Tag Archives: corporations

Watchdog: Wednesday’s Big Wall Street Settlement Is “Laughably Inadequate”

by DwainOquinn Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, six massive international banks agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle allegations from regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland that their traders tried to manipulate the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign-currency exchange market. But Wall Street watchdogs say the banks got off with a slap on the wrist.

From 2008 through 2013, traders at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS colluded to coordinate the buying and selling of 10 major currencies to manipulate prices in their favor. The penalties—announced Wednesday by an alphabet soup of American and foreign regulatory agencies—mark the end of the first phase of investigations into the banks that could lead to further fines. They “should be seen as a message to all market participants that wrongdoing and foul play in the financial markets is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Tim Massad, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said in a statement.

But critics say the banks, which were not forced to admit wrongdoing, deserved a much harsher punishment. “The global too-big-to-fail banks are again allowed to evade responsibility and accountability by using shareholders’ money to pay big fines, which will generate headlines but do little if anything to stop the relentless Wall Street crime spree,” Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a financial reform advocacy shop, responded in a statement.

David Weidner, who covers Wall Street for MarketWatch, agrees. The settlements “appear to be just another cost-of-doing-business budget line for the banks,” he wrote.

What’s more, financial reformers say, none of the employees involved in the rate-fixing will face criminal charges. “It’s corrupt, as usual,” says one House staffer. Regulators should “send crooks to jail.”

As part of the deal, the CFTC and Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority called on the banks to strengthen their internal monitoring of foreign exchange trading activity. But “while the banks did agree to take certain steps to better supervise their traders, that is laughably inadequate” to prevent future wrongdoing, Kelleher says.

The Justice Department and New York’s Department of Financial Services have been pursuing separate criminal investigations into the alleged rate manipulation. Those probes could result in criminal charges, although “if history is any indication,” Weidner says, the people charged won’t be high-level executives. To date, only one top banker who helped cause the financial crisis went to jail because of it. This time, he adds, they will likely “single out low-ranking traders who pushed the buttons.”

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Watchdog: Wednesday’s Big Wall Street Settlement Is “Laughably Inadequate”

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Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal

by johnsmith2345as Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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The plan announced last night for the United States and China to join forces in the fight against climate change is a big deal. It sets a new, more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target for the US (although the target will only bring emissions slightly below 1990 levels, which isn’t as aggressive as climate scientists have advocated). It establishes a goal for China to get one-fifth of its power from low-carbon sources by 2030. And it lays out what both countries will bring to the table at next year’s international climate negotiations in Paris. That should help other countries set their own goals, and it increases the likelihood that the talks will be productive.

More coverage of the historic US-China climate deal.


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Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal


Awkward: Watch a Supercut of Republicans Using China As an Excuse to Do Nothing About Climate Change


Deep Inside the Wild World of China’s Fracking Boom


Here Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts

The deal could also be a big win for the clean energy sector. It calls for more funding for research and development projects focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean vehicles. It also includes a major new pilot project in China to study carbon capture and sequestration, the controversial technology that—at least in theory—could help China curb its emissions while continuing to burn coal for electricity.

Perhaps most significantly, the plan says that for China to meet its clean energy production target, it will have to roll out an additional 800 to 1,000 gigawatts of low-carbon energy sources by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to the size of the US’s current electric grid, but made up entirely of non-fossil energy. So the renewable energy market in China, already the world’s biggest, is poised to grow by a lot over the next decade or so. That’s not necessarily a new development, but now we know that the growth expectation is nailed down to some specific numbers—and that it will happen with the support of the US government and American companies.

In other words, China’s climate goals represent a big economic opportunity for both countries.

“I think the technology stuff is the most important part of this agreement,” said Alex Trembath, an energy analyst with the Breakthrough Institute. “This is what energy innovation looks like: Not only partnerships in deploying new technologies, but innovation that takes advantage of demand in growing markets” like China.

Up to this point, trade relations on clean energy have been a little icy between China and the US, especially on solar power. Over the last couple years, the explosion of the solar power market has led to some bitter trade wars between Chinese and American solar panel manufacturers, with US regulators complaining that Chinese companies were dumping super-cheap panels on the American market. The Commerce Department already raised tariffs on Chinese solar technology this summer, and it’s poised to do so again in December.

But Nick Culver, a solar market analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, says yesterday’s announcement effectively signals a pivot in the Obama administration’s attitude that will ultimately benefit the US solar industry.

“Folks in the solar world are worried about a discrete number of things that can really throw the brakes in US, and one of those things is a trade war with escalating tariffs,” Culver said. “This seems like it really relieves that fear,” because the plan makes it US policy to promote, not inhibit, China’s clean energy sector.

Culver cautioned that it could be several years before China’s new commitments translate to a noticeable uptick in manufacturing, so don’t expect solar stock prices to necessarily skyrocket right away. The bilateral plan is light on details, so it’s hard to say exactly when and how China envisions ramping up its solar deployment. But now the tone is set for a relationship between the countries that is less combative and more collaborative.

That attitude applies beyond solar power. China is the world’s biggest coal consumer; it gets more than 70 percent of its power from coal. Thanks to China’s skyrocketing growth, its coal addiction is expected to rise until 2030, when the International Energy Agency predicts China will, at its peak, consume more than half the world’s coal. To reconcile China’s need for more cheap energy with its climate goals, the plan calls for a major pilot project to study carbon capture and sequestration, a technology intended to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants and either bury it underground or repackage it for use as an industrial chemical.

