Corporate Warlord Corruption

Several weeks ago, we posted this blockbuster piece on corporations. If you haven’t read it yet, you might take a look before we continue our lessons on the corporate warlords.

We the People vs. Them the Corporations

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Corporations make a tremendous amount of money by scamming us, screwing us, stealing from us, killing us, poisoning us, destroying our environment, and endless other heinous crimes. If we had a working democracy, our representative republic would stop this corporate crime immediately and resort American constitutional rights to We the People instead of condoning blatant war tactics used by corporations that are protected by courts that treat them as if they are higher than American citizens.

Corporations get rich from corruption, bribery, buying elections, buying legislators, purchasing government subsidies, tax breaks, handouts and bailouts while they are protected by many layers of courts, judges and lawyers.

Corporations use a portion of the money they are accumulating from not paying proper taxes to pay-off legislators, regulators, inspectors — Senior Executive Service members — to keep the bureaucracy from stopping the corporation from doing what is illegal or unethical. This is simply the price of doing business – political pay-offs.

Corporations, through lobbyists, pay-off career federal employees to stop the rest of the government from doing anything about the corruption, as the Senior Executive Service members avert their eyes from the scene of the crime that they created. Meanwhile, corporations spend more of those tax-free dollars on marketing, propaganda, PR, trickery and loads of subliminal programming to make everyone look the other way.

The cycle of corporate crime continues as corporate dynasties have developed that rival European monarchs who rule from their well-padded economic fortresses, often hiding behind the scenes and stashing their stolen loot one of the many Commonwealth off-shore havens. As We the People become poorer, corporations grow richer and their crimes grow more evil and pervasive. As the cycle continues and strengthens each year, corporations become more ensconced in their power and the corrupt streams of power that reach into our government at all levels.

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

When corporations act like criminals, we have the right and the power to stop them, holding leaders and multinational corporations alike to the accords they have signed and the laws of the land.

All we really have to do to beat this vicious cycle of corporate corruption is remember that the first three words of the U. S. Constitution are “We the People.” We the People have unalienable rights in America, not corporations. We the People have U. S. Constitutional rights, not corporations. We the People own America and its resources, not corporations. We the People elect those who make the laws, not corporations.

After fighting a revolution to end exploitation by the British monarchy, the church, and corporations, America’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.

Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.

In our current situation, America simply needs to go back to the original foundations of corporate structure that kept corporations from acting like sovereign monarchs and were kept in check by state legislatures, not the current federal systems that are supported by “superior” federal courts. A better checks and balance system of corporations would produce a tremendous amount of taxes that are now flowing out of America at a rate that is staggering. Some say over 50% of America’s wealth leaves each year through off-shore corporations and their tax-havens.

Corporations want the rights of a “person” without any of the responsibilities. This simply must end. Corporations act as criminals far below the nature of a “person” and thus have shown the world their true nature; an immoral nature that acts with impunity, lawlessness, and with a superiority (royalty) that act as if they are “above” a person when, in fact, corporation are “less than a person.”

The “old rules” for corporations will work quite well as a new standard by which all American corporations should abide. Foreign corporations will have to abide by the same rules and make sure to pay taxes and be held responsible for all applicable laws that We the People are held accountable for as an American citizen.

The Renewed Corporate Rules of America

• Corporate charters (licenses to exist) are granted for a limited time by an American agency and can be revoked promptly for violating laws.
• Corporations may engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
• Corporations may not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that is not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
• Corporations are terminated if they exceed their authority or cause public harm.
• Owners and managers are responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
• Corporations may not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.

A Short List of Some Corporate Crimes

We have established that corporations often willfully conduct “misconduct” knowing that they will simply have to pay a fee, if caught. No “one” is actually conducting a criminal act because a corporation is a “person” – but is also “not a person” who can be locked up for committing crimes, even murder. The list of corporate crimes includes the crimes of the Dutch East India and British East India companies which continue to this day: war, murder, slavery, theft, rape, poisoning, torture, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam. We the People are well aware of the crimes and have all suffered the misfortunes of corporate greed and their control of our economic, political, and personal lives.

In an effort to show some well-known corporations’ evil sins, we bring you a “short-list” of some of the more egregious criminal activities that can be found in open media. Mind you, this is a very short-list.

Dow Chemical

• Dow Chemical ravaged the health of millions of Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans caused by its lethal Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange.

