[Mb-civic] The 10 Worst Corporations of 2004

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

The 10 Worst Corporations of 2004
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

When the Multinational Monitor judges gather to pick the 10 worst
corporations of the year, one of their instructions is: name no
companies that appeared on the previous year's list (barring
extraordinary circumstances).

For the 2004 list, that means no Bayer (even though in 2004 the company
pushed for import of genetically modified rice into the European Union,
polluted water in a South African town with the carcinogen hexavalent
chromium, and was hit with evidence that its pain medication Aleve
(naproxen) increases the risk of heart attack, among other egregious
acts), no Boeing  (despite new evidence that the tanker plane scandal
costing U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars is even worse than it
appeared), no Clear Channel (even though the radio behemoth in 2004
stooped to new lows with a "Breast Christmas Ever" contest that promised
to pay for breast implants for a dozen contest "winners"), and no
Halliburton (embroiled in a whole new set of contracting fraud and bribery
charges in 2004).

But at least the no-repeat rule helps limit the field a bit.

And there remained plenty of worthy candidates.

Of the remaining pool of price gougers, polluters, union-busters,
dictator-coddlers, fraudsters, poisoners, deceivers and general
miscreants, we chose the following -- presented in alphabetical order --
as the 10 Worst Corporations of 2004 [full text available at
www.multinationalmonitor.org]:

Abbott Laboratories: Abbott makes the list for raising the price of
Norvir, an important AIDS drug, developed with a major infusion of U.S.
government funds, by 400 percent. The price increase doesn't apply if
Norvir is purchased in conjunction with another Abbott drug, giving 
Abbott
an unfair advantage over competitors and tilting consumers to use the
Abbott products on the basis of price.

AIG: The world's largest insurer, American International Group Inc.
(AIG) was charged in October with aiding and abetting PNC Financial
Services in a fraudulent transaction to transfer $750 million in mostly
troubled loans and venture capital investments from subsidiaries off of
its books. AIG agreed to pay $126 million to resolve the charges, but it
got off light, entering into a "deferred prosecution agreement" -- meaning
the charges against the company will be dropped in 12 months time if it
abides by the terms of the agreement.

Coca-Cola: Workers at the Coke bottling plant in Colombia have been
terrorized for years by right-wing paramilitary forces. A fact-finding
mission headed by a New York City Council member found, among other
abuses, "there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of
Coca-Cola's workers, including nine murders. Family members of union
activists have been abducted and tortured." Coke says it opposes the
anti-union violence and in any case that it hasn't had control of the
bottling plant (though it does now, after purchasing the Colombian
bottling company). Coke's former general counsel, and the former assistant
U.S. attorney general, Deval Patrick, resigned in 2004, reportedly in part
because Coke refused to support an independent investigation into the
Colombia allegations.

Dow Chemical: The world's largest plastic maker, Dow purchased Union
Carbide in 1999. At midnight on December 2, 1984, 27 tons of lethal
gases leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India,
immediately killing an estimated 8,000 people and poisoning thousands of
others. Today in Bhopal, at least 150,000 people, including children born
to parents who survived the disaster, are suffering from exposure-related
health effects such as cancer, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual
cycles and mental illness. Dow refuses to take any responsibility. In a
statement, the company says, "Although Dow never owned nor operated 
the
plant, we -- along with the rest of industry -- have learned from this
tragic event, and we have tried to do all we can to assure that similar
incidents never happen again."

GlaxoSmithKline: Following revelations and regulatory action in the UK 
in
2003 and 2004, the story of the severe side effects from Glaxo's Paxil (as
well as other drugs in the same family) -- notably that they are addictive
and lead to increased suicidality in youth -- finally broke in the United
States in 2004. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed
suit against Glaxo, charging the giant drug maker with suppressing
evidence of Paxil's harm to children, and misleading physicians. Glaxo
denied the charges, but agreed to a new system whereby it would make
public results all of its clinical trials. In October, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration ordered Glaxo and makers of drugs in Paxil's class to
include a "black box" warning -- the agency's strongest -- with their
pills.

Hardee's: The fast-food maker is bragging about how unhealthy is its
latest culinary invention, the Monster Thickburger: "First there were
burgers. Then there were Thickburgers. Now Hardee's is introducing the
mother of all burgers -- the Monster Thickburger. Weighing in at
two-thirds of a pound, this 100 percent Angus beef burger is a monument 
to
decadence." The Monster Thickburger is a 1,420-calorie sandwich. Eating
one Thickburger is like eating two Big Macs or five McDonald's 
hamburgers.
Add 600 calories worth of Hardee's fries and you get more than the 2,000
calories that many people should eat in a whole day, according to Michael
Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which calls the
Thickburger "food porn."

