Last night I had a fascinating conversation with David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter and writer who knows more about Donald and his businesses that almost everybody on the planet. But first I had a few things to say about American corporations:
A couple of days ago every single Republican on the Senate Banking Committee opposed the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to be the Federal Reserve’s top banking cop. Alleged Democrat Joe Manchin also said he wouldn’t support her. Why? Because she was somehow unqualified? No. Ms. Raskin is deeply qualified. She was Deputy Secretary of the Treasury during the Obama administration.
As it turns out her great and unforgiveable sin is the fact that she holds the position—shared by most financial regulators and central banks in the United States—that financial institutions must consider how “existing instruments can be used to incentivize a rapid, orderly, and just transition away from high-emission and biodiversity-destroying investments.” In other words, we need to take climate change into account when considering how best to deal with our economy.
But such an idea is completely out-of-bounds as far as the fossil fuel industry and its mascots in Congress are concerned. One-hundred percent of Republicans and one corporate Democrat in the Senate are bought and paid for by this same industry. The bottom line is that their greed makes them short-sighted because apparently they care more about taking money from Big Oil than the future of the human race. And it blinds them to the fact that catastrophic climate change will make the world uninhabitable not just for our children and grandchildren, but for theirs as well.
Corporate greed is also the reason Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale University, put together a list of American corporations and their activity in Russia.
Since Sonnenfeld published his list, over 400 companies have withdrawn from Russia entirely while dozens of others have completely suspended operations.
That’s the good news.
There is a third category of companies that are scaling back—like Dunkin’ Donuts, Johnson, and Johnson, Hyatt, Marriot, Nestle, Kellogg, Taco Bell, Nabisco, Mars—but they need to be convinced to do better.
The fourth category consists of thirty-three companies that have dug in their heels and refuse to stop investing in Russia’s illegal war of aggression against the innocent Ukrainian people. You may not recognize the names of the companies, but you will recognize the products:
Dixie Cups and Brawny Paper Towels (made by Koch Industries), Bacardi, Reebok, Brooks Brothers, Nine West, Avon cosmetics, and LG appliances.
The whole point of the sanctions, of course, is to bring the Russian economy to its knees. By staying in Russian not only are these companies making money off of a war criminal and his corrupt regime, they are helping to perpetuate the war by propping up the Russian economy—thereby undermining the sanctions put in place by the Western Alliance—in order to line the pockets of their executives and shareholders.
Don’t be fooled by those Republicans who have so belatedly become willing to support Ukraine or by those corporations who still somehow need to be convinced that it is wrong to keep financing the Russian slaughter in Ukraine. These Republicans and their ally Joe Manchin, these corporations—which are not people, as the Supreme Court would have us believe but are indeed run by people—have so much fucking blood on their hands even Lady Macbeth would be horrified.
You can watch the whole episode here.
Or listen to it here.
Do you think any actions should be taken against those 33 corporations? Is it too late for them to change course or is there anything they can do to redeem themselves?
P.S. It’s good to be back. Between Spring Break and a dental emergency it’s been something of a week.
33 Is the Loneliest Number