The project will be a fresh opportunity to prove that CCS can be made economically viable—the closest equivalent project in the US, a coal plant in Mississippi, is a $5 billion boondoggle.

“Having CCS called out specifically is a good sign that the technology is necessary” for China to meet its climate goals, said Elizabeth Burton, director of the Global CCS Institute, a Melbourne-based think tank.

Nuclear power could also be a winner. China already has 26 nuclear reactors in the works, with an additional 60 planned, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. These will likely become a key component of China’s push for low-carbon energy.

Trembath said the agreement is a model for international collaboration on climate action that reduces our collective carbon footprint without the geopolitical hassle of a legally binding global treaty.

“If you really want to gather momentum for clean energy,” Trembath said, “you have to take advantage of China.”

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Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal

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The Mother Jones Guide to Evil NBA Owners

by JungDellinger Posted on October 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Six months ago, the NBA rid itself of its worst owner, perpetual sleazebag Donald Sterling. Everyone praised the swift, harsh punishment meted out by commissioner Adam Silver for Sterling’s racist tirade—well, almost everyone. Shortly after the league announced the lifetime ban of the Clippers owner, Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank celeb Mark Cuban called the league’s move “a very, very slippery slope.”

Cuban got on board the next day, even tweeting that he agreed 100 percent with Silver’s decision. But what was he so worried about? Well, the league’s 30 owners might not have Sterling-like baggage, but there’s plenty of embarrassing biographical material to mine—offensive emails, family feuds, sketchy business deals, and more—just like we here at Mother Jones did for their counterparts in baseball and football. So, with an eye on political contributions and general scumbaggery, here’s how the NBA’s most powerful men (and woman) stack up:

Atlanta
Boston
Brooklyn
Charlotte
Chicago
Cleveland
Dallas
Denver
Detroit
Golden State
Houston
Indiana
LA Clippers
LA Lakers
Memphis
Miami
Milwaukee
Minnesota
New Orleans
New York
Oklahoma City
Orlando
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Portland
Sacramento
San Antonio
Toronto
Utah
Washington

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlanta Hawks: Bruce Levenson, reportedly worth $500 million, likely won’t be the Hawks owner for long, not after the email he self-reported to the league following the Sterling debacle. The offending missive included observations like “My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base” and “i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that’s our season tixs demo,” and “I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black.” (Notably, a league higher-up told one reporter that Levenson didn’t actually self-report the email, and others have suggested that he might have used it as an ownership exit strategy.)

Boston Celtics: Wycliffe “Wyc” Grousbeck—son of H. Irving Grousbeck, the cofounder of Continental Cablevision, which sold for $5.3 billion in 1996—was a Princeton rower before becoming a venture capitalist and eventually buying the Celtics with his dad in 2002. In his spare time, Grousbeck moonlights as a drummer (he once played with former Celtic Walter McCarty). His brother, a singer-songwriter who goes by Peter Walker, told the Boston Globe in 2004 that “Wyc’s pretty much a straight-up rock dude.”

Private equity investor Stephen Pagliuca is managing director at Mitt Romney’s old haunt, Bain Capital. But Pagliuca’s politics lean left: He’s a big Democratic donor, and in 2009 he ran for the party’s nomination to replace Ted Kennedy. He came in last of four candidates.

Brooklyn Nets: The famously tech averse Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov (who reportedly doesn’t use a cellphone or computer in his office) bought the Nets for $200 million in 2010 and helped oversee their move from New Jersey to Brooklyn. He’s one of the tabloids’ favorite back-page curiosities, and why not? In 2007, he famously brought eight Russian models with him to the French Alps to help entertain the dozens of business associates he was partying with. French authorities temporarily detained him, fearing that he was encouraging prostitution. Prokhorov’s response: The French elite were just jealous because they were way behind when it came to fashion, life, and sex drive. (He later told 60 Minutes that he hadn’t yet found a woman who cooked well enough to marry.) He’s also really into jet skiing:

Charlotte Hornets: Six NBA titles. Five league MVP awards. Countless pairs of ripped jeans. Michael Jordan has stumbled often since his days as the league’s premier player, gumming it up as an executive, sneaker mogul, and even Hall of Fame inductee. Legendary for his competitive nature—and penchant for attacking teammates he saw as weak links—His Airness can’t seem to help himself when it comes to being the official arbiter of all-time NBA greatness. Mix in a decade as management, and you get plenty of “Back in my day…” moments, like when he recently called out superstars LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki for suggesting that the league scale back its 82-game schedule: “Are they ready to give up money to play fewer games? That’s the question, because you can’t make the same amount of money playing fewer games.”

Chicago Bulls: Jerry Reinsdorf, who also owns baseball’s White Sox, has always been more of a baseball man. That’s where he’s focused much of his energy over the years, becoming one of the players union’s biggest adversaries and a pioneer of publicly funded stadiums. When he threatened to move the Sox to Florida in the early 1990s, he got a sweetheart deal from Illinois—or, as one confidant told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1993, “Not only are there ticket subsidies from the state, but if a light goes out in the bathroom, the state pays for the bulb and the installation. If we sent him to the Middle East to deal with the Arabs, they wouldn’t have any oil left. He’s that good.”

