Tag Archives: corporation

A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry

by WillardArchdall Posted on June 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Read Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer’s firsthand account of his four months spent working as a guard at a corporate-run prison in Louisiana.

In the early 1980s, the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit. “You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers,” one of its founders told Inc. magazine. Today, corporate-run prisons hold eight percent of America’s inmates. Here’s how the private prison industry took off:

1983


More: Who owns the Corrections Corporation of America?

Thomas Beasley, Doctor R. Crants, and T. Don Hutto start Corrections Corporation of America, the world’s first private prison company.

1984

CCA begins operating a county jail and a juvenile detention center in Tennessee. It also opens its first privately owned facility in Houston, a motel hastily remodeled to hold immigration detainees.

1985

A federal judge orders Tennessee to stop admitting inmates to its overcrowded prisons. CCA offers, unsuccessfully, to pay $250 million for a 99-year lease on the state’s entire prison system.

1986

CCA goes public, saying its facility design and use of electronic surveillance mean it can operate larger prisons “with less staff than the public sector would have needed.”

A guard dog at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana

1987

Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, later known as the GEO Group, gets its first contract to run a federal immigration detention center.

Mid-’90s

CCA co-chairs the criminal justice task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Among the “model” bills to emerge are truth-in-sentencing and three-strikes legislation that help fuel the ’90s prison boom.

1997

Arguing that it’s in the property business, CCA becomes a real estate investment trust for tax purposes. A new affiliate, Prison Realty Trust, raises $447 million for a prison-buying spree.

Private And Public Prison Populations 1990-2014

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1998

The Justice Department investigates a CCA prison in Youngstown, Ohio, following a spate of escapes, stabbings, and killings. In addition to finding inexperienced and poorly trained guards, the probe reveals that CCA took on maximum-security inmates at a facility designed for a medium-security population.

2000

As prison occupancy rates drop, Prison Realty Trust nearly goes bankrupt. CCA stock, once nearly $150 a share, falls to 19 cents. The company drops the trust and restructures.

CCA Stock Price, 1997-2016

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2004

A Justice Department report finds a “disturbing degree” of physical abuse by staff and underreporting of violence among inmates at a Baltimore juvenile facility run by the private prison operator Correctional Services Corporation. CSC is later acquired by GEO.

2005

Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) introduces the Private Prison Information Act, which would require private prisons holding federal inmates to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests. It died, as have at least seven similar bills opposed by CCA and GEO.

2007

A drawing by an immigrant child held at CCA’s T. Don Hutto Center. ACLU

CCA’s and GEO’s stock prices jump as both companies jockey to run the federal government’s expanding immigration detention centers. Meanwhile, the ACLU settles a case against Immigration and Customs Enforcement for conditions in the CCA-managed T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas, where about half the detainees are kids. Under the agreement, children no longer wear prison uniforms and may move more freely.

2008

The New York Times investigates the deaths of immigration detainees, such as a Guinean man at a CCA-run facility who fractured his skull and was placed in solitary confinement before being taken to a hospital. He died after four months in a coma.

2009

A CCA representative attends a meeting where ALEC members draft the legislation that will eventually become Arizona’s notorious anti-immigration law. CCA denies having a hand in writing the bill. It cuts ties with ALEC the following year.

2010

An ACLU suit alleges rampant violence at a CCA-run Idaho prison known as “gladiator school.” The lawsuit claims the prison is understaffed and fosters an environment that “relies on the degradation, humiliation, and subjugation of prisoners.” The FBI investigates but doesn’t pursue charges. In Kentucky, the governor orders all female inmates removed from a CCA prison after more than a dozen cases of alleged sexual abuse by guards.

2011

Inmates at Winn Correctional Center

CCA becomes the first private prison company to purchase a state facility, buying Ohio’s Lake Erie Correctional Institution as part of a privatization plan proposed by Gov. John Kasich and supported by his corrections chief, former CCA Director Gary Mohr.

2012

CCA offers to buy prisons in 48 states in exchange for 20-year management contracts. The same year, a GEO-operated youth facility in Mississippi where staff sexually abused minors is described by a judge as a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions.” At another Mississippi facility, a 24-year-old CCA employee is killed during a riot over prisoners’ complaints about poor food, inadequate medical care, and disrespectful guards.

