You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Corporate Greed’ tag.
April 10th, One Day Without Shoes (or Comprehension)
Today is a day in which a company encourages you to go barefoot for a day (the website for this year has been mostly scrubbed of overt branding; criticism and backlash against this cynical corporate venture must be growing) of in order to ‘raise awareness’ and ‘help children’ the world over. Oh, and let’s not forget profit from the gullibility and ignorance of people. I’ve discussed how Tom’s Shoes plays on peoples ignorance in a previous post and thus shall not linger too long on how despicable this ad campaign is. I will repost a quick summary, just so we’re all aware of the how crappy this one-day nonsense actually is.
“Companies like Tom’s shoes take White Liberal Guilt and build a empire on the fuzzy feel good notion of helping others just by buying their brand of shoes. Hey, what could be wrong with getting shoes and having another pair donated to a needy person elsewhere on the globe? The notion of BOGO or “buy one, give one” is a cagey play by Tom’s as it exploits our altruistic instincts; we want to be good generous people, we want to be seen as people that help. It is a nice feeling, but should nice feelings escape critical examination? Of course not, especially when the noxious tentacles of greed are wrapped firmly around our feel-good assumptions about a product or service. NEWSFLASH – The poor of the world do not need more shoes! Sustainable jobs, debt forgiveness, clean water (etc.) – hell yes, but shoes, unless they are edible are far down the frakking list.”
Yah, you get to raise awareness. Awareness of a brand of shoes that is playing you for your altruistic notions in order to flog their product. So when you see the people walking around barefoot today make a note, these are also the same shallow people who do not bother with doing their research and as a result have wholeheartedly bought into the superficial lies of a misanthropic corporate entity.
Celebrate a day without shoes indeed.
Keeping with the light blogging schedule, this is a repost from Alter.net about why the people of OWS are so ticked off and why they are protesting. Consider it a primer to help in understanding their positions.
1. Wall Street caused the crash: Unless you are suffering from financial amnesia, you should remember that it was Wall Street’s reckless gambling that did us in. It was Wall Street banks and hedge funds, not home buyers, who created the enormous demand for high-risk mortgages to pool, to securitize, and to turn into Ponzi-like gambling structures with names like CDOs, CDO squared and synthetic CDOs. It was the money-grubbing rating agencies that blessed these pieces of garbage with AAA ratings. As a result, trillions of dollars of worthless toxic assets polluted our financial system. When the bubble they induced burst, our system crashed, causing 8 million working people to lose their jobs in a matter of months due to no fault of their own. Anyone who still blames low-income home buyers, or regulations or Greece — or anyone other than Wall Street — should be checked for dementia.
2. The Wall Street crash directly caused the gravest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression: We’re three years into the worst jobs crisis since 1937. Upwards of 29 million people are out of work or have been forced into part-time jobs. The number of people who have been jobless for more than 26 weeks is at post-WWII record levels. And there’s no end in sight to this misery. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s representatives in Washington want us to focus on cutting public employment and public services to address the debt that Wall Street itself precipitated. WE wouldn’t have a debt crisis were it not for the bailouts, the crash, the lost jobs and the soaring cost of jobless benefits that can be laid at Wall Street’s door. (The debt was also caused by tax cuts for the rich, and the bankers certainly don’t want to talk about that.) For those diversionary debt tactics alone, Wall Street should be occupied until it pays to replace the jobs it destroyed.
3. Wall Street profited from the bailouts and remains unaccountable: Taxpayers provided trillions of dollars in cash and asset guarantees to the wealthiest bankers and hedge fund managers in the world. But nothing was extracted from them in return. Here’s one egregious example: Goldman Sachs paid $550 million in SEC fines for selling mortgage-related securities that were designed to fail so that a large hedge fund could bet against them. The securities failed as planned and the hedge fund pocketed $1 billion in profits. But after we bailed out AIG, Goldman Sachs picked up nearly $12 billion for similar bets that AIG had insured. Goldman Sachs collected 100 cents on the dollar and those dollars were ours.
4. The super-rich are getting richer: When the economy was crashing during 2008, high frequency traders in hedge funds and banks made upwards of $20 billion from the turmoil. This trading scam provided no redeeming value to our economy. Rather, it was a hidden tax on our sorrows — a transfer of funds from the many to the few. In 2010 the top hedge fund managers “earned” over $2 million an HOUR! The top 25 hedge fund managers took in as much as 650,000 teachers. Young people have the right to question these lopsided values. All of us have the duty to do something about it.
5. The super-rich are paying lower and lower taxes: While the government pleads poverty when asked to create a massive jobs program, our financial elites use every loophole available to avoid taxes. In 1995, the 400 wealthiest families paid about 30 percent of their income in taxes (after all deductions). Today their effective rate is less than 16 percent. And for what? What did society gain from their retained wealth? Not jobs, not debt reduction, only more Wall Street gambling.
This could be a small win for corporate greed, but somehow I think the internet is a little to big for their money grubbing to contain.
“The men linked to the Pirate Bay file-sharing site were defiant on Friday after a Swedish court found them guilty of breaking the country’s copyright law.
The Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison for “assisting making available copyrighted content.”
They were also ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($4.3 million Cdn) to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.”
An appeal is already in the works so the founders are not currently in jail or responsible for paying some silly amount of money.
“But the group said any verdict would be appealed, and the website home page carried a message equally defiant:
“As in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow,” said a message posted to the site. “That’s the only thing Hollywood ever taught us.”
Peter Sunde, one of the four founders of the site, said in a video posted Friday the court’s ruling was “bizarre.” “It’s so bizarre we just have to laugh about it, it’s unreal,” he said. As for the damages awarded, Sunde said the number was meaningless. “They could have gotten one billion,” he said. “We can’t pay and we won’t pay.”
Predictably, hollywood is crowing about their victory.
“This is an important decision for rights-holders, underlining their right to have their creative works protected against illegal exploitation and to be fairly rewarded for their endeavours,” Glickman said in a statement.”
Creative protection. What a load of hoo-haa. They really mean is that they want access to an unending stream of royalties from these so called protected works. See Lawrence Lessig’s work on how they have gamed the copyright system to work for them in their favour.
Stay tuned, this case is far from over.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…