Cleveland Cavaliers: Not only is Dan Gilbert the nation’s most notorious user of Comic Sans, he’s also the billionaire owner of the country’s second-largest mortgage lender, Quicken Loans. And while Quicken has cultivated a squeaky-clean image over the years—note its annual place on those best-places-to-work lists, as well as its goofy emphasis on Gilbert’s “isms”—it did face its share of post-crisis lawsuits. Now that LeBron is back in Cleveland, Gilbert has just one rebuilding project to focus on: his commitment to turn around his hometown of Detroit, where he has bought and updated some 60 downtown properties at a reported cost of $1.3 billion, and moved 12,000 of his own employees there. (Some even have taken to calling downtown Detroit “Gilbertville.”) It’s a risk, but then again, Gilbert bankrolled roughly half of a $47 million campaign to bring gambling to Ohio via a 2009 ballot initiative. The initiative passed, and Gilbert’s Horseshoe Casino opened in downtown Cleveland in 2012.

Detroit Pistons: Tom Gores, 50, is a Beverly Hills tech buyout king and owner of Platinum Equity, which has bought out everything from steel manufacturers to the San Diego Union-Tribune (though it lost out on a bid for the Boston Globe back in 2009). Gores was born in Israel and moved to the Detroit area as a child; he worked at his brother Alec’s software company and private equity firm before leaving to start Platinum. The brothers’ relationship cooled when it was revealed that Tom, who is married with three kids, had a sexual relationship with Lisa Gores, Alec’s wife. (Alec had Los Angeles private detective Anthony Pellicano follow Lisa and Tom, and the scoop came out in Pellicano’s 2008 trial for illegal wiretapping.) For photos of Gores’ squinching game, check out the gallery at TomGores.com.

Indiana Pacers: Herbert Simon and his nephew David run one of the world’s largest real estate investment funds, the Simon Property Group. He has eight kids and is on marriage No. 3, to former Miss Thailand Bui Simon. He started SPG with his brother, Melvin, David’s father. When Melvin died, his widow, Bren, feuded with her stepchildren, calling David “a terrorist” and stepdaughter Debbie “Debbie bin Laden.” Herbert and Bui fought off three successive lawsuits from former domestic employees—all brought by the same attorney.

Miami Heat: In a 2005 Washington Post profile of Heat owner Micky Arison, team president and then-coach Pat Riley raved about him: “He’s about as down to earth as you’re going to get for a billionaire…He doesn’t need, nor does he pursue, the spotlight.” Arison took over Carnival Cruises from father Fred and presided over its rise—as well as its recent Poop Cruise-era fall. (He stepped down as CEO last year.) Still, Arison seems to take setbacks in stride, given his gracious response to LeBron James’ departure for Cleveland this past offseason and his general outlook on the business world (as told to the Post): “In any given year, out of 30 NBA teams, there is only one winner. In business, we can all be winners.”

Milwaukee Bucks: The most memorable thing hedge fund exec Wesley Edens—whom Vanity Fair described as a “cerebral, intense, very private wunderkind”—has done as one of the Bucks’ new owners is send his 18-year-old daughter, Mallory, to the NBA Draft Lottery this past May to represent the Bucks. (The team snagged the second pick.)

Meanwhile, fellow hedge fund exec and Clinton confidant Marc Lasry was up for consideration for the French ambassadorship—only to pull out just before stories emerged about his taste for high-stakes poker.

New York Knicks: Where to start with tabloid staple and Cablevision CEO James Dolan? With the sexual-harassment scandal involving former coach Isiah Thomas and team executive Anucha Browne Sanders? Or perhaps the lawsuit this past March from a shareholder alleging “grossly excessive” executive pay after Cablevision’s board approved $80 million in bonuses for Dolan and his father, chairman Charles Dolan? Then there’s the endless kookiness surrounding the team’s media policy, which requires a member of the PR office to be present for all interviews with Knicks players and coaches—and then to send transcripts up the chain of command, even to Dolan? Oh, and Dolan also fronts a band called JD & the Straight Shot. He wrote a song called “Under That Hood” (It’s all good/Under my hood/So misunderstood) about Trayvon Martin.

Orlando Magic: From Andy Kroll’s expansive profile on Richard DeVos and his political family:

He fit the part of GOP rainmaker-in-chief, wearing a diamond pinkie ring and Gucci loafers, driving a Rolls-Royce and frequently commuting to his nearby office by helicopter. He once docked Amway’s $5 million yacht on the Potomac River in Washington to hold court with Michigan’s congressional delegation, RNC staffers, and personnel from 12 embassies representing countries where Amway did business. DeVos was also a strident voice within the party: In an era when Republicans still courted labor, he urged the GOP to ignore union members. “If they want to be represented by somebody else,” he once said, “good for them.” At a party meeting in 1982, he called the recession that was spiking inflation and unemployment “beneficial” and “a cleansing tonic” for society.

DeVos recently was the subject of an Orlando Sentinel column headlined, “Is Magic’s Rich DeVos Next NBA Owner to Become a Target?” (The story, which came out after the Sterling fiasco, was about DeVos’ anti-gay views.)

Philadelphia 76ers: Buyout-firm maven Joshua Harris made his billions in private equity, cofounding Apollo Global Management, which made headlines in 2011 when it was revealed that it had paid a former California Public Employees’ Retirement System board member tens of millions of dollars to score billions in investments from the pension fund. (Apollo wasn’t accused of wrongdoing.) Harris, who also owns the New Jersey Devils, reportedly is on the verge of buying the English Premier League’s Crystal Palace. Meanwhile, the rebuilding-focused Sixers continue to suck; in April, following the team’s 19-63 season, Harris called the year “a huge success.”

