market policies, without addressing any of issues raised by the groups regarding problems with the legislation ALEC has been spreading.

ALEC Fingered for Lobbying

A front page article in the New York Times on April 21, 2012 exposes the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a stealth business lobbyist that pushes pro-business, anti-public interest legislation in state capitols from coast to coast. ALEC is a little-known, non-profit organization that brings state legislators together with corporations to draft model legislation favoring businesses. The group has a sophisticated system for shaping state-level legislation. Legislators pay a nominal $50  fee annually to join ALEC, but corporations pay dues ranging from $7,000 to $25,000 per year, which affords them guaranteed access to legislators at upscale events like cigar receptions, conferences and pigeon shoots. Businesses use these opportunities to promote new laws to legislators benefiting the companies’ bottom lines. ALEC claims to be bipartisan, but of 104 leadership positions in the organization, Republicans fill all but one, and the policies ALEC promotes are almost exclusively right-wing. ALEC’s role as a driving force behind the wave of “Stand Your Ground” or “Shoot First” laws sweeping the country has made the group a target of public anger.

Philip Morris and Monsanto Sued over Birth Defects in Tobacco Farmers’ Children

Screen shot from Monsanto's website

Tobacco farmers in Argentina filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Monsanto and Philip Morris for requiring them to use herbicides and pesticides that caused a high rate of severe birth defects among their children. The farmers charge that Philip Morris and the subsidiary companies that bought their crops required the farmers to stop growing their native tobacco grow a new kind of tobacco instead that Philip Morris uses in its cigarette formulation for the North and South American markets. The new tobacco they had to grow required more pesticides, and the farmers had to use excessive amounts of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup — but the defendant companies did not warn them about the dangers of the herbicide, or provide the farmers with safety information about the chemical or any protective gear to wear when applying it.

Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier Dump ALEC

Two more companies have dropped their affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative nonprofit organization that drafts pro-corporate “model bills” which Republicans then introduce in state houses across the country as though the legislation was their own. One of the companies is Wendy’s, the country’s second largest fast-food chain. Wendy’s tweeted about ALEC on it’s official Twitter account, “We decided late 2011 and never renewed this year. It didn’t fit our business needs.” Wendy’s departure from ALEC is key, according to Mother Jones magazine, since the company has supported politically conservative causes in the past, including Rick Berman’s Center for Consumer Freedom, an astroturf group that battles regulation of the food and beverage industries.  The second company to depart ALEC is Reed Elsevier, a large publisher of medical and scientific books and journals. Reed Elsevier resigned from its board seat at ALEC and ended it’s membership in the group. A spokesperson for Reed commented that, “We made the decision after considering the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC.” ALEC has been criticized for promoting laws that liberalize gun use, privatize schools, restrict people’s right to vote, crush unions, and more.

Vermont Senate Votes to Overturn Citizens United

Graph by CleanSlateNow.org

The Vermont Senate voted to ask the U.S. Congress to introduce a constitutional amendment to undo the Citizens United ruling, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in which the Court declared that corporations are the equivalent of people with First Amendment free speech rights. The Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates for corporations and billionaires to start pouring huge sums of money into influencing elections at every level of government — and they have, largely anonymously. On December 8, 2011, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the “Saving American Democracy Amendment”, which would restore the ability of lawmakers to enact campaign spending limits like those that fell in the wake of Citizens United.  In early March of this year, 64 Vermont towns approved resolutions calling on Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to counter the Citizens United ruling.  The national Move to Amend campaign is also mobilizing a grassroots campaign from coast to coast calling for a constitutional amendment to establish that corporations are not people and that the First Amendment does not protect unlimited political spending as free speech.

Johnson & Johnson Fined $1.2 Billion for Illegal Drug Marketing

The state of Arkansas has ordered Johnson & Johnson and one of its subsidiaries, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, to pay $1.2 billion in fines for deceptively marketing the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, approved to treat conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The companies were accused of failing to provide adequate warning about potential side effects of the drug, which include diabetes, weight gain, neurological problems and increased risk of strokes and death in elderly patients with dementia.   Fletch Trammell, a lawyer in the case who had used Risperdal, said that J&J hid studies that showed Risperdal caused diabetes at a higher rate than a competing drug. The court also found nearly 240,000 instances in which the companies violated the state laws against Medicaid fraud, with each count representing one prescription for Risperdal written to a state Medicaid patient over a 3 1/2 year period. The fine for the Medicaid fraud portion of the case, at $5,000 per prescription, was the state’s minimum.  A 12 person jury deliberated for three hours before finding against J&J. Arkansas is just one of several states suing over Risperdal. South Carolina and Texas have already reached settlements with J&J in their lawsuits. J&J plans to appeal the Arkansas ruling, claiming it did not break the law and that the package insert that comes with the medication was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Main source: New York Times, April 11, 2012

Corporations Flee ALEC — Will More Follow?

