corporate power
August 31, 2012 -
The Romney campaign had a strangely inapt group of messengers promote the theme of Ayn Rand-style entrepreneurship at the Republican Convention: GOP governors who have presided over deals in which huge sums of taxpayer money have been handed over to large corporations.
August 24, 2012 -
The Securities and Exchange Commission stood up to intense pressure from the likes of ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute to approve rules that will shine a light on dealings between some of the world's biggest corporations and the poor countries from which they extract vast amounts of wealth.
August 16, 2012 -
Founded by the family of former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, previously led by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and acquired by private equity firms including Bain Capital in 2006, Tennessee-based HCA was already the subject of the largest Medicare fraud settlement in history -- and now it's under investigation again for performing medically unnecessary heart procedures.
July 30, 2012 -
In debating what it takes to succeed in business, President Obama and Mitt Romney talk as if we were still in an early 19th Century economy of small enterprises. But with megacorporations dominating American commerce, it's time to talk about tightening state corporation laws -- or replacing them entirely with a federal chartering system.
July 27, 2012 -
Duke Energy is facing a credit downgrade, shareholder lawsuits, multiple investigations, and a legal move to reopen the regulatory proceedings that allowed it to take over Progress Energy in the first place.
July 27, 2012 -
As the Olympics get underway in London, protesters are targeting BP for its corporate sponsorship of the games, which they say amounts to "greenwashing" its pollution in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.
July 23, 2012 -
The $2 billion to be poured into nuclear fleet upgrades turns the Duke-Progress merger into a public soaking instead of a public saving -- which violates the deal's key legal standard.