Toronto Raptors: There are many fun things about the NBA’s only foreign franchise, including its throwback dino uniforms, its F-bomb-dropping general manager, and one of the smartest and most raucous fanbases in the NBA. (And, occasionally, Drake.) Owner Larry Tanenbaum, however, is boring as sin.

Washington Wizards: For a glimpse of Ted Leonsis at his peak, this 1995 New York Times Magazine profile is chock full of great stuff: As a bachelor, Leonsis would occasionally bring an Elvis bust with him when dining out with friends; later, as an AOL exec, he came around to the fact that the company was more Norman Rockwell than MTV: “Face it, when you go to a cocktail party and America Online diskettes are being used as coasters, you know you’ve become mainstream.” These days, Leonsis is DC sports royalty as owner of the Wizards, the WNBA’s Mystics, and the NHL’s Capitals—he once got into a physical altercation with a heckling fan, who accused Leonsis of grabbing his neck and throwing him to the ground after a Caps game.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Dallas Mavericks: What is there left to say about Mark Cuban? The guy speaks for himself: This year alone, the self-made billionaire and self-identified Randian has defended Donald Sterling, waded into the Trayvon Martin controversy, and predicted the NFL would collapse within 10 years. Over the years, he’s been fined nearly $2 million by the league, tried to draft Michael Bloomberg to run for president, and commissioned a mural about his life. He’s come out of an insider-trading trial unscathed and actually built a pretty decent basketball team. Literally and figuratively, he’s the biggest shark in the tank.

Denver Nuggets: Stan Kroenke—a.k.a. “Silent Stan” for his reluctance to talk to the media—collects sports franchises like trophies. Besides the Nuggets, the multibillionaire owns the Colorado Avalanche, the St. Louis Rams, a MLS franchise, a lacrosse team, and has a majority share of the UK soccer club Arsenal. He’s made good money in real estate, but buying a bunch of teams is easier when you’re married to Ann Walton, of the Bentonville Waltons. Kroenke served on Walmart’s Board of Directors in the 1990s and has benefited from Walton ties for decades: The Denver Post reports that his retail ventures (often anchored by the megastore) have landed hundreds of millions in tax breaks.

Golden State Warriors: Peter Guber’s résumé sounds more appropriate for a Lakers owner. He’s a longtime showbiz exec and producer of big-time hits like Rain Man and The Color Purple. Since the ’90s, he has run Mandalay Entertainment, which has produced art-house gems like I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Guber is a fairly loyal Democrat, but he’s also said on record that President Obama has disappointed Hollywood, and he has sometimes donated to Republicans, such as the late former Sen. Ted Stevens. The Warriors have thrived under Guber’s tenure, but he may not have mastered email yet: He recently replied-all to the entire organization, writing that he had to learn “hoodish” in addition to the languages of the Warriors’ international players. (He claims that he meant to write Yiddish.)

Joe Lacob is the more hands-on, day-to-day owner of the Warriors. He’s a partner at the elite Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which is the subject of a nasty, ongoing sexual-harassment lawsuit. Ellen Pao, a former partner, is suing the company for wrongful termination after she reported sexual harassment to senior management.

Houston Rockets: A billionaire New York financier, Leslie Alexander fits the stereotype of a fat-cat owner: He’s got a $42 million penthouse in Manhattan and launched a Hamptons wine club with a $50,000 entry fee. He ran First Marblehead, a for-profit student loan company that tanked during the 2008 financial meltdown—but not before cashing out nearly $300 million in stock. His love of green extends beyond taking people’s money, though—he’s also an outspoken animal rights activist who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to PETA and affiliated groups. He also reportedly donated to a militant animal rights group whose US leaders were convicted of terrorism charges in 2006.

Los Angeles Clippers: Steve Ballmer is the newest (and with a net worth of $22.5 billion, richest) addition to the owners’ club. He forked over $2 billion in pocket change this year to rescue the Clippers from Donald Sterling. He’s fresh off a 14-year tenure as Microsoft’s CEO, abruptly quitting after years of internal and external criticism of his leadership. To be fair, he did preside over a very rough patch for the company—losing billions, getting beat by Apple, and overseeing the flop of the Zune. Forbes even called him the “worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company…without a doubt.” The famously exuberant BasketBallmer is now looking to rebound with the resurgent Clips—but not before banning Apple products from the locker room.

Los Angeles Lakers: Technically, the six children of Jerry Buss—the longtime Lakers owner who died last year—own a majority share of the team, but day-to-day owner Jeanie Buss has the final say. (Brother Jim focuses on basketball operations.) That unofficially makes her the league’s sole female owner. Despite her short tenure, she’s been criticized for the crazy deal she offered Kobe Bryant and her engagement to Lakers legend (and Knicks president) Phil Jackson. Earlier this year, Jackson was being considered for a job with the Lakers, but Jim was against hiring him, leading to even more Buss family strife.

Memphis Grizzlies: At 36, Robert J. Pera is the youngest NBA owner, and one of the world’s youngest billionaires. The Silicon Valley native founded Ubiquiti, an internet technology company that wants to kill off Cisco in the quest to wifi-ify America’s offices and cities. A former high school player, the 6-foot-3 Pera tweeted that he could easily take Mark Cuban in a 1-on-1, and even challenged Michael Jordan to a $1 million game. (Jordan called it “comical.”)