• Dow developed and perfected Napalm, a brutal chemical weapon that burned many innocents to death in Vietnam and other wars.

• In 1988, Dow provided pesticides to Saddam Hussein despite warnings that they could be used to produce chemical weapons.

• On Dec. 3, 1984, a chemical leak from a UCC pesticide plant in Bhopal gassed thousands of people to death and left more than 150,000 disabled or dying. Dow still refuses to address its liabilities in Bhopal.

• Dow has been producing chlorinated chemicals and burning and burying its waste, including chemicals that make up Agent Orange.

• In New Plymouth, 500,000 gallons of Agent Orange were produced and thousands of tons of dioxin-laced waste was dumped in agricultural fields.

Monsanto 

• Monsanto is, by far, the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds in the world, dominating 70% to 100% of the market for crops such as soy, cotton, wheat and corn.

• Monsanto is the world’s leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as Roundup. Roundup is sold to small farmers as a pesticide, yet harms crops in the long run as the toxins accumulate in the soil.

• Plants exposed to Roundup eventually become infertile, forcing farmers to purchase genetically modified Roundup Ready Seed, a seed that resists the herbicide.

• This creates a cycle of dependency on Monsanto for both the weed killer and the only seed that can resist it. Both products are patented, and sold at inflated prices.

• Exposure to Roundup is documented to cause cancers, skin disorders, spontaneous abortions, premature births, and damage to the gastrointestinal and nervous systems.

• According to the India Committee of the Netherlands and the International Labor Rights Fund, Monsanto also employs child labor.

• In India, an estimated 12,375 children work in cottonseed production for farmers paid by Indian and multinational seed companies, including Monsanto.

DynCorp

• DynCorp, one of the providers of mercenary services, guarded Afghan statesmen and African oil fields, trained Iraqi police forces, eradicated Colombian coca plants, and protected business interests in hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

• DynCorp’s fumigation of coca crops along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border led Ecuadorian peasants to sue DynCorp.

• In 2001, a mechanic with DynCorp blew the whistle on DynCorp employees in Bosnia for rape and trading girls as young as 12 into sex slavery.

KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root)

• KBR, a Subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, is notorious for its fraudulent bookkeeping, dishonest billing practices with US taxpayer dollars and no-bid contracts.

• In June 2005, a previously secret Pentagon audit criticized $1.4 billion in “questioned” and “unsupported” expenditures.

• In 2002 the company paid $2 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit that accused KBR of inflating contract prices at Fort Ord, California.

• Many third-country national (TCN) laborers have been hired by KBR with few protections and uncertain legal status. TCNs often sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in scorching heat for food rations. Many lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day.

Nestle USA

• Nestle, the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, is well aware of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the farms with which it continues to do business.

• Nestle and other chocolate manufacturers agreed to end the use of abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by July 1, 2005, but they failed to do so.

• Nestle is notorious for its aggressive marketing of infant formula in poor countries in the 1980s. Because of this practice, Nestle is still one of the most boycotted corporations in the world, and its infant formula is still controversial.

• In Italy in 2005, police seized more than two million liters of Nestle infant formula that was contaminated with the chemical isopropylthioxanthone (ITX).

• Violations of labor rights are reported from Nestle factories in numerous countries. In Colombia, Nestle replaced the entire factory staff with lower-wage workers and did not renew the collective employment contract.

Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International

• Among tobacco companies, Philip Morris is notorious. Now called Altria, it is the world’s largest and most profitable cigarette corporation and maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament, Basic and many other brands of cigarettes.

• Documents uncovered in a lawsuit filed against the tobacco industry by the state of Minnesota showed that Philip Morris and other leading tobacco corporations knew very well of the dangers of tobacco products and the addictiveness of nicotine.

• Although the company says it doesn’t want kids to smoke, it spends millions of dollars every day marketing and promoting cigarettes to youth.

• Overseas, it has even hired underage “Marlboro girls” to distribute free cigarettes to other children and sponsored concerts where cigarettes were handed out to minors.

• Philip Morris has aggressively moved into developing country markets, where smoking and smoking-related deaths are on the rise.

• Preliminary numbers released by the World Health Organization predict global deaths due to smoking-related illnesses will nearly double by 2020, with more than three-quarters of those deaths in the developing world.

