"This is an America that has transferred its allegiance to spectacle, to pseudo-events, that no longer can determine what is real and what is illusion, that confuses how they’re made to feel with knowledge, that confuses propaganda with ideology, and that’s exceedingly dangerous. All totalitarian societies are image-based societies, and that’s what our society has become."
posted by plexi on Aug 16, 2009 - 127 comments

The Tax Gap - "The Guardian will examine the extent of tax avoidance by big business, day-by-day over two weeks. We are naming more than 20 major British companies, and analysing their secretive tax strategies to ask: are they paying their fair share?".
posted by Gyan on Feb 4, 2009 - 34 comments

The Bad Bank Assets Proposal: Even Worse Than You Imagined -- the administration appears intent on building another black swan. This is political capitalism. [via]
posted by kliuless on Feb 4, 2009 - 103 comments

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants - The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface [pdf]
posted by kliuless on Jul 11, 2005 - 30 comments

Earthly Empires: How evangelical churches are borrowing from the business playbook - "The triumph of evangelical Christianity is profoundly reshaping many aspects of American politics and society... This year, the 16.4 million-member Southern Baptist Convention plans to 'plant' 1,800 new churches using by-the-book niche-marketing tactics. 'We have cowboy churches for people working on ranches, country music churches, even several motorcycle churches aimed at bikers', says Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' North American Mission Board... Many of today's evangelicals hope to expand their clout even further. They're also gaining by taking their views into Corporate America. Exhibit A: the recent clash at software giant Microsoft."
posted by kliuless on May 15, 2005 - 35 comments

Oligopoly Watch. An Oligopoly tracking weblog.
posted by euphorb on Aug 23, 2003 - 8 comments

Enron's historical precidents. This L.A. Times article discusses the historical precidents to the Enron debacle. My favorite (among lots of good stuff):

"Like Enron, ITT was a big campaign contributor. But Geneen's idea of how to use political influence made Lay and associates look like choir boys. In 1970, the company offered Republicans $1 million and consulted heavily with the Nixon White House and the CIA when Chile's new socialist president, Salvador Allende, threatened to seize the ITT-owned Chilean Telephone Co. Allende was overthrown with U.S. aid."
posted by electro on Feb 22, 2002 - 9 comments

Pass it along : GM buys Chumbawamba song for $70,000. Chumbawamba takes money and gives it to corporate watchdogs that use the money to fund anti-GM ads. All of which makes up for how annoying "Tubthumping" got after awhile.
posted by zedzebedia on Jan 31, 2002 - 32 comments

The most sensible take I've seen on Enron and Bush. Once all the fuss has died down—Congress is currently planning ten separate inquiries—two good things will probably have come out of the Enron mess. Companies will no longer be allowed to use their pension programs to treat their employees as an especially loyal and malleable class of shareholder; instead, pension funds will have to be diversified. And accounting firms will no longer be allowed to act as paid consultants to the companies they audit, as Arthur Andersen did with Enron. New Yorker link, no registration required.
posted by jfuller on Jan 23, 2002 - 9 comments

Intellectualism's Hottest Ticket? (New York Times link; my apologies) According to the cultural arbiters at the NYT, this book is picking up heat as one of the most important philosophical works of the new century. As near as I can tell, it's about the cultural and sociological impact of globalization, creating the new political state they call "Empire." Anybody heard of this, or read it yet? Wank or insight?
posted by logovisual on Jul 6, 2001 - 19 comments

'The deadliest threat facing democracy today?' Noreena Hertz thinks that governments' steady withdrawal from running their own countries' affairs and the concessions made to big business are leading to a society which has lost faith in the political process. I guess there are a few people in California at the moment who'd agree.
posted by Markb on Apr 9, 2001 - 5 comments

'Industry pumped in a record 696 million dollars to elect George W. Bush and a GOP Congress. The Mother Jones 400 reveals the nation's top contributors -- and what they expect in return.'

The donors complain in this article about how much they have to shell out. Are their complaints legitimate? Is this simply the cost of doing business? Is this the way campaigns should be funded?
posted by Sean Meade on Mar 6, 2001 - 14 comments

This confirms suspicions I've had about "Mr. America Inc." The line between government and the corporate/entertainment-whatever blurs further. Is this a new kind of coup? What lines are being drawn (or erased) here?
posted by aflakete on Dec 26, 2000 - 10 comments