Minnesota Timberwolves: Glen Taylor has that classic life story: grew up on a farm, pulled himself by the bootstraps, and made himself into a multibillionaire by cobbling together a business empire based on printing and electronics. Big surprise, then, that he’s a staunch Republican: He was a Minnesota state senator from 1981 to 1990 and has given more than $700,000 to Republicans, particularly fellow Minnesotans like Rep. Michelle Bachmann. (He also just bought the left-leaning Minneapolis Star-Tribune for $100 million, and suggested he’d make it more conservative.) Politics aside, Minnesotans have been critical of Taylor’s track record as owner: He feuded with star big man Kevin Love and lost him to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Timberwolves, meanwhile, suffer the league’s longest playoff drought.

New Orleans Pelicans: Tom Benson’s two-pronged moneymaking strategy consists of selling cars and taking taxpayers’ money. Louisiana’s richest man, he owns dealerships all over the state and in Texas too, in addition to New Orleans’ Fox affiliate and the New Orleans Saints. Thanks to a complex deal he negotiated on the Superdome (yup, he also owns that), Benson is set to rake in nearly $400 million in state subsidies on the taxpayers’ dime. He initially wanted to move the team—especially after Hurricane Katrina—but it seems he’s settled for this deal. Benson was honored with a statue outside the Superdome for his trouble; Louisiana has cut health care and education funding to save money.

Oklahoma City Thunder: Oklahoma hedge fund baron Clayton Bennett is easily the most hated man in the Pacific Northwest: He’s responsible for moving the beloved Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City. In 2006, Bennett bought the team from Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and essentially promised to keep the team in Seattle. Almost immediately, he and his co-owners conspired to move the team, while assuring Sonics fans they’d stay. Minority owner and Bennett buddy Aubrey McClendon even went on the record in 2007, saying that they’d never intended to keep the team in Seattle. (McClendon, who founded the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, is a leading proponent of fracking, opponent of gay rights, and—as if all that weren’t enough—a former Swift Boater.) In spring 2008, Bennett and McClendon got their wish: The Sonics were officially defunct, and replaced by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Seattle was devastated.

Phoenix Suns: It’s tough to find an owner as loathed by his team’s fans as Robert Sarver. The 53-year-old Tucson native made his money running and selling a series of community banks, writing more than $1 billion in loans to Arizona businesses and homeowners during and after the financial crisis. He bought the Suns in 2004, and since then has presided over a steady exodus of talent—both on and off the court. Phoenix fans, who argue that he’s insanely cheap, are hyperbolic about his tenure, arguing that he’s run the team into the ground for his own profit. ESPN’s Bill Simmons once said Sarver “destroyed basketball” in Phoenix.

Portland Trail Blazers: Paul Allen does a lot of things: The Microsoft cofounder is an investor, philanthropist, film producer, art collector, blues musician, and yachting enthusiast. In his spare time, he tends to his sports franchises: the Blazers, the Seattle Seahawks, and soccer’s Seattle Sounders. He’s worth more than $16 billion and has pledged to give at least half of that away (e.g., his $100 million gift to fight Ebola). He’s given generously to political causes, including $1 million to back a charter-school bill with his old pal Bill Gates and more than $500,000 to committees and candidates—65 percent of it to Democrats.

Sacramento Kings: Vivek Ranadivé, an Indian-born billionaire—and the first and only Asian American NBA owner—could be the Most Interesting Man in Silicon Valley. He attended MIT, supposedly as a penniless exchange student, and went on to engineer software that digitized stock trading for Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs. His Twitter feed is a steady stream of chill: hanging out with Shaq, hobnobbing with world leaders, and fawning over his wannabe pop-star daughter, whom he coached to a girls’ basketball championship. In addition to trying to turn around the long-struggling Kings, Ranadivé also has the modest goal of revolutionizing data, and has huddled with the new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—no friend to Muslims—on bringing basketball to India.

San Antonio Spurs: Peter Holt is American tractor royalty: His great-grandfather built the first one a century ago, and his family’s company, Holt Cat, is the biggest Caterpillar dealer in the country. His small-market team has won five NBA titles—all without paying a luxury tax—making Holt one of the more admired owners in the league. He counts Rick Perry in his fan club: The Texas guv has received more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from Holt since 2000, and returned the favor with a state appointment (Parks and Wildlife Commission) and some generous, multimillion-dollar tax breaks for Holt’s businesses.

Utah Jazz: Greg Miller inherited the Jazz from his dad, Larry, along with an expansive business empire that includes real estate, retail, and car dealerships. He seems an affable guy—although not even he was immune to feuding with Karl Malone—with a Twitter feed that showcases his globetrotting off-road expeditions. (He was even on Undercover Boss!) Miller is also a devout Mormon who credits “divine intervention” for the success of his franchise and businesses. During the 2012 election cycle, the Miller family companies gave nearly $1 million to the Mitt Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future after a brief flirtation with former Utah governor and Mormon cool-dad Jon Huntsman.

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The Mother Jones Guide to Evil NBA Owners

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, Down To Earth, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Sterling, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Mother Jones Guide to Evil NBA Owners

"Hurt That Bitch": What Undercover Investigators Saw Inside a Factory Farm

by VRBSanorabni Posted on October 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is an excerpt from Mother Jones contributing writer Ted Genoways’ new book The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food.