Wal-Mart

• Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world that has wiped out its competition. It owns 5,100 stores worldwide and employs 1.3 million workers in the United States and 400,000 abroad, as well as millions more in the factories of its suppliers.

• Many people have heard of the way that Wal-Mart steamrolls its way into every possible town, destroying local supermarkets and countless small businesses.

• We have also heard about Wal-Mart’s long track record of worker abuse, from forced overtime to sex discrimination to illegal child labor to relentless union busting.

• Wal-Mart also notoriously fails to provide health insurance to over half of its employees, who are then left to rely on themselves or taxpayers, who provide for a portion of their healthcare needs through government Medicaid.

• In September 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of Wal-Mart supplier sweatshop workers in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland. The workers were denied minimum wages, forced to work overtime without compensation, and were denied legally mandated health care.

• Other worker rights violations that have been found in foreign factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart include locked bathrooms, starvation wages, pregnancy tests, denial of access to health care, and workers being fired and blacklisted if they try to defend their rights.

Chevron

• The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worst environmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992, Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought out in 2001) unleashed a toxic “Rainforest Chernobyl” in Ecuador by leaving over 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used for bathing water.

• Local communities have suffered severe health effects, including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous abortions.

• Chevron is responsible for the violent repression of peaceful opposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has hired private military personnel to open fire on peaceful protestors who oppose oil extraction in the Niger Delta.

• Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems in Richmond, California, where one of Chevron’s largest refineries is located. Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refinery produces oil flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result, local residents suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumatic fever, liver problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eye problems.

• Chevron’s Unocal Corporation, in December 2004, settled a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmese villagers, in which the villagers alleged Unocal’s complicity in a range of human rights violations in Burma, including rape, summary execution, torture, forced labor and forced migration.

Coca-Cola

• Coca-Cola Company leads in the abuse of workers’ rights, assassinations, water privatization, and worker discrimination. Between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia were killed after protesting the company’s labor practices.

• Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers who have joined or considered joining the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who are hired to intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing.

• In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by privatizing the country’s water resources.

• In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agricultural activity. As a result, the remaining water became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading to scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population.

Pfizer

• Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world; it is also one of the worst abusers of the human right of universal access to HIV/AIDS medicine.

• In addition to Viagra, Zoloft, Zithromax and Norvasc, Pfizer produces the drug fluconazole (an antifungal used by AIDS patients) under the name Diflucan, and sells it at inflated prices most poor people cannot afford.

• The company refuses to grant generic licenses of fluconazole to governments in countries like Brazil, South Africa, or Dominican Republic, where patients are forced to pay $20 per weekly pill, though the average national wage is only $120 per month.

• Pfizer also values shareholder profits over safety standards. In Europe in 2005, it withdrew from scientific studies of a new class of AIDS drugs called CCR5 inhibitors, choosing instead to rush its own untested CCR5 inhibitor onto the European market without full information about the drug’s side effects.

Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux

• The privatization of water has had a disastrous impact on the human right to clean water, and the French company Suez is the worst perpetrator of this abuse. The company’s billions of dollars in profit come at the expense of poor people living in countries where thousands lack access to potable water, and, because of private water contracts, are also facing skyrocketing water prices.

• Suez goes by many names around the world–Ondeo, SITA and others–to mask its worldwide net of controversial activities.

• In Manila, Philippines, after seven years of water privatization under a Suez company (Maynilad Water) contract, studies showed that water rates increased in some neighborhoods by 400 to 700 percent. These studies also showed that the negligence of the company resulted in cholera and gastroenteritis outbreaks that killed six people and severely sickened 725 in Manila’s Tondo district.

• In Bolivia, a Suez company (Aguas de Illimani) left 200,000 people without access to water and caused a revolt when it tried to charge between $335 and $445 to connect a private home to the water supply. Countless people were unable to afford this charge in a country whose yearly per capita GDP is $915.

Credit Suisse

• Credit Suisse has been charged with corporate secrecy mixed with tax evasion, $2.88 billion in fines pleading guilty to criminal charges of helping U.S. citizens evade taxes.

• Credit Suisse helped 22,000 Americans evade taxes, but the bank did not have to reveal its clients’ names.

GlaxoSmithKline

• GlaxoSmithKline has been charged and fined for branding and hiding safety information with $3 billion in fines after pleading guilty not only to misbranding the drugs Paxil and Wellbutrin.

