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News & ArtsFriday, October 16, 2009
Politics The Struggle
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 8:37 AM
(The Nation) The nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight and Reform recently revealed that the top 100 government contractors made nearly $300 billion from federal contracts in 2007 alone. Since 1995 these same contractors have been involved with 676 cases of "misconduct" and paid $26 billion in fines to settle cases stemming from fraud, waste or abuse. Fines and other penalties, it seems, are simply the stunningly small price of doing government business.There is the truth of the matter. There's no way around it; there's no way to ignore it. That truth is a matter of class struggle. It's real, its American, and it is at the center of all this nonsense about ACORN.Take the case of the top three war contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. These companies have engaged in 108 instances of misconduct since 1995 and have paid fines or settlements totaling nearly $3 billion. In 2007 they won some $77 billion in federal contracts. Or consider pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which in September paid $2.3 billion to settle a slew of criminal and civil cases, including Medicaid fraud. According to the Justice Department, this was "the largest healthcare fraud settlement" in its history. Yet Pfizer made more than $40 billion in profits last year and won $73 million in federal contracts in 2007; it continues to do robust business with the government. Not bad for a "corporate felon."
Unfortunately, neither Pfizer nor the largest US military contractors are targets of significant Congressional action. Instead it's ACORN, a community organization that trains and advocates for poor and working-class Americans...
3
No, what their employees did was fucked up. Those employees have been fired and ACORN is implementing a whole slew of more robust training around ethics issues and what you can and cannot help people with.
The point here isn't the guilt or innocence of the company; the point isn't that they should get off the hook. The point is that this is so clearly a class issue. Ethics are only important, this says, if you're poor or working with the poor.
4
what we have in the usa is more ofa class pounding, with one side barely fighting back and usually saying things like "oh my we must sit down with health insurers."
6
I categorically disagree. It isn't nonsense or about class struggle. ACORN and some of its employees are responsible for its demise. Not just Pres. Obama but Sec. Donovan and even Barney Frank want nothing to do with ACORN.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/us/pol…
7
And you are on the wrong side of that struggle.
8
9
Oops ... did I let fly about the 2nd one?
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