On September 15, 2008, Lynn Becker got the phone call every hog farmer fears.

For months on end, pork producers across the Midwest had been struggling against record-low prices per head, but Becker had taken steps to protect his family’s farm against contractions of the market. He had signed a producer agreement with Hormel Foods, maybe the one company with a recession-proof demand for pork, and he had planted enough of his own corn to sustain his herd for the next year, insulating his operation from skyrocketing feed prices. With another Minnesota winter already in the air, Becker was out walking his fields one last time before starting the harvest. “When I got in and checked the answering machine,” he told me later, “there was a message from Matt Prescott with PETA.” Becker was soft-spoken but bristled with nervous energy. His jitters, together with his work-honed physique and fair hair, made him seem much younger than forty. But he insisted that the four years since receiving the call from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had aged him by more than a decade. “They had ‘damning evidence,'” he said haltingly. “Undercover. Of animal abuse. On a farm that we own.”

Becker described his hog operation outside Fairmont, Minnesota, a little more than an hour due west of Austin on Interstate 90, as a “good old-fashioned, American family farm”—and it might appear that way at first. Everything about the old homestead suggests its age, from the weathered, brick-red Dutch Gambrel barn emblazoned with the name, lb pork, to the simple farmhouse that Becker’s grandfather built in the 1940s—the house where all big decisions are still made on Sundays around the dinner table. But in truth, Becker was already a major supplier, providing more than fifty thousand pigs to Hormel each year, and he was making a bid to double that number by bringing the whole supply chain, from seed to slaughter, under his control. He owned 1,500 acres of prime farmland, where he raised corn and soybeans, which he put up in a colossal grain bin and ground at his own feed mill and then trucked to more than a dozen sites in Minnesota and Iowa to feed to thousands of pregnant sows in his breeding barns and tens of thousands of weaned piglets at separate finishing facilities. The company was sprawling and complex, employing dozens of full-time and part-time workers, and it was only getting bigger. Still, Becker insists that he always personally monitored every phase of his business. And as the voice message claiming animal abuse started to sink in, his shock and disbelief quickly turned to indignation.

“Wait a second,” he remembered thinking. “Not on any farm I own.”

Then it dawned on him. The farm in question wasn’t LB Pork or even his breeding facility, Camalot, about ten miles away outside the town of Welcome. The farm that PETA had investigated was a large barn complex, housing some six thousand sows and tens of thousands of newborn piglets, that Becker had acquired less than a month before in Iowa, an operation he had purchased from Natural Pork Production II and renamed MowMar Farms but had only ever seen a few times. Becker phoned his day-to-day management company, Suidae Health & Production, based in Algona, Iowa, and asked them to reach out to Prescott and see if they could get their hands on this “damning evidence”; maybe the video they claimed to have in their possession had all been shot before the facility was under his ownership.

Everything You Didn’t Want to Know About Hormel, Bacon, and Amputated Limbs:

Meanwhile, Becker worked his connections. He was the president of the Minnesota Pork Board, and his wife, Julie, had been the Minnesota Pork Promoter of the Year in 2007. In fact, she was, at that very moment, on Capitol Hill with the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, the lobbying arm of the Pork Board, meeting with members of Congress. Becker called his wife so she could alert her fellow lobbyists. Then he placed another call to Cindy Cunningham, the assistant vice president for communications at the National Pork Board in Des Moines, Iowa.

Soon Becker heard back that PETA wanted to meet with him one-on-one and then stage a joint press conference. Everyone advised against it. Instead, with the assistance of Himle Horner, a public relations firm in the Twin Cities, he decided to issue a written statement, and Cunningham mobilized several agribusiness organizations to help answer press inquiries. But nothing could have prepared them for the onslaught of negative attention. The next day, when the Associated Press released the video online along with a wire report describing its contents, the story became worldwide news almost instantly. The video’s camerawork was shaky and low-definition, captured with recorders hidden in the hat brims of undercover workers, but it had been cut together into a concise and harrowing five minutes.

In one shot, a supervisor was shown beating a sow relentlessly on the back. In another, workers turned electric prods on a crippled sow and kicked pregnant sows repeatedly in the belly. A close-up showed a distressed sow knocked out, her face royal blue from the Prima Tech marking dye sprayed into her nostrils by a worker who said he was trying “to get her high.” In one of the most disturbing sequences, a worker demonstrated the method for euthanizing underweight piglets: taking them by the hind legs and smashing their skulls against the concrete floor. Fellow workers whooped and laughed as he tossed the bloodied and twitching bodies into a giant bin. The AP story revealed that PETA had already met with Tom Heater, the sheriff of Greene County, Iowa, and he had agreed to open a criminal investigation.


Gagged by Big Ag


You Won’t Believe What Pork Producers Do to Pregnant Pigs


Has Your State Outlawed Blowing the Whistle on Factory Farm Abuses?


Timeline: Big Ag’s Campaign to Shut Up Its Critics


The Cruelest Show on Earth

That night, Becker played the PETA video again and again on his iPad. He told me he felt numb as he watched his inbox fill with more than a thousand angry emails. He was starting to see what an ordeal the release of this video was going to be. But worse, he feared that Hormel would terminate its production contract with him—the contract he had used to secure a loan of more than $1 million to mortgage the breed barns in Iowa, with his family’s homestead in Minnesota as collateral. If Hormel decided that Becker had become a liability, he and his family could lose everything.