• They were also charged with hiding safety information from the FDS plus fraud, rigged prices, false claims, failure to report safety data, and aggressive marketing.

• GlaxoSmithKline targeted physicians to promote the drugs for non-FDA approved uses. Some wonder if the $3 billion fine was punitive enough given the $25 billion in sales from the respective drugs.

Goldman Sachs

• Goldman Sachs has been charged with representing toxic securities to investors.

• They were charged $5 billion in fines for misleading investors about residential mortgage-backed securities.

• Goldman Sachs was held culpable for its role in helping ignite the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Anadarko Petroleum 

• Anadarko Petroleum was charged with passing the buck on major environmental fines, $5.15 billion in fines for trying to avoid paying fines for environmental contamination.

Citigroup

• In 2014, Citigroup settled with federal and state agencies for $7 billion for its role in the 2008 financial crisis for knowing the mortgages it had sold were bad while representing the securitized mortgages as good investments.

BNP Paribas

• BNP Paribas has been charged with flouting US economic sanctions, $8.9 billion in fines.

• In 2014, BNP Paribas, pleaded guilty to illegally processing transactions from 2004-2012 through the U.S. financial system from countries that were under U.S. economic sanctionssuch as Sudan, Iran, and Cuba.

JPMorgan Chase

• In 2013, JPMorgan was charged for its role in causing the 2008 financial crisis.

• The company agreed to pay $13 billion, which at the time was the largest U.S. corporate settlement in history.

Volkswagen

• Volkswagen got caught cheating on emissions tests and deceiving its customers.

• In June 2016, the German automaker agreed to a $14.7 billion settlement with the U.S. government.

Bank of America 

• In 2014, Bank of America paid out the largest settlement in history (at the time) for financial fraud leading up to and during the mortgage crisis of 2008.

• The U.S. government concluded that Bank of America helped exacerbate the financial crisis by engaging in unlawful conduct.

• Bank of America lied to investors about the quality of its residential mortgage-backed securities, but it also was responsible for the origination and underwriting of many of the bad mortgages in the first place.

British Petroleum 

• In 2016, British Petroleum was found guilty of criminal manslaughter and environmental crimes and ordered to pay $20.8 billion — the largest fine ever levied by the Department of Justice.

• BP was found to be “grossly negligent” and the story of the disaster reveals a fatally flawed well design, faulty emergency equipment, inadequate safety precautions and an emergency contingency plan rife with errors and miscalculations.

• BP pleaded guilty to eleven counts of manslaughter for the eleven crew members who died.

• Following the disaster, BP played down the severityof the spill, and even lied to Congress about how much oil was leaking leading to a guilty plea of obstruction of justice.

• BP faced a $525 million fine from the SEC for hiding information from investors.

Arms Dealers – Corporate Warlords

This is a list of the world’s largest arms manufacturers and other military service companies who profit the most from the war economy. The information is based on a list published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2015.

Boeing                                               96.1 billion

Airbus                                               71.4 billion

United Technologies                      61.0 billion

Lockheed Martin                            46.1 billion

General Dynamics                         31.4 billion

BAE Systems                                   27.3 billion

Raytheon                                         23.2 billion

Northrop Grumman                     20.0 billion

Leonardo S.p.A.                             14.4 billion

LC Technologies                           10.4 billion

Corporate misconduct is “standard operating procedure” which is commonly expected and government fines are simply part of “doing business.” Below are just a few example of the corruption documented at the Project On Government Oversite website at: http://www.pogo.org/about/

Corporate Global Warlords

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Amount obligated: US $40.5 billion, global $91.2 billion

Contracts awarded: 136,366

Employees: 126,000

Lockheed Martin is the U.S. government’s largest contractor. Its largest customer is the Defense Department, to which it supplies weapons systems, aircraft and logistical support. Among its products are the F-35 Lightning II fighter, Sikorsky helicopters and the Aegis naval weapons system. The company provides data services and space technology to the civilian sector. The company generated $51 billion in annual revenue and $2 billion in net income for 2016.

Lockheed Martin employs approximately 126,000 people worldwide and receives about 10% of the funds paid out by the Pentagon each year. In May 2001, Lockheed Martin sold Lockheed Martin Control Systems to BAE Systems. On November 27, 2000, Lockheed completed the sale of its Aerospace Electronic Systems business to BAE Systems for $1.67 billion, a deal announced in July 2000.

