Bad Deeds for 5-26-2007: The Corporate Hall of Shame

Cast Your Vote for the Worst Offender in the Corporate Hall of Shame

Coca-Cola: The real cost of the Real Thing
What is the “Coke Side of Life” like on the other side of the world? In India, Coca-Cola bottling plants drain local water supplies, causing village wells to run dry. Plant workers in Colombia who fight for labor rights and decent working conditions are violently harassed. Here in the United States, Coke has worked to undermine public confidence in local water utilities through the marketing of its bottled water products, even though its water comes from municipal sources that they then mark up hundreds of times the original cost.

ExxonMobil: Slick lawyers — and a lot of hot air
Even though ExxonMobil is the most profitable corporation in the world, the oil giant is still using its legal clout to avoid paying $4.5 billion in punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. At the same time, Exxon is spending millions to delay action on global warming. As the only oil corporation that still denies the urgency of climate change, ExxonMobil spent nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 funding “junk science” from front groups that confuse the issue.

Ford: Driving America’s dependence on oil
Automobiles are one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States — and Ford’s auto fleet has had deplorable fuel efficiency ratings. Ford also leads the industry in blocking state and federal efforts to improve auto emissions and efficiency. It was Ford’s lobbyists that took the lead in keeping improved fuel efficiency standards out of the 2005 Energy Bill. Meanwhile, Ford has spent millions on “greenwashing” ads to portray itself as an environmental leader. In April, Ford awarded its new CEO $28 million for only four months of work, just as the company moves ahead with plans to close plants and cut more than 30,000 hourly positions.

Halliburton: Maximum profits, minimal accountability
At Halliburton, war profiteering is big business. Since the Iraq war began, Halliburton has been awarded more than $20 billion in government contracts. Now Congress is investigating $2.7 billion in waste and overcharging by Halliburton — including bills for three times the meals that U.S. troops actually received in Iraq. With these sky-high prices comes an embarrassingly low level of service, such as water contaminated with feces that Halliburton delivered to troops for bathing, laundry and even making coffee. Now, after charging taxpayers billions of dollars for their government contracts, Halliburton has announced plans to cut and run, moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, which will likely make it easier for the company to pay less U.S. taxes.

Kimberly-Clark: The clear-cut truth about Kleenex
Kimberly-Clark may say its tissues are soft on the nose, but its paper products are hard on the Earth. The world’s largest tissue maker refuses to use recycled fiber in Kleenex and its other popular products. Kimberly-Clark’s appetite for clear-cut fiber is driving the destruction of ancient forests in the North American “Boreal” — a pristine forest that is critical for stabilizing the climate and home to migratory birds and 80 percent of Canada’s indigenous peoples.

Merck: Big pharma’s bad medicine
Once a role model for responsible corporate behavior, Merck has been more about money than patients in recent years. The pharmaceutical giant was widely condemned for keeping Vioxx on the shelves for four years after learning that the pain medication could cause heart complications. Merck withdrew the drug only after negative press about the thousands of lawsuits filed by patients who had suffered heart attacks. In the face of public health crises in the developing world, Merck’s actions have been increasingly motivated by greed. In Thailand, Merck aggressively fought government efforts to allow the sale of generic versions of life-saving AIDS medications.

Nestle: Not so sweet after all
Its chocolate may be sweet, but Nestlé’s corporate conduct and labor practices are far from it. Violations of labor rights have been reported from Nestlé factories in numerous countries, including the exploitation of children in the cocoa fields of the Ivory Coast. As one of the world’s largest and most powerful food and beverage corporations, Nestlé uses its political influence to shape nutrition policies to avoid responsibility for its role in the global obesity epidemic. For its bottled water products, Nestlé uses aggressive and manipulative tactics to obtain community water sources.

Wal-Mart: Low prices, lower wages
The world’s largest retailer generates nearly a billion dollars per day in sales. In fact, 2.5 cents of every dollar spent in the United States passes through a Wal-Mart cash register. But the employees who run those cash registers, stock the shelves, and clean the floors aren’t sharing in the corporate wealth. Most of the retail giant’s workers have an annual income close to the poverty line. Fewer than half are covered by the corporation’s health plan. Meanwhile, congressional investigators estimate that each Wal-Mart store receives nearly half a million dollars a year in government subsidies.

FreedomCentralUSA by Hugh E. Scott. – Freedom Central USA is dedicated to the destruction of domestic fascism — also known as neoconservatism — using truth and the Internet as WMDs.