A couple of miles north of Bayard, Iowa, at the crossroads of two wide gravel tracks, there are three enormous sow barns: the site of Lynn Becker’s MowMar Farms. It’s now operated under the name Fair Creek, though you’d never know it; there are no company signs, no indication at all of what’s going on inside. The barns gleam white in the sun and seem, by all appearances, to be well ventilated, well supplied with water from giant external holding tanks, and generally well turned-out, right down to their square corners and tightly tacked aluminum siding. Gary Weihs (pronounced WISE), the site’s original developer, saw to it that the facility was clean, inconspicuous, and odor-free. It took him two years of disputes and disagreements to get a permit recommendation from the board of supervisors for Greene County, so he wanted to be sure there were no complaints once the facility was built.

After spending years working with large corporations like Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, and Monsanto in operational management, Weihs had decided to return to his native Iowa. He planned to combine the experience he had gained growing up on his father’s hog farm outside of Harlan with the statistical analysis of three decades of corn pricing and hog yields he had performed to complete his MBA at Harvard Business School. “We flat price everything,” Weihs told the National Hog Farmer, “so that we make a little bit per head and base our profits on quantity.” Under the name Natural Pork Production II (NPPII), he lined up investors and, when he had the start-up money in place, began building facilities, about one per year. The three-barn complex in Bayard was the fifth unit—a 6,000-sow farrow-to-wean operation, where returns would be generated for investors by selling roughly 130,000 weaned pigs each year to finishing operations at $36 apiece. All told, NPPII facilities were supplying about fifteen different hog farmers with close to 800,000 weaned pigs, for gross annual earnings of nearly $29 million—but all while carrying precarious overheard, including roughly $5 million in construction costs per site and millions more invested in the breeding sows housed inside.

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"Hurt That Bitch": What Undercover Investigators Saw Inside a Factory Farm

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The Walmart Heirs Are Worth More Than Everyone in Your City Combined

by KSYJessika Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Everybody knows that middle-class incomes have stagnated while those of the richest Americans have skyrocketed, but the trend is even more pronounced when you look at the relative fortunes of the super-duper rich. Consider the Walmart heirs: Since 1983, their net worth has increased a staggering 6,700 percent. According to a report released today by the union-backed Economic Policy Institute, here’s how many American families earning the median income it would have taken to match the Waltons’ wealth in a given year:

In 1983, the Walton family’s net worth was $2.15 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 61,992 average American families, about the population* of…

Peoria, Arizona Hanroanu/Flickr

In 1989, the Walton family’s net worth was $9.42 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 200,434 average American families, about the population of…

Albuquerque, New Mexico Len “Doc” Radin/Flickr

In 1992, the Walton family’s net worth was $23.8 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 536,631 average American families, about the population of…

San Antonio. Texas Wells Dunbar/Flickr

In 1998, the Walton family’s net worth was $48 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 796,089 average American families, about the population of…

The State of New Mexico Shoshanah/Flickr

In 2001, the Walton family’s net worth was $92.8 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 1,077,761 average American families, about the population of…

Chicago, Illinois Conway Yao/Flickr

In 2010, the Walton family’s net worth was $89.5 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 1,157,827 average American families, about the population of…

The State of Arkansas (pictured: Walmart visitors center in Bentonville) Walmart/Flickr

In 2013, the Walton family’s net worth was $144.7 billion, equivalent to the net worth of 1,782,020 average American families, about the population of…

The State of Louisiana Jim Hobbs/Flickr

Correction: An earlier version of this article confused families with individuals, causing an under-estimate of how many individuals’ net worth would equal that of the Waltons. Population equivalents in this story are based on the size of the average American family: 2.55 individuals.

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The Walmart Heirs Are Worth More Than Everyone in Your City Combined

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The Gulf Is Still So Far From Recovering. Just Ask This Oyster Farmer.

by Jonatho39T Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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John Tesvich slices open oysters on the deck of his boat, the “Croatian Pride”. Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

John Tesvich is a fourth-generation oyster farmer in Empire, a tiny Gulf Coast enclave south of New Orleans. He’s spent his life working in the rich oyster beds here, the most productive in the nation, and has weathered his share of storms: During Hurricane Katrina, his house ended up under 17 feet of water. But last week, as he navigated his 40-foot oyster boat out into open water, he admitted that the turmoil this region has faced in the last decade was beginning to wear him down.

“A lot has changed over the years,” he said. “It seems like one crisis after another sometimes.”

One crisis was particularly damaging to Tesvich’s industry: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The fourth anniversary of the busted undersea well’s sealing (after it gushed crude into the Gulf for nearly five months) is coming up next week, and Tesvich, who also chairs the oyster industry’s main statewide lobbying group, says his crop is still struggling to rebound.

Tesvich got some good news last week, when a federal judge in New Orleans found that BP’s “willful misconduct” and “gross negligence” had been the principle causes of the spill, a ruling that could eventually force BP to pay billions for ecological restoration in the Gulf. But for oystermen here, whose day-to-day income depends on these reefs, those dollars still seem very far away.

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The Gulf Is Still So Far From Recovering. Just Ask This Oyster Farmer.

