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March
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
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CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
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Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
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by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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March 8, 2002
International
Women's Day
When Businessmen Make Boo-Boos
By Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman
Let us now take a walking tour of Washington,
D.C., to see whether the Enron scandal has loosened corporate
America's grip on our nation's capital. (Okay, the answer is
no.)
At the White House yesterday, President
Bush announced a 10-point plan that he said will "improve
corporate responsibility and help protect America's shareholders."
It will not.
In fact, a quick analysis shows that
the federal government already has the authority to implement
Bush's proposals. No new laws are needed. It's merely a question
of will power.
Even the toughest of the Bush ideas (#5
-- CEOs or other officers who clearly abuse their power should
lose their right to serve in any corporate leadership positions)
can be executed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
today, right now, with no law changes.
But given that the top cop on the securities
fraud beat in Washington is the accounting industry's former
top lawyer -- that would be current SEC chair Harvey Pitt --
we may conclude this: there is no will, and there is therefore
no way this Bush's 10-point proposal will "improve corporate
responsibility."
It's all smoke and mirrors.
Let's remember that when Bush's Treasury
Secretary, Paul O'Neill, last month proposed that corporate
executives be held liable for their negligent wrongdoing, he
was quietly sent packing.
Why?
When asked about why O'Neill's proposal
was shot down, a senior administration official told reporters
yesterday morning at the White House: "Businessmen can
make boo-boos. When you invest in a company in which a businessman
makes a mistake, a business judgment mistake, no one wants to
have to have anyone be guaranteed for those returns."
(Translation: can't hold the executive responsible for mistakes
under the "business judgment rule.") "And we're
trying to be very careful to steer away from that issue and
still leave investors on the hook for the choices businessmen
make about business." (No that is not a typo. According
to the White House transcript, he said "on the hook.")
Let us now proceed across the street,
to the Treasury Department annex, where the Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC) has for years been engaged in a kind of
protection racket -- enforcing the law against large corporations
for alleged violations of the Trading with the Enemy Act, allowing
the companies to settle those cases for a few thousand dollars,
and yet never informing the public about those settlements.
Until last week, that is, when as a result
of a lawsuit we filed last year, OFAC began releasing the documents
detailing about 100 to 150 such cases from 1998 to 2000.
But still, the Treasury Department says
it won't inform the public, in a timely manner, about which
of our giant corporations are "trading with the enemy."
Let us now proceed cross town to the
U.S. Sentencing Commission, where it is the tenth anniversary
of the sentencing guidelines for corporate criminals.
These guidelines were drafted in 1991.
They created a carrot-and-stick approach. If a corporation had
a strong ethics program, an 800-number for whistleblowers, a
compliance officer with teeth, but despite all of that, was
still convicted of crime, a judge would give that "good"
convicted corporation a lighter sentence.
If a corporation didn't have a strong
ethics program and wantonly violated the law, the judge, under
the sentencing guidelines would give that "bad" corporation
a harsher sentence.
The result of the guidelines: there are
now 800 corporations with ethics officers. The officers even
have their own trade group -- the Ethics Officers Association.
But have the corporate crime sentencing
guidelines reduced corporate crime? We doubt it.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission says it
wants to know the answer, so it has announced the creation of
a 15-member ad hoc panel to study the effect the guidelines
have had on corporate crime.
But get this: 12 of the 15 members are
corporate white collar criminal defense attorneys or others
from the corporate sector. Why no one from the public interest
community? Why no lawyers who sue corporations alleging wrongdoing?
Why no legal scholars critical of corporate influence over our
democracy? (The grip is tight.)
Let us now proceed to Capitol Hill, where
Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is introducing legislation
that would create a Federal Bureau of Audits.
Today, corporations hire their own auditors.
If the auditors find something wrong and try to get it fixed,
a corporation can lawfully fire the auditor and hire another
more to its liking.
Kucinich's bill would require that publicly
held companies go to the Federal Bureau of Audits and be assigned
a government auditor.
It's one of the few reforms we've seen
floated in recent months that has a chance of preventing future
Enrons.
And yet, at the press conference where
Kucinich announced his legislation, there were two reporters.
And no co-sponsors.
The Democrats, who like the Republicans,
are marinated in corporate cash and culture, see Kucinich's
bill as too hot to handle.
The reason: accounting firms stand to
lose tens of millions of dollars in auditing business to the
federal government.
Let us now proceed down Pennsylvania
Avenue, to the J. Edgar Hoover building, where the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) is about to release it's yearly "Crime
in the United States Report."
If history is a guide, the report will
document all kinds of street crimes, but not even mention the
wave of corporate crime and violence sweeping over our country
-- this despite the well documented reality that corporate crime
and violence inflicts far more damage on society than all street
crime combined.
Let us now proceed uptown, to the K street
corridor, where we find thousands of corporate lobbyists working
diligently late into the night to ensure that whatever citizen
energies were released from the Enron earthquake are contained
within reasonable bounds.
After all, businessmen make boo-boos.
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor.
They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on
Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999)
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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