ALEC protest in Arizona in 2011

Kraft Foods, Coke, Pepsi, Intuit and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have all pulled their support of the controversial corporate bill mill the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Now Common Cause, a nonprofit public interest advocacy organization, is circulating a petition urging McDonalds, State Farm Insurance and Johnson & Johnson to cut their ties to ALEC. ALEC has been revealed as a driving force behind so-called Shoot-First laws that led to the Trayvon Martin killing and increased citizen vigilantism, “Voter ID” bills that deny millions of U.S. citizens a right to vote and attacks on public schools that divert taxpayer money to charter and private schools. ALEC is a members-only group that exposes state legislators to corporate lobbyists several times throughout the year at conferences and gatherings at tony beach-front spa and golf resorts. Legislators pay a small fee to belong to ALEC, but corporations pay tens of thousands of dollars to become members. Corporate members gain direct access to legislators at ALEC-sponsored events.  You can read more about ALEC at ALECExposed.org.

CleanSlateNow.org Lists Courageous Candidates Who Turn Down All PAC Funding


A new website created in Colorado, CleanSlateNow.org, is the first and only site so far to publicly list candidates for office at all levels of government nationwide who have pledged to forgo all special interest money. The listed candidates do not accept any funding from political action committees, big banks, insurance companies, unions, big oil, pharmaceutical companies or any other corporate interests. As CleanSlateNow states, the only problem is that these candidates are little-known. The website aims to fix that. CleanSlateNow.org was founded in October, 2011 by former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, who was term-limited out of office in 2009. Gordon is famous for making a chilling 2007 “No Stuntman Used” campaign video in which he appears in person in scuba gear from inside a shark tank to demonstrate his independence from local political sharks. The goal of CleanSlateNow is to create an environment where people, and not money, will start determining the outcome of U.S. elections.

Goldman Exec Resigns, Blows Whistle on Company’s Loss of Morals

Goldman CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein

If you read just one thing today, it should be the remarkable open resignation letter of Goldman Sachs’ executive Greg Smith, who was head of  the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. After a highly successful 12 year career with Goldman, Smith — a Rhodes scholar — explains that felt he could no longer tolerate working Goldman because of the severe downward trajectory of its corporate culture, and the company’s loss of moral fiber. “I can honestly say that the environment [at Goldman] now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it,” he wrote, explaining that best interests of clients is now not even on Goldman’s radar screen. The only thing that matters now behind closed doors at Goldman, Smith says, is how to make money off of clients. The clients’ goals, desires and best interests are of absolutely no interest anymore. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” Smith writes, confessing that over the previous 12 months he’s personally witnessed five different managers refer to their own clients as “muppets,” even doing so over corporate email.  He lays the blame for the company’s completely loss of integrity on the current CEO, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn. Smith formally resigned the day his open letter was published in the New York Times.

Source: New York Times Op-Ed, March 14, 2012

The Noose Tightens Around Rupert Murdoch’s Media Empire

James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch)

An ongoing criminal investigation into media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World phone hacking scandal in Britain has unearthed new and damaging information: that Murdoch’s paper, The Sun, illegally paid sums ranging into the hundreds of thousands of dollars to corrupt officials inside the British government, police and military in exchange for news tips and titillating gossip. Mr. Murdoch and his son, James, have tried to blame rampant phone hacking, bribes and other wrongdoing at Murdoch’s papers on a single rogue reporter, but the inquiry into the phone hacking scandal shows such activities were widespread in the organization and knowledge about them reached the highest levels of the papers’ management. The investigation found that former News International executive Rebekah Brooks was notified by police in 2006 that detectives possessed evidence that the cell phones of dozens of politicians, sports figures and celebrities had been illegally hacked by someone working for News of the World.  In emails circulated among newspaper employees, staff talked about the risks of losing their pensions or their jobs if they weren’t careful to keep their payments to sources secret. The emails showed that journalists at Murdoch’s papers were fully aware what they were doing was wrong. Recently several senior editors and reporters at The Sun were arrested under allegations that they illegally paid sources, and on February 29, 2012, James Murdoch quit his position as executive chairman of News International, the company that owns the The Sun and the Sunday Times. James Murdoch will still run News Corporation’s television interests outside the U.S.

Main source: The New York Times, February 27, 2012