Lockheed Martin works for more than two dozen government agencies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s involved in surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Security Agency (NSA), The Pentagon, the Census Bureau and the Postal Service.

Lockheed Martin shareholders include: State Street Corporation, Capital World Investors, Vanguard Group, BlackRock Inc., Bank of America Corporation.

In August 2016 Lockheed Martin spun off their Information Systems & Global Solutions business and merged with Leidos to create the defense industry’s largest IT services provider. The merger created a combined company of $10 billion in revenue, with a strong bond to the No. 1 government contractor, Lockheed Martin. Leidos was formerly the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the research and development branch of the C.I.A. known as In-Q-Tel. Leidos expects to grow 3% in 2018 with many high-value contracts already awarded. Leidos earned $10.2 billion in revenues last year. The mutually beneficial relationship Leidos has with Lockheed Martin makes it a virtual monopoly in IT defense contractors.

The 8,000 Leidos operatives do everything from analyzing signals for the NSA to tracking down suspected enemy fighters for US Special Forces in the Middle East and Africa. The sheer size of Leidos makes it one of the most powerful companies in the intelligence-contracting industry, which is worth about $50 billion today. Leidos is now the largest of five corporations that together employ nearly 80 percent of the private-sector employees contracted to work for US spy and surveillance agencies.

For the first time since spy agencies began outsourcing their core analytic and operational work in the late 1990s, the bulk of the contracted work goes to a handful of companies: Leidos, Booz Allen Hamilton, CSRA, SAIC, and CACI International. 

Lockheed Martin’s Own Intelligence Agency

Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance Systems (ISR)

Lockheed Martin provides innovative, cost-efficient airborne and ground system configurations that address a wide range of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements. Options are meant to be customized to meet specific ISR requirements that can support military, homeland defense, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance mission needs. For nearly 40 years, Lockheed Martin has been developed ground systems that collect, process, exploit and disseminate sensors data from manned and unmanned platforms.
Integrated Operations & Intelligence Systems

Lockheed Martin merges the capabilities delivered by intelligence processing systems with those provided by mission command and control systems to provide users with a comprehensive single picture of the battlespace. This unprecedented capability that links ISR, air operations and missile defense systems at the battle management level, allowing users to work together in a shared environment to optimize defense operations.

Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance As a Service

For customers who need ISR – aircraft or ground stations – for only a short period of time, Lockheed Martin offers the ability to bring surveillance capabilities to any region immediately via the Airborne Multi-INT Lab, or AML. Lockheed Martin also offers a transition from a service that is completely contractor owned and operated to a standard procurement when the customers are ready to assume operations.

Lockheed Martin Corruption

• Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest military contractor providing satellites, planes, missiles and other lethal high-tech items to the Pentagon keeps the profits rolling in. Lockheed Martin is not the only defense contractor that goes behind the scenes to influence public policy, but it is one of the worst. These war profiteers have a profound and illegitimate influence on our country’s international policy decisions.

• In 2001, Lockheed Martin settled a nine–year investigation conducted by NASA’s Office of Inspector General with the assistance of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. The company paid the United States government $7.1 million based on allegations that its predecessor, Lockheed Engineering Science Corporation, submitted false lease costs claims to NASA.

• In January 2011, Lockheed Martin agreed to pay the US Government $2 million to settle allegations that the company submitted false claims on a U.S. government contract for that amount. The allegations came from a contract with the Naval Oceanographic Office Major Shared Resource Center in Mississippi.

• On March 3, 2012, the U.S. Justice Department said that Lockheed Martin had agreed to settle allegations that the defense contractor had sold overpriced perishable tools used on many contracts.

• On February 20, 2013, Lockheed Martin Corp complied with the S. District Courtin New York, agreeing to pay a $19.5 million lawsuit to conclude a securities fraud class-action legal battle that had accused the company of deceiving shareholders in regards to expectations for the company’s information technology division.

• On December 20, 2014, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems agreed to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit paying $27.5 million to finalize allegations that it had knowingly overbilled the taxpayer for work performed by company staff who did not hold the relevant, essential qualifications for the contract.

Lockheed Martin has had 8 instances of misconduct since 1995 with fines of $767,331,643. 

The Boeing Company

Amount obligated:  $24.3 billion, global $40.5 billion

Contracts awarded: 13,589

Employees: 148,750

Boeing is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, and satellites worldwide and is the second-largest defense contractor in the world based on 2015 revenue, and is the largest exporter in the United States by dollar value. Boeing recorded $94.6 billion in sales, ranked 24th on the Fortune magazine “Fortune 500” list (2017), ranked 61st on the “Fortune Global 500” list (2017).

The largest amount of Boeing stock shares are held by institutional investors and mutual funds rather than by any one individual. The largest institutional holder of Boeing stock, as of the end of 2017, is the Vanguard Group with a reported 41 million shares — or almost 7% of the company. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, holds 14.5 million shares as of the end of March 2018, or about 2.47% of Boeing. Other major shareholders are the usual culprits: Blackrock Inc., Newport Trust Co., Price T Rowe, State Street Corp., and the other good ole boys.

Boeing Corruption

• In December 2003, the Pentagon announced allegations of corruption by Boeing. Darleen Druyun pleaded guilty to inflating the price of the contract to favor her future employer and to passing information on the competing Airbus A330 MRTT

• In July 2003, Boeing was penalized, with the Pentagon stripping seven launches away from the company and awarding them to Lockheed Martin. The company was forbidden to bid for rocket contracts for a twenty-month period, which expired in March 2005.

• In early September 2005, it was reported that Boeing was negotiating a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in which it would pay up to $500 million to cover this and the Darleen Druyun scandal.
  

Boeing has had 68 instances of misconduct since 1995 with fines totaling  $1,456,813,493.

BAE Systems (British Aerospace)

Amount obligated: US $4.2 billion, global $27 billion

Contracts awarded: 10,133

Employees: 83,400

BAE Systems (British Aerospace) is the biggest supplier of Britain’s military and one of the biggest suppliers of the Pentagon. BAE Systems is the third-biggest military contractor in the world, with sales surpassing all other weapons makers except Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  No company has a broader range of competencies in defense and aerospace technology.  BAE builds most of Britain’s warships, most of the U.S. Army’s armored vehicles, and is by far the biggest foreign-based contributor to the F-35 fighter — the program that will replace Cold War tactical aircraft in the fleets of three U.S. military services and at least a dozen allies.

BAE is one of the Pentagon’s top suppliers and is a global leader in electronic warfare, tactical communications, flight controls, thermal sights, signal processing, and cockpit displays. but good luck finding anybody in the investment community who knows that. BAE is the only foreign-based military supplier allowed to participate in the Pentagon’s most sensitive technology exploits.

Current work: $245.3 million project for the initial production of the M109A7 self-propelled howitzer and M992A3 ammunition carrier for the US Army. The M109A7 upgrades the previous Paladin howitzer with a new chassis, and includes a high-voltage gun drive and a projectile ramming system.

BAE has had 23 Instances of misconduct since 1995 with fines totaling $596,264,756.

Raytheon Company

Amount obligated: $12.7 billion, global $25.2 billion

Contracts awarded: 11,128

Employees: 63,000

The Raytheon Company’s core manufacturing concentrates in weapons, military and commercial electronics, special-mission aircraft and is the world’s largest producer of guided missiles. More than 90% of Raytheon’s revenues were obtained from military contracts and, is the fifth-largest military contractor in the world. As of 2015, it is the third largest defense contractor in the United States by defense revenue.

Raytheon provides electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems; as well as a broad range of mission support services. Raytheon’s electronics and defense-systems units produce air-, sea-, and land-launched missiles, aircraft radar systems, weapons sights and targeting systems, communication and battle-management systems, and satellite components.

In addition to its US domestic facilities, Raytheon has offices in countries worldwide, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, CzechRepublic, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

As of December 2014, according to filed reports, the top ten institutional shareholders of Raytheon are Wellington Management Company, Vanguard Group, State Street Corporation, Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss, BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, BlackRock Advisors, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank and Macquarie Group.

Raytheon had 27 instances of misconduct since 1995 with $489.9 million in penalties.

General Dynamics Corporation

Amount obligated: $12.7 billion, global $24.3 billion

Contracts awarded: 24,650

Employees: 99,500

General Dynamics Corporation is an American aerospace and defense multinational corporationformed by mergers and divestitures. It is the world’s fifth-largest defense contractor based on 2012 revenues.  It has four main business segments: Marine Systems, Combat Systems, Information Systems Technology, and Aerospace. General Dynamics’ former Fort Worth Division manufactured the F-16 Fighting Falcon until 1993, which was one of the Western world’s most-produced jet fighters. Production was sold to Lockheed Martin, but GD re-entered the airframe business in 1999 with its purchase of Gulfstream Aerospace.

General Dynamics Corporation constructs DDG 51 Class Destroyers for the US Navy with all-steel, gas turbine equipped with the AEGIS combat system, Vertical Launching System, an advanced anti-submarine warfare system, two embarked SH-60 helicopters, advanced anti-aircraft missiles, and Tomahawk anti-ship and land-attack missiles. In 2018, General Dynamics bought CSRA for $9.6 billion. CSRA Inc. provides information technology services to U.S. government clients in national security, civil government, and health care and public health. Its largest market, national security, includes the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and intelligence agencies.

General Dynamics Corporation Corruption 

• On August 19, 2008, GD agreed to pay $4 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the US Government claiming that a GD unit fraudulently billed the government for defectively manufactured parts used in US military aircraft and submarines. The US alleged that GD defectively manufactured or failed to test parts used in US military aircraft from September 2001 to August 2003, such as the C-141 Starliftertransport plane. The GD unit involved, based in Glen Cove, New York, closed in 2004.

General Dynamics Corporation has had 22 Instances of misconduct since 1995 with penalties of $280,287,952.

Northrop Grumman Corporation

Amount obligated: $10.7 billion, global $24.5 billion

Contracts awarded: 10,476

Employees: 65,000

Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American global aerospace and defense technology company formed by Northrop’s 1994 purchase of Grumman. The company was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015. Northrop Grumman employs over 68,000 people worldwide. It reported revenues of $24.508 billion in 2016. Northrop Grumman ranks No. 124 on the 2015 Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. Northrop Gumman builds controversial and highly classified Long-Range Strike Bombers (LRS-B) designed to replace the Air Force’s aging fleets of bombers. The LRS-B would be able to deliver its nuclear payload while using its signature stealth technology.

Northrop Grumman Corruption

• In 2000, Northrop Grumman was designated a Primary Responsible Party under federal Superfund laws at 13 hazardous waste sites and under state Superfund laws at eight sites. The corporation has also been linked to 52 superfundtoxic waste

• Based on 2008 data, Northrop Grumman was the 62nd-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, per the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Northrop Grumman facilities released more than 23,798 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air in that year.

• In 2002, the Bethpage Community Park in Bethpage, New York, owned by the company until the 1960s, was closed due to soil contamination with polychlorinated biphenyls(PCBs). The company dumped cadmium, arsenic, chromium-tainted sludge, solvents, paints and PCBs at the site between 1949 and 1962. In November 2013, the Bethpage Water District filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Northrop Grumman in Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York for contaminating the groundwater in Bethpage

• In 2003, the company was among 84 parties with which the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the S. Department of Justice, and the state of New Yorkreached an estimated US $15 million settlement for the rehabilitation of the Mattiace Petrochemical Company Superfund site in Glen Cove, Long Island. In the same year, Northrop Grumman agreed to pay $33,214 after EPA inspectors found hazardous waste violations at the Capistrano test site.

United Technologies Corporation

Amount obligated: $6.5 billion, $12.1 billion

Contracts awarded: 24,434

Employees: 197,200

United Technologies Corporation (UTC) is an American multinational conglomerate that researches, develops, and manufactures products in numerous areas, including aircraft engines, aerospace systems, HVAC, elevators and escalators, fire and security, building systems, and industrial products, among others. UTC is also a large military contractor, getting about 10% of its revenue from the U.S. government.

United Technologies Corruption

• Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amhersthave identified UTC as the 38th-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States as of 2008. UTC released roughly 110,000 pounds of toxic chemicals annually into the atmosphere including manganese, nickel, chromium and related compounds.

• In the 2016 University of Massachusetts AmherstToxic 100 Air Polluters Index, UTC was ranked 9th by a toxicity population exposure score. It was also reported they release 60,000 pounds of toxins into the air, the second lowest amount by the top 10 listed companies.

• During the 2006 election cycle, UTC was the sixth largest defense industry donor to political campaigns, contributing a total of $789,561.

• Produces F-35 fighter jet engines. Although the jet engines were plagued with issues, Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of UTC, stated that their reliability rate was now at 90 percent.

• A federal judge has ordered United Technologies Corp to pay $473 million plus interest for manipulating costs to win U.S. Air Force jet engine contracts in the 1980s.
  

United Technologies Corporation has had 23 Instances of misconduct since 1995 with penalties of $757,463,652.

L-3 Communications

Amount obligated: $5 billion

Contracts awarded: 7,622

Employees: 38,000

L3 was formed as L-3 Communications in 1997 to acquire certain business units from Lockheed Martin that had previously been part of Loral Corporation. L3 Technologies supplies command control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems and products, avionics, ocean products, training devices and services, instrumentation, aerospace, and navigation products. Its customers include the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Government intelligence agencies, NASA, aerospace contractors and commercial telecommunications and wireless.

L-3 Communications Corruption

• The Pentagon had awarded $24 million to EOTech, a subsidiary of L-3, for the purchase of their holographic optical sights. The sights have since been deemed defective due to their inability to perform optimally in extreme temperatures. Further, claims have been made that EOTech had waited to disclose the defect until 2013. L-3 Communications has since settled the case for $25.6 million.

• In 2010 it was announced that L3’s Special Support Programs Division had been suspended by the United States Air Forcefrom doing any contract work for the US federal government. A US Department of Defense investigation had reportedly found that the company had, “used a highly sensitive government computer network to collect competitive business information for its own use.” A US federal criminal investigation ended the temporary suspension on July 27, 2010.
• On November 4, 2010 L3 issued a part purge notification to prevent future use of Chinese counterfeit parts, but did not notify its customers whose display systems suffered from much higher than expected failure rates.

• In 2015, L3 Technologies agreed to pay $25.6 million to settle a lawsuit with the U.S. Government. L3 was accused of knowingly providing the U.S. military with optics that failed in extreme temperatures and humid weather conditions. These sights were provided to infantry and special operations forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as civilians and law enforcement.

L-3 has had 19 instances of misconduct since 1995 with penalties of $137,514,466.

Patriots, Let’s End Corporate Fascism!

The Anonymous Patriots always like to point in the direction of positive change, even in the face of evil that begs to be destroyed. We believe that change can happen overnight once the force of consciousness reaches critical mass on a particular issue. Corporate corruption exists because of corrupt laws, lawyers, judges, and courts (Fake Justice) that make it perfectly legal for corporations to be immune from most types of prosecution – they are above the law like nobility and the clergy. But We the People can change the twisted laws back to the way they were when corporations in America were controlled by Americans, instead of the other way round.

We offer the suggests below as a beginning to correct the problem and put Justice back into the American system of law. We the People will then become the sovereign citizens that we are, and our unalienable rights will not be shared with international corporations that demand to have higher rights granted by some false privilege, title, or unfounded Fake Justice claim.

• We can stop corporations from corrupting us with the money that our laws allow corporations to accumulate tax-free by simply taxing appropriately and not allowing off-shore tax havens. Corporations must pay their fair share.

• We can end corporate lobbying completely and stop all influence peddling for money in all areas of the government. When you stop the flow of money to politicians, laws will not be geared to corporate interests and will return to We the People.

• We can stop corporate Fake News and main stream media propaganda that is simply yellow journalism for corporate interests. Reuters and the Associated Press can be closed-down for indecency in broadcastings, false reporting, fake news, and political manipulation and propaganda.

• We can end corporate impunity in the courts by stopping the Supreme Court’s recognition of a corporation as a “person” and restructure state and federal courts to limit federal courts to the single jurisdiction of Washington D. C., the only place they have authority.

• We can end all corporate donations to elections and end corporate tax-free donations altogether.

• We can close international loopholes for transnational corporations that allow them to evade taxes in America.

• We can limit U. S. governmental contracts to American corporations.

• We can stop U. S. funds from being given to foreign corporations which would dry up the USAID and OPIC programs.

• We can prosecute Serco and the Crown Agents for their economic crimes, fraud, and theft.

• We can write new legislation limiting the power of corporations (especially banks and brokers) making them responsible for the same laws that all American’s are held to, along with the punishments associated with those crimes.