Merck: Dr. David Graham, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug
safety official, calls it "maybe the single greatest drug-safety
catastrophe in the history of this country." Testifying before a Senate
committee in November, Dr. David Graham put the number in the United
States who had suffered heart attacks or stroke as result of taking the
arthritis drug Vioxx in the range of 88,000 to 139,000. As many as 40
percent of these people, or about 35,000-55,000, died as a result, Graham
said. The unacceptable cardiovascular risks of Vioxx were evident as early
as 2000 -- a full four years before the drug was finally withdrawn from
the market by its manufacturer, Merck, according to a study released by
The Lancet, the British medical journal. Merck says it disclosed all
relevant evidence on Vioxx safety as soon as it acquired it, and pulled
the drug as soon as it saw conclusive evidence of the drug's dangers.

McWane: McWane Inc. is a large, privately held Alabama-based sewer 
and
water pipe manufacturer. In a devastating series, the New York Times
revealed the company's egregious safety record, and the utter failure of
regulatory agencies to control the company's workplace violence. Nine
McWane employees have lost their lives in workplace accidents since 
1995
-- and three of the deaths were the result of deliberate company
violations of safety standards. More than 4,600 injuries were recorded
among the company's 5,000 employees. According to the Times, McWane 
pulled
the wool over the eyes of investigators by stalling them at the factory
gates, and then hiding defective equipment. Accident sites were altered
before investigators could inspect them, in violation of federal rules.
When government enforcement officials did find serious violations, the
Times reported, "the punishment meted out by the federal government was 
so
minimal that McWane could treat it as simply a cost of doing business."

Riggs Bank: An explosive report from the U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental 
Affairs,
issued in July, revealed that the Washington, D.C.-based Riggs Bank
illegally operated bank accounts for former Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet, and routinely ignored evidence of corrupt practices in managing
more than 60 accounts for the government of Equatorial Guinea. Although
these and other activities seem to violate U.S. banking rules, the Office
of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) did not take enforcement action
against the bank after it learned of these matters in 2002. That
presumably was not unrelated to the fact that the OCC examiner at Riggs
soon thereafter went to work for Riggs. In May 2004, the bank paid $25
million in fines in connection with money-laundering violations related to
the Equatorial Guinea and Saudi Arabian governments, and it is the subject
of ongoing federal criminal investigations.

Wal-Mart: While Wal-Mart is presently on a bit of a public relations
defensive, the company remains the colossus of U.S. -- and increasingly
global -- retailing. It registers more than a quarter trillion dollars in
sales. Its revenues account for 2 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
For two years running, Fortune has named Wal-Mart the most admired 
company
in America. It is arguably the defining company of the present era. A key
component -- arguably the key component -- of the company's business 
model
is undercompensating employees and externalizing costs on to society. A
February 2004 report issued by Representative George Miller, D-
California,
tabulated some of those costs. The report estimated that one 200-person
Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per
year -- about $2,103 per employee. These public costs include free and
reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families, Section 8
housing assistance, federal tax credits and deductions for low-income
families, and federal contributions to health insurance programs for
low-income children.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate 
Crime
Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>, and counsel for Essential
Inventions, a nonprofit involved in the pricing dispute discussed in the
Abbott profile. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the 
Rampage:
Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2005/000193.html>

_______________________________________________

Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell Mokhiber
and Robert Weissman. Please feel free to forward the column to friends or
repost the column on other lists. If you would like to post the column on
a web site or publish it in print format, we ask that you first contact us
(russell at nationalpress.com or rob at essential.org).

Focus on the Corporation is distributed to individuals on the listserve
corp-focus at lists.essential.org. To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your
address to corp-focus, go to:
<http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/corp-focus> or send an e-mail
message to corp-focus-admin at lists.essential.org with your request.

Focus on the Corporation columns are posted at
<http://www.corporatepredators.org>.

Postings on corp-focus are limited to the columns. If you would like to
comment on the columns, send a message to russell at nationalpress.com or
rob at essential.org.

-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option 
D - up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone 
forwarded you this email and you want to be on our list, send an 
email to ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050201/7e01c57e/attachment.htm