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The IRS Is Coming For Your Offshore Bank Account

by AugustFrewin Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s always been a pretty simple arrangement for America’s superrich: Park your money in a country whose banks know how to keep a secret and then underreport your assets to the IRS. Without a way to independently verify how much money you have abroad, the taxman had to take your word for how much money you had stashed in a Swiss vault or in a sunny haven like the Cayman Islands. But as of yesterday, the US government will require foreign banks to report their American clients’ assets, or face 30 percent tax penalties on some offshore deposits.

The move is part of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was introduced in 2010. Since then, more than 80 countries have agreed to open their ledger books to the feds. After some complicated last-minute negotiations, even Russia and China have started to cooperate.

Companies and individuals have long used offshore banking to keep their taxes low: Last year, American multinationals kept an estimated $2 trillion (yes, with a “t”) abroad, according to a Bloomberg analysis. In recent years, tech companies have become some of the most enthusiastic offshore depositors. Between 2010 and 2013, Microsoft more than doubled its foreign stockpile to $76.4 billion, while Apple increased its pot abroad more than fourfold to $54.4 billion.

But while big US companies have stowed a massive pile of cash abroad, US banks hold even more money for foreign clients. According to Tax Justice Network, a British-based advocacy and research group, out of the $21 to $32 trillion kept offshore globally, about 22 percent is kept in the United States—a fact that’s not lost on countries complying with FATCA, some of whom are embracing the law because it means they’ll get to learn a few things about their own citizens’ holdings in the US.

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The IRS Is Coming For Your Offshore Bank Account

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WATCH: MoJo’s Dan Schulman Talking Koch Brothers, ‘Sons of Wichita’ on The Daily Show

by CalvinCherry Posted on June 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones’ own Daniel Schulman appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Tuesday to talk about Sons of Wichita, his new book on the Koch brothers. If you’d like to buy the book, click here.

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WATCH: MoJo’s Dan Schulman Talking Koch Brothers, ‘Sons of Wichita’ on The Daily Show

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Condom Companies: Twitter Is Censoring Us

by BBWWilbert Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Most businesses that accept advertising—from magazines and television networks to news websites and Facebook—accept ads for condoms. But earlier this year, Melissa White, the CEO of Lucky Bloke Condoms, learned that there’s one major exception: Twitter.

For months, Twitter had spammed White with emails encouraging her to try sending a promoted Tweet—a paid advertisement that shows up in other users’ tweet streams. But when she finally sent one—a relatively anodyne message asking readers if they were “tired of lousy condoms”—it was quickly rejected. “Your account is ineligible to participate in the Twitter ads program at this time based on the Twitter Ads adult sexual products and services policy,” Twitter wrote to her. Baffled, White wrote a piece for RH Reality Check complaining about how her company was treated.

A Twitter spokesman says the company “allows and encourages ads from condom companies and safer sex education organizations,” noting that condom giant Durex and a number of HIV and STD awareness campaigns have advertised on the social network. But several condom companies and safe-sex advocates say that the Durex campaign was the exception, not the rule—and that in practice, Twitter bans most condom advertising and safe-sex advocacy from its promoted tweets program.

Courtesy of Melissa White

Courtesy of Melissa White

Twitter’s advertising policy, which says the company bans “the promotion of adult or sexual products and services,” including “contraceptives,” only confuses the issue. The multi-page policy goes on to clarify that Twitter allows condom ads, but only if they are targeted at Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, or the US—and then only if they “comply with all local laws,” and “do not contain or link to any sexual content.” (That can be a challenge, given that condoms are used for sex.) White says she “was aware” of the geographical restrictions in Twitter’s condom ad policies and “was very careful to select only countries approved in that section.” She only targeted users who were over 18 and followers of “sex and relationship personalities,” such as Dan Savage and Emily Morse. But she was blocked from the program anyway—and Twitter won’t explain why, either to White or to Mother Jones.

White isn’t the only person complaining that Twitter’s rules about sexual content in ads are too strict. Last October, Jenelle Marie, founder of The STD Project, a site that offers resources for people suffering from sexually transmitted diseases, tried to use the promoted tweets program to send out a link to her site. Her first promoted tweet, which Marie recalls saying “STD? It’s Ok! We can help,” was deleted. Marie says she was “surprised” and “disconcerted” that Twitter wasn’t allowing her to promote safe sex. Third party ads on her site—which occasionally include condom ads—might have been to blame, she says. Twitter rejects sexual content if it’s in either the tweet itself or on the landing page of the link.

Several other small companies have similar complaints. Momdoms, a company that sells vintage tins with sex jokes for a “less awkward birds and bees talk,” was booted from the promoted tweets program after tweeting out a YouTube video advertising its products. Bedsider, a “birth control support network” that provides information and support on birth control topics and options, still tweets, but has twice been temporarily banned.

White’s negative experience is preventing other companies from trying the ad program in the first place. Jason Panda, the head of b condoms, a condom manufacturer that aims to promote healthy lifestyles among minority populations, says he “heard about what’s happened with Lucky Bloke” and decided investing in promoted tweets wasn’t worth the hassle. “We were interested in shifting our advertising to begin promoting tweets and advertising on Twitter because it’s a powerful way to connect with the underserved communities that we target,” Panda wrote in an email. “However, it’s hard to promote safe sex when awesome tools like Twitter block companies like ours from reaching the communities that need the information the most.”

Condoms, which the US Food and Drug Administration classifies as medical devices, may be considered scandalous on Twitter, but they’re widely available in stores. There is no federal age restