This episode is yet one more example of corporate greed and stupidity trumping all other considerations. It’s just the latest in a long, fast-growing list of examples of the bitter fruits of deregulation and inexcusably lax regulation, of people in government who should know better erring on the side of keeping big businesses happy.
Posts under ‘Business’
U.S. needs three-strikes law
for habitual corporate offenders
From the late 1970′s through the ’90′s, numerous states passed three-strikes and habitual-criminal laws as a means of protecting the public from the “two-inch-thick police record” set. Those laws targeted both violent offenders and lesser criminals for whom repeated short-time jail and prison sentences provided no deterrence against committing future crimes – incorrigibles with no [...]
U.S. Chamber bashes Democrat
through front group, with a lie
The day the U.S. Chamber of Commerce starts siding with out-of-work Americans against businesses that want to boost profits by offshoring production and jobs will be the day its free-market-fanatic, right-wing zealot chief, Tom Donohue, crawls in a hole and pulls the dirt in over himself.
Oil drilling boosters carry on
even as spill fouls Gulf waters
Just because the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill is leaking 5,000 barrels gallons of oil a day — five times early estimates — and is now at the mouth of the Mississippi River, the forces of drill, baby, drill carry on as if it’s no big deal. Think Progress notes Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions [...]
Derivatives gambling should be illegal
Suppose that in a weak moment you agree to lend a relative with a mixed record for keeping his word $500, on his promise to repay the loan with 10 percent interest in six months. Other family members start ribbing you about your questionable judgment, whereupon you challenge them to put their money where their [...]
WellPoint a deadly menace
to customers with breast cancer
No one’s survival should be pitted against the corporate profit imperative or sacrificed to satisfy the personal ambition and greed of business executives.
McConnell financial reform lies
spark rapid Democratic response
After years of seeing Republicans launch attacks based on nothing but self-serving lies and distortions, only to have Democrats respond too meekly and too late, today’s sudden smack-down of McConnell comes not just as a surprise but as a big relief.
April showers millions on Wellpoint executives
The calendar indicates Easter, but it’s strictly Christmas in April for Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly and other top executives at the giant health insurer, who are getting increases of their already hefty pay of 51 percent and even 75 percent. Braly’s compensation jumps from $8.7 million a year to $13.1 million. What does a health [...]
Insurer’s empty pledge adds to case
for a universal single-payer system
Aconspicuously missing argument in the debate about health care reform is that health insurers are doing a good job of operating in the public interest, and a well-done Los Angeles Times story provides evidence why no one is making that case. The story concerns Wellpoint, the nation’s No. 2 health insurer, No. 32 in the [...]
Our eight-point health care reform plan
President Obama and many congressional Democrats seem to feel their only chance to reform health care lies in passing the lousy Senate bill or a few a la carte measures — lame, face-saving expedients they hope would allow them to move on to other issues without being accused of giving up. We’ve got a better [...]