2013

CCA converts back to a real estate investment trust, as does GEO. Mother Jones reports that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $2.2 million in GEO.

2014

CCA’s annual report flags criminal justice reform—including drug decriminalization and the reduction of mandatory minimum sentences—as a “risk factor” for its business. Chris Epps, Mississippi’s prison commissioner and the president of the American Correctional Association, is charged with taking kickbacks from a private prison contractor.

2015

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) co-sponsors the Justice is Not for Sale Act, which would ban all government contracts with private prison companies. After Hillary Clinton is criticized for using campaign bundlers who’d worked as lobbyists for CCA and GEO, she promises to no longer take their money and says, “We should end private prisons and private detention centers.”

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A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry

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The 21st Century Sure Has Been a Great Time to Be a Corporation

by CatalinStapleto Posted on January 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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This is apropos of nothing in particular. I was just noodling around on something else and happened to run across this data, so here it is. The economic recovery of the Bush years might have been pretty anemic for most of us, but it was sure a great time for the corporate world: Between 2001 and 2006, pretax profits went up 3x and after-tax profits went up even more. These profits dipped during the Great Recession, of course, but they’ve fully recovered since then. All in all, since the start of the 21st century the income of ordinary folks has declined about 5 percent, but after-tax profits in the nonfinancial sector have gone up nearly 4x. Nice work, business titans!

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The 21st Century Sure Has Been a Great Time to Be a Corporation

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TransCanada Just Asked the United States to Suspend the Keystone XL Pipeline

by DuaneJoshua Posted on November 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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In an unexpected turn of events, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline proposal requested to temporarily suspend its US permit application on Monday.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, the Calgary-based TransAmerica Corporation asked that State Department, which reviews cross-border pipelines, delay its decision while the company goes through a state review process in Nebraska. Earlier in the week, the White House indicated its intention to rule on the controversy-ridden pipeline by the end of Obama’s term; some were expecting the State Department decision to reject the pipeline as soon as the end of the week.

“We are asking State (Department) to pause its review of Keystone XL based on the fact that we have applied to the Nebraska Public Service Commission for approval of its preferred route in the state,” TransCanada Chief Executive Russ Girling said in a statement.

But some are speculating that the request is a political play: A delay in the permit could mean pushing the issue beyond the 2016 election—and into the hands of a new administration.

TransAmerica has vowed over the years that it would not back down on the proposed pipeline from Alberta to Texas in the face of economic or political challenges, and until recently, it had been pushing for a speedy border permit approval.

â&#128;&#139;This post has been updated.

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TransCanada Just Asked the United States to Suspend the Keystone XL Pipeline

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Smoking Will Kill 1 in 3 Chinese Men

by WesleyStLeon Posted on October 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Smoking will kill one in three young men in China unless rates of tobacco use drop dramatically, according to a new study in the medical journal The Lancet.

The study, led by Oxford University epidemiologist Zhengming Chen, is full of eye-opening stats: In 2010 alone, smoking accounted for 1 million Chinese deaths, primarily of men. If the current trend continues, that number will double by 2030. (In the United States, cigarettes kill 480,000 people annually—a number that’s been steadily declining over the last several decades and is expected to keep dropping.) “About two-thirds of young Chinese men become cigarette smokers, and most start before they are 20,” explains Chen. “Unless they stop, about half of them will eventually be killed by their habit.”

The researchers came to these conclusions by conducting two nationally representative studies—the first in the 90s, the second 15 years later—that tracked the health outcomes of smoking among a total of 730,000 men and women.

There is some good news: While smoking among men has increased dramatically in recent years, smoking among women has plummeted, to roughly 3 percent of the population. And the proportion of smokers overall who have chosen to quit rose from 3 percent to 9 percent between 1991 and 2006.

The high smoking rates are fueled by low prices. “Over the past 20 years, tobacco deaths have been decreasing in Western countries, partly because of price increases,” said Richard Peto, a co-author of the study. “For China, a substantial increase in cigarette prices could save tens of millions of lives.” Pervasive myths don’t help either, including beliefs that Asians are less susceptible to tobacco’s effects and smoking is easy to quit. The World Health Organization estimates that only a quarter of Chinese adults have a “comprehensive understanding” of smoking’s hazards.

This lack of awareness is hardly surprising when you look into who’s selling the cigarettes: An estimated 98 percent of the Chinese cigarette market is controlled by China National Tobacco Corporation, a government-owned conglomerate that runs more than 160 cigarette brands. According to a Bloomberg Business feature on the topic, the industry accounts for 7 percent of the country’s revenue each year and employs roughly 500,000 people. In 2013, the company manufactured 2.25 trillion cigarettes. (Philip Morris International, the second-largest producer, manufactured 880 billion.)

“The extent to which the government is interlocked with the fortunes of China National might best be described by the company’s presence in schools,” writes Bloomberg’s Andrew Martin. “Slogans over the entrances to sponsored elementary schools read, ‘Genius comes from hard work. Tobacco helps you become talented.'”

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Smoking Will Kill 1 in 3 Chinese Men

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You Can’t Go To Prison For Destroying The Economy, But Bad Peanut Butter Is Another Story

by AntoniaDWQ Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Food company executives who play a role in outbreaks that sicken and kill consumers now face the prospect of decades in prison because of a recent precedent-setting case and a crackdown by federal prosecutors.

Stewart Parnell, an executive from Peanut Corporation of America, a now-defunct company behind one of the worst Salmonella outbreaks to hit the US, was sentenced Monday to 28 years in prison. He sold contaminated food products that claimed nine lives and sickened more than 700 people in 46 states.

It is by far the most severe punishment ever given for criminal food safety violations. His brother, Michael Parnell, also a top official at PCA was sentenced to 20 years and quality assurance manager, Mary Wilkerson was sentenced to five.

The hefty sentences signal that the feds are stepping up prosecutions against high-ranking officials and underscores some of the challenges agencies face when they want to hold companies accountable. Still, the crimes committed by the Parnells could have led to much stiffer sentences. Stewart Parnell was convicted of 47 offenses, which qualified him for a sentence of up to 803 years—and he was facing life behind bars.

“Honestly, I think the fact that he was prosecuted at all is a victory for consumers,” says Bill Marler, a foodborne illness lawyer who represents more than 50 victims of the outbreak. “Although his sentence is less than the maximum, it is the longest sentence ever in a food poisoning case. This sentence is going to send a stiff, cold wind through board rooms across the U.S.”

The massive 2008 Salmonella outbreak prompted officials to strip 4,000 products made by 361 companies from store shelves, resulting in roughly $200 million in losses. Ultimately, the tainted food was traced back to PCA—a manufacturer that sells peanut-based-products to companies like Kellogg, Sara Lee, and Little Debbie, as well as government programs that produce food for poor children and the military. According to a federal investigation, company officials spent years covering up unsanitary production conditions, faking test results, and lying to customers and consumers when salmonella was detected in their facilities.

Salmonella victim Jacob Hurley with his father Peter J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

Jacob Hurley was one of the victims infected with salmonella in 2008 after eating one of his favorite snacks—peanut butter crackers. At the time, he was only 3-years-old. Hurley, now 10, survived and traveled with his father to the sentencing on Monday. “I think its OK for him to spent the rest of his life in prison,” he told the judge.

Nine victims, such as Clifford Tousignant, a Korean War hero with three Purple Hearts who became ill after eating a peanut butter sandwich died from their infections caused by contaminated food.

The indictment against Parnell, which relied on uncovered emails and investigations, revealed that between 2003 and 2009 PCA shipped products before the results of tests were complete. Parnell green-lighted the use of faked and fabricated certificates of analysis, documents that certify food has been properly tested. Even after Salmonella had been detected numerous times, the company continued to claim that their products were safe and sell them to customers.

In several emails Parnell instructs his employees to violate standards. After being told in 2007 that salmonella testing results would take longer than expected and shipping would be delayed, he responded, “Shit, just ship it.” Soon after an employee sent an email saying that some peanut totes were “covered in dust and rat crap,” to which Parnell responded “Clean em all up and ship them.”

