Source: common dreams

WASHINGTON – June 20 – Nine out the 30 companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Index are convicted corporate criminals, according to a report released today by Corporate Crime Reporter.

“This should put to rest the myth that indicting or convicting a corporation of a crime results in an automatic death penalty for the corporation,” said Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter.

The Wall Street Journal in its lead editorial today, states flat out that “an indictment against a corporation is usually a death sentence, whatever the ultimate legal outcome.”

“Not true,” said Mokhiber. Continue reading →

Source: Government Dirt

Companies commit fraud against the US and State governments constantly. They run a simple calculation based on the chance of getting caught and how much they can earn in the short term. These companies ran the numbers, took their chances, got caught and paid through the nose.

1) Tenet Healthcare — $900,000,000 under the False Claims Act
In July 2006, Tenet Healthcare (formerly known as NME, see #9 on this list) agreed to pay the Federal Government $900 million for billing violations that include manipulation of outlier payments to Medicare, as well as kickbacks, upcoding, and bill padding. The DoJ press release notes that the settlement was based on the company’s ability to pay; a nice of saying that Tenet stole more money than was recovered in this settlement. Continue reading →

A WEST Australian medical expert wants families to pay a $5000-plus “baby levy” at birth and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 a child.

Writing in today’s Medical Journal of Australia, Associate Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime.

Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and “greenhouse-friendly” services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits. Continue reading →

America’s richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat

SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.

These members, along with Gates, have given away more than £45 billion since 1996 to causes ranging from health programmes in developing countries to ghetto schools nearer to home.

continue here… http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

(CNN) (FindLaw) — Last week, the Democratic National Convention (DNC) ended. But the First Amendment issues that were raised there did not. Indeed, they are likely to continue on indefinitely — recurring at the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC), and similar public events raising intense security concerns.

Protesters at the DNC were confined to a fenced-in area — a wire enclosure topped by razor wire outside Boston’s FleetCenter, where the Convention was held. They charged that their First Amendment rights were violated by this confinement.

Were they correct? Certainly, the involvement by police in enforcing the enclosure established the “state action” necessary to establish a First Amendment violation. (Because the First Amendment does not apply to private actors, only government action can trigger its protections, and lead to a constitutional challenge.) Continue reading →