The hands-down winner: Oil companies. (by HughScott)
If you like anecdotal information, then my background in the petroleum industry should capture your interest because it pertains directly to the White House.

After graduation in 1956 from Texas A&M with a BS in Geology, before entering the Air Force I worked for Atlantic Refining Company, now ARCO. By doing so, I followed the footsteps of my late father, Ed Scott, a career geologist/high-level executive for Union Oil of California (Unocal), which is well-known in the Bush administration.

For example, UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad worked for Unocal as a high-paid consultant. A former Chevron board member in addition to his Unocal connection, Khalilzad was appointed by President Bush to the National Security Council, where he reported directly to Condoleezza Rice.

Because Khalilzad’s assignment to the Council didn’t require congressional approval, he dodged a potentially difficult inquiry into his past as a State Department official under President Reagan. At the time, Khalilzad pushed for high-end weapons, such as surface-to-air missiles, for the Soviet-battling Mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan. U.S. funded and Pakistani-trained, they later became our enemy known as the Taliban.

When Bush 41 was president, Khalilzad worked for Paul Wolfowitz in the Defense Department. Prior to Gulf War 1, both Wolfowitz and Khalilzad advocated the use of military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

After Khalilzad left the DOD, he worked for the Rand Corporation, a rightwing think tank that performed research for the U.S. military, DOD and American intelligence community. Not surprisingly, Unocal was a Rand client.

While consulting for Unocal, Khalilzad participated in talks with the Taliban on Afghan oil and gas pipeline infrastructure, escorted a delegation of Taliban leaders that visited Unocal headquarters in Texas, and called for the United States to support their regime.

During the Clinton years, Khalilzad conducted risk assessments for Unocal on their proposed 900-mile pipeline project to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan. Even as the Clinton administration began to recognize the repressive nature of the Taliban regime and its links to Osama Bin Laden, Khalilzad called for U.S. engagement with the Taliban. …

Coexisting with the petroleum industry-White House connection is the subversive rightwing organization, Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

Not coincidentally, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad and Richard Armitage — all former oilmen — are PNAC members (called “signatories”). Oilman Bush is linked to PNAC through his brother, Jeb, a PNAC founder.

Another original PNAC member, Steve Forbes, has publicly stated he wants the IMF out of Iraq and private oil companies in. Some critics have dubbed PNAC’s imperialist goals the “Cheney strategy,” which employs a U.S. foreign policy based on securing direct global energy control by the Big Four American/U.S.-tied oil giants — Chevron. Exxon-Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Simply put, the PNAC/Cheney strategy is aimed at controlling the world’s major oil and natural gas deposits.

Oil Companies May Make 80% to 85% Profit on Crude Oil – Oil companies do not usually break out their divisional earnings, i.e. production, refining, chemical operations and on. Yet the oil industry had an ‘Oops’ moment a few years ago when a then bubbling management of Marathon Oil, one year out from its separation from U.S. Steel and clearly not yet fully in thrall of the oil industry’s vow of omerta, laid out exactly such a breakdown (By the way this is the same company currently under investigation by the CFTC for alleged crude oil price manipulation). In Marathon’s 2002 annual report, barely able to contain themselves they claimed upstream profits (primarily sales of crude) of over $1 billion dollars. They further boasted that they had replaced their annual production that year by 262 percent with finding and development costs of $4.61 per barrel, while increasing their proved reserves by 23 percent. In 2002 the average price of crude was in the $20’s per barrel, so that with a price of say $25/bbl Marathon earned a gross profit of over $20 per barrel produced and sold. If we assume the price of finding and producing a barrel of oil has doubled since then, which is a generous assumption, then at today’s prices of circa $65/bbl their per barrel, gross profit would be over $55 per barrel! Marathon has been brought into line and no longer breaks out earnings by division. But we can readily assume that today at over $65 a barrel the upstream profits are staggering, and that the same would apply for all integrated oil companies.

But that’s not all. Marathon’s 2002 report showed that the Upstream Division (production) had some 3000 employees and earnings were over $1 billion, while the rest of the companies additional 26,000 employees brought in earnings of $300 million. The report showed that upstream operations comprised 71% of the company’s earnings while downstream (primarily refining) and other energy related business comprised 29%. With today’s crude oil prices of over $60/barrel the numbers become daunting even with beneficent refinery margins. Certainly House chairman Bart Stupak’s criteria “unconsciously excessive” would readily apply.

Regards,

Jim