After the outbreak, PCA was liquidated through bankruptcy proceedings.

“Our prosecution is just one more example of the forceful actions that the Department of Justice, with its agency partners, takes against any individual or company who compromises the safety of America’s food supply for financial gain,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Stuart Delery in statement after the sentence was announced.

While victims and advocates are pleased that the case is finally coming to a close and the Parnells are on their way to prison, Marler says he hopes more will be done to stop shoddy business practices that could lead to future infections.

Largely because of the outbreak linked to Peanut Corporation of America the FDA has introduced new rules, along with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)—a bill signed into law in 2011 intended to crack down on contamination before it reaches consumers. However, so far the agency has lacked the resources to fully implement them. Congress has appropriated less than half of what the Congressional Budget Office recommended was necessary to fund implementation of FSMA.

To make up for investigations into potential risks, Marler says the FDA has beefed up its prosecution of law-breakers.

And, in some cases, like Parnell’s it’s warranted, he added.

“I am not a huge fan of criminalization of things but I think there are instances where it’s necessary,” he says. “This is one of those necessary cases—the facts are so horrific and the clear knowledge that they had that they were shipping contaminated product.” But, he adds, “We would all be better served if we spent more money to have more FDA inspectors—and just avoided these problems to begin with.”

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You Can’t Go To Prison For Destroying The Economy, But Bad Peanut Butter Is Another Story

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Meet the Megadonors Bankrolling Jeb Bush’s Campaign

by pinfamozpa Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush knows it doesn’t look good if a candidate appears to get most of his financial support from a small group of wealthy donors. Earlier this spring, he asked donors to try not to give checks of more than $1 million to his super-PAC, and when the group announced its total haul for the first six months of the year, it took pains to emphasize that 9,400 of its more than 9,900 contributors had donated less than $25,000.

But now it’s going to be a lot harder for anyone to think of the Bush super-PAC—which completely dwarfs his campaign in terms of financial resources—as anything but driven by extremely wealthy donors.

This morning, the Right to Rise super-PAC filed its first disclosure reports, confirming that it had indeed raised $103 million in the first six months of the year. That is an unprecedented amount, but what’s really news is the distribution of the donations. It does appear that only about 500 donors gave more than $25,000 to the super-PAC, but donations of less than $25,000 accounted for just $21.7 million of the total. On the other end of the spectrum, 23 people gave more than $1 million to the super-PAC, contributing a total of $27.3 million.

The size of the donations is shocking. Despite the growing public perception that super-PACs are playgrounds for millionaires, the number of people who have ever given $1 million to political causes in their lifetimes is small. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan campaign finance organization (where I used to work), prior to this election cycle, just 475 individuals had ever given $1 million or more cumulatively since 1989, when it began keeping track of the data. Given the seven-figure donations that have already been reported for other super-PACs in the last week, the number is probably well over 500 people now, and the Right to Rise super-PAC is responsible for many of them.

The fact that only about 0.04 percent of Americans gave more than $2,600 last election cycle means that even most of the donors who gave less than $25,000 were already elite in terms of political donations. But with these latest numbers, even the under-$25,000 contributors begins to look like small donors by comparison.

Among Bush’s top donors are people with an interest in some of the top foreign policy debates right now. Miguel Fernandez, a private equity executive who chipped in $3 million, the largest contribution to the super-PAC, was a refugee from Cuba. Bush has slammed President Obama’s rapprochement with the Castro regime. Hushang Ansary was the Iranian ambassador to the US before the Iranian Revolution; he and his wife each donated $1 million. Bush has likewise opposed Obama’s nuclear-containment deal with Iran.

The list of top donors has some expected names, the dependable rainmakers who have long fueled the Bush family. Included among the top donors are big Texas names like oilmen T. Boone Pickens and Ray Hunt, as well as the widow of Harold Simmons, a Dallas chemical magnate who is one of the largest political donors of all time and who was a major source of money for Karl Rove’s various fundraising efforts over the years.

There are also a number of donors who are not people—something that could not have happened before the super-PAC era, or at least not on the same scale. NextEra Energy, Florida’s electric utility, donated $1 million to the super-PAC. That donation itself is unusual, given that publicly traded corporations have tended to avoid giving money to super-PACs, though they may legally do so after the Citizens United court decision in 2010. The US Sugar Corporation Charitable Trust donated $505,000—possibly a first for charities, which are generally excluded from involving themselves in politics.

Not all of the corporate donors are quite as transparent. One $1 million donation came from a shell corporation called Jasper Reserve LLC. On the disclosure forms, the company lists a Charleston, West Virginia address belonging to a law firm that has represented numerous coal companies over the years. The company appears to be registered in Delaware, effectively blocking any information about who founded it or runs it.

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Meet the Megadonors Bankrolling Jeb Bush’s Campaign

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Israel and Palestine Would Make $173 Billion If They Stopped Fighting Today

by YFWCarroll Posted on June 9, 2015

Mother Jones

There are many reasons to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to a recent study, there might even be 173 billion reasons.

Researchers at the Rand Corporation’s Center for Middle East Public Policy recently mounted a study to determine the net economic costs and benefits of various alternatives in the Middle East over the next ten years. They looked at five possible scenarios: a two state solution; a coordinated unilateral withdrawal of 60,000 Israelis from much of the West Bank, with 75 percent of the cost covered by the international community and 25 percent of the bill footed by Israel; an uncoordinated unilateral withdrawal, in which only 30,000 Israeli settlers leave the West Bank and Israel bankrolls the withdrawal completely; nonviolent Palestinian resistance to Israel through boycotts of Israeli products in the region, and diplomatic efforts in the UN; and a violent Palestinian uprising beginning Gaza, with the potential to spread to the West Bank and involve players like Hezbollah.

The study asserts that the two-state solution is most profitable, and could allow Israel to gain $123 billion by 2024. Assuming that an agreement is reached and Israel retreats to the 1967 borders (save for agreed-upon swapped territories), 100,000 Israeli settlers relocated from the West Bank to Israel, Palestinian trade and travel restrictions are lifted, and up to 600,000 refugees are returned to their homes in the West Bank and Gaza, the changes in “direct and opportunity costs”—among them a projected 20 percent increase in tourism and a 150 percent increase in Palestinian trade—would be immediate boons. The peace would bring the cessation of Arab country trade sanctions and with it, a raise of Israel’s GDP by $23 billion over what it would have been under the status quo. Palestine would pocket over $50 billion under these conditions. Palestinians would see an average per capita income increase of approximately 36 percent. Under such a peace accord, Israelis would experience a 5 percent increase in income.

Conversely, the study found that “a return to violence would have profoundly negative economic consequences for both Palestinians and Israelis.” Specifically, it estimates that per capita GDP would fall by 46 percent in Gaza and the West Bank, and by 10 percent in Israel.

The study was posted with an interactive calculator that allows users to estimate GDP increases and decreases with changes in the Israeli defense budget or an influx of Palestinian workers in Israel.

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Israel and Palestine Would Make $173 Billion If They Stopped Fighting Today

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Which Tech Companies Are the Greenest?

by PercySpangler Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“It’s not easy being green” is a tired cliché, but it’s still particularly true if you are a giant technology company. Even Apple, Facebook, and Google—the best of the bunch, according to a new report from Greenpeace—will have to put in serious additional effort to fully shift to clean energy, especially in terms of lobbying at the state and local level. And the industry laggards, which include Amazon and eBay, have that much further to go.

Here’s how Greenpeace categorizes the tech giants:

Greenpeace

Energy efficiency in traditional appliances keeps improving, but our demand for energy is boosted by new technologies. In particular, companies that manufacture mobile devices and provide services like email, social networking, cloud storage, and streaming video have to contend with constantly escalating demand for data storage.

At the same time, being eco-friendly is important to many of those same companies—or at least important to their public image. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft all dropped out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) last year because of bad publicity around the right-wing corporatist group’s opposition to action on climate change. But tech giants will need to do a lot more than quit dirty lobbying groups, Greenpeace argues; they’ll need to actually get involved in the political sphere on behalf of clean energy solutions.

First, the good news is that some tech companies are making respectable efforts to power their operations through clean energy sources. Google has invested heavily in solar energy, and Apple announced just yesterday that it’s expanding its renewable programs to manufacturing facilities in China. But in many cases, the issue is not whether companies have good intentions but whether clean energy is available to them.

Here are a few key quotes from the Greenpeace report:

Apple continues to lead the charge in powering its corner of the internet with renewable energy even as it continues to rapidly expand. All three of its data center expansions announced in the past year will be powered with renewable energy.
Google continues to match Apple in deploying renewable energy with its expansion in some markets, but its march toward 100 percent renewable energy is increasingly under threat by monopoly utilities for several data centers including those in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Singapore and Taiwan.

And here are some challenges the report lays out:

Amazon’s adoption of a 100 percent renewable energy goal, while potentially significant, lacks basic transparency and, unlike similar commitments from Apple, Facebook or Google, does not yet appear to be guiding Amazon’s investment decisions toward renewable energy and away from coal.
The rapid rise of streaming video is driving significant growth in our online footprint, and in power-hungry data centers and network infrastructure needed to deliver it.
Microsoft has slipped further behind Apple and Google in the race to build a green internet, as its cloud footprint continues to undergo massive growth in an attempt to catch up with Amazon, but has not kept pace with Apple and Google in terms of its supply of renewable electricity.

The underlying problem in many cases is that dirty energy-dependent utility monopolies are providing the electricity for massive, and growing, data centers. If these utilities use coal or natural gas, then by extension so do the tech companies with data centers in their service areas. Meeting data-storage demand without burning more fossil fuels will not be easy. Greenpeace writes:

Big data’s massive growth is expected to continue with the emergence of cheap smartphones: nearly 80 percent of the planet’s adult population will be connected to the internet by 2020, and the total number of devices connected to the internet will be roughly twice the global population by 2018. Internet traffic from mobile devices increased 69 percent in 2014 alone with the rapid increase of video streaming to mobile devices, and mobile traffic will exceed what is delivered over wired connections by 2018.

There are different ways to increase renewable energy supply at data centers. The first, of course, is simply to generate clean power on site with solar panels or wind turbines. Apple is already doing this and other companies are following its lead. But data centers require so much energy that they won’t generally be able to cover most of their needs that way. Other free-market approaches include power purchase agreements, in which the tech companies can make a deal with a clean energy supplier, and “green tariffs,” in which they agree to buy 100 percent clean power from the local utility at a price premium.

To get all their energy from renewables, though, will require tech companies to engage in policy debates. Greenpeace writes:

In many markets, companies’ ability to power with renewable energy will remain severely limited without policy changes. Even in more liberalized markets, it behooves companies to advocate for policies that will green the broader grid, narrowing the ground that they need to cover to power with 100 percent renewable energy. Companies can and must become advocates with the regulators and policymakers who ultimately have the power to change markets in ways that will allow companies to achieve their renewable energy goals. State policymakers covet data center investments, offering significant tax incentives to companies to lure them into their borders. Companies could compel a similar race to the top on renewable energy.

There were a few instances last year of tech companies lobbying for clean energy policies—Google submitted comments in favor of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and several major tech firms signed the “Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles” calling on state regulators and utilities to expand access to renewable energy.

Greenpeace argues that tech companies particularly need to get engaged in state and local politics, forming an effective counterweight to the fossil fuel and right-wing interest group money that has swayed state legislative races and outcomes in recent years. Last year, Facebook and Microsoft submitted comments to the Iowa Utilities Board in favor of distributed electricity generation, but that was a relatively isolated event. That sort of activism needs to become routine.

In North Carolina, for example, Greenpeace notes that it’s illegal to buy renewable energy from a third party instead of buying whatever dirty energy is offered by state monopoly Duke Energy. The same state legislature that is offering tax incentives to attract data centers is considering changing that law. Tech companies should tell North Carolina that doing so is a precondition to getting any data centers located there, Greenpeace argues. Similarly, Virginia has a harsh cap on third-party clean power purchases, and the State Corporation Commission is due to review that rule this year.

You can be sure that the utilities, the Koch brothers, Art Pope, and Americans for Prosperity will be involved in these fights. If clean energy supporters are not, they will be over before they have begun. To really be green, tech companies need to put their muscle into this fight.

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Which Tech Companies Are the Greenest?

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McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

by 0c4g78x Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here is a hilarious thing that I find hilarious. The first McDonald’s franchise opened its doors 60 years ago today in Des Plaines, Illinois. This is the day McDonald’s Corporation celebrates as its birthday. When you dive into Google to find the opening day menu for the McDonald’s that opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955, this is what you find:

source: kottke.com

Notice anything funny? On its opening day menu, McDonald’s bragged about having already served “over 15 million burgers.” So what’s going on? Is this just a hilariously transparent case of false advertising or something else?

It turns out something else. Though McDonald’s as we know it traces its origins to April 15, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, that was actually just the first franchise. McDonald’s had actually already existed for years in California. It was founded by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in the 1940s. The site’s official history explains:

Entrepreneur Ray Kroc pitched his vision of creating McDonald’s restaurants all over the U.S. to the brothers. In 1955, he founded McDonald’s System, Inc., a predecessor of the McDonald’s Corporation, and six years later bought the exclusive rights to the McDonald’s name. By 1958, McDonald’s had sold its 100 millionth hamburger.

So there was nothing nefarious about this claim, but it is still pretty amusing.

Correction: This post originally said Des Plaines was in Iowa. It is in Illinois. I’m dumb.

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McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

Posted in Anchor, Bragg, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

by NataliaWarfield Posted on February 10, 2015

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Members of Congress and a big utility are teaming up to raise that question. But experts think their concerns are overblown. Solar panels on the roof of a house in Apache Junction, Arizona. Darryl Webb/AP Back in December, a group of Republican members of Congress from Arizona and Texas sent a worried letter to the Federal Trade Commission. Solar panel companies, the letter claimed, might be using deceptive marketing practices to lease their rooftop systems to homeowners without fully disclosing the financial risks. The concerns were similar to those raised a month earlier by Democratic lawmakers—also from Arizona and Texas—in a letter sent to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Both letters raised the specter of serious problems in the business model of the country’s fastest-growing energy source. But as the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last month, the Republicans’ letter was originally drafted by an employee of Arizona Public Service, the state’s biggest electric utility and a long-time opponent of third-party solar companies. The draft was passed by APS to the office of Rep. Paul Gosar (R), which made a few changes, got the Congressman’s signature, and sent it off, according to AZCIR’s report. (The letter is here; the highlights were added by AZCIR to show where changes had been made from the original APS draft.) It’s not the first time APS has engaged in this type of secretive advocacy to undermine solar, an exploding industry that poses an existential threat to the old-school utility’s bottom line. In 2013, the company outed itself as the backer of two secretive nonprofits that ran an aggressive anti-solar ad campaign in the state. Back then, the company’s target was net metering, the policy that requires utility companies to buy excess electricity produced by its customers’ rooftop panels. Now APS’s focus appears to have shifted to the marketing practices of companies that lease solar panels to homeowners. “This is the next evolution in the utility playbook,” said Susan Glick, a spokesperson for The Alliance for Solar Choice, an advocacy group that represents some of the country’s biggest solar companies. APS wants “to demonize rooftop solar and ensure they have a monopoly,” she said. The cost of rooftop solar systems has plummeted in recent years. But some solar companies have realized that many homeowners are still unable to pay north of $10,000 to buy and install panels. Instead, the trendy option is solar leasing: A company installs panels on your roof for free and then charges you a monthly fee for the power they produce, which in theory is less than what you paid your electric utility. A recent industry survey found that about half of all residential solar systems are leased rather than owned. A spokesperson for Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D)—one of the authors of the Democratic letter—told Climate Desk that Kirkpatrick wanted to “take the lead” on the letter to the CFPB “after receiving numerous complaints about solar rooftop leasing practices in Arizona.” The spokesperson added that “any suggestion that the congresswoman issued the letter because of coercion by the utilities is false.” The APS-authored letter from Gosar and his GOP colleagues was more specific. It alleged that, as part of their rush to sign up customers before a federal tax credit expires, solar leasing companies have been overstating the savings that homeowners will receive. Neither Gosar’s office nor APS returned requests for comment. Both letters drew parallels between solar leasing and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which financial companies used shady lending practices to lure home buyers into mortgages they couldn’t really afford. It’s been a couple months now since the letters were fired off, and the response from the feds has been mixed. On Jan. 12 the CFPB responded to Kirkpatrick and her peers, writing that the agency is “currently studying a number of overlapping issues that may implicate the leasing of rooftop panels.” A CFPB spokesperson declined to elaborate on what exactly those issues are and whether these inquiries were instigated by Kirkpatrick’s letter. An FTC spokesperson said the agency had not yet taken any action on solar leasing. Back in Arizona, last month the state’s Corporation Commission opened a docket to collect preliminary information on solar leasing, with the possibility of a more thorough investigation in the future, a spokesperson said. So is the congressional prodding warranted, or just glorified lobbying for one freaked-out utility company? For all the noise, actual complaints against solar leasing companies seem to be relatively rare. According to the AZCIR report, Gosar’s chief of staff said he had not actually seen any complaints, and a spokesperson for Kirkpatrick “declined to answer questions about the quantity of reports, the way the reports reached their office, or to confirm that they reviewed any consumer complaints.” The Corporation Commission docket currently contains only one complaint, from a Scottsdale resident who claimed that “uneducated residents are bamboozled into these programs by unscrupulous businesses looking to make a quick buck.” That was essentially the complaint in a separate 2013 lawsuit against SunRun, a leading solar leasing company, brought by a California man who claimed he was misled about cost savings. SunRun denied the allegation, and that claim has since been dropped, the man’s law firm said. And a smattering of news outlets have reported cases of homeowners finding it more difficult than they expected to sell homes that are attached to a solar lease. But Travis Lowder, an energy finance analyst with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, said complaints like this tend to be rare, isolated incidents that don’t reflect systemic flaws with the solar leasing business model. Lowder runs a team that has spent the last several years developing standardized contracts and practices for solar leasing companies. “The solar industry has been very proactive on consumer protection laws,” Lowder said. “They don’t want to put the consumer in the position where the consumer is going to default, because they need that cash flow” to support the large up-front costs of solar installations on other roofs. The biggest issue, Lowder said, comes down the long lifespan of a typical solar lease: 20 years. Over that time scale, a solar lease ultimately amounts to thousands of dollars of debt taken on by homeowners. What’s more, most lease contracts include terms that gradually increase the monthly fees paid by homeowners over time. The pitch to customers is that the solar fee rate will escalate less than the cost of grid electricity. (Over the last decade, the average cost of electricity nationwide rose 36 percent.) The problem is that it’s practically impossible to make iron-clad predictions about cost savings that far in advance. Unforeseen changes to US energy policy or to a customer’s local electricity market, for example, could potentially reduce savings from solar over the grid, while homeowners remain locked in to their original contracts. Energy investors and analysts make those predictive calculations all the time, but always with a number of assumptions about future market conditions and an appreciation for the built-in uncertainty. So the challenge is communicating that uncertainty to customers. Solar leases “are certainly not risk-free,” said Nathanael Green, a renewables policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Still, he said, the agitation from APS is “almost without a doubt a politically motivated attack.” “That doesn’t mean it’s all nonsense,” added Green. “You have to separate out some of the silliness from the real things we can do a better job of.” Either way, courts and state and federal regulators will now have a chance to weigh in. Because Arizona is among the country’s largest solar markets, with a colorful history of conflict between incumbent power companies and their renewable rivals, the outcome there could set the stage for how solar leasing is treated elsewhere. Nicholas Mack, the general counsel of solar financing company Clean Power Finance, has worked with NREL on developing best practices for solar leasing. The solar industry will be ready if the government comes knocking, he said: “I do think we can withstand the scrutiny.”

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Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

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Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?

Posted in bamboo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, green energy, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, Scotts, solar, solar panels, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Solar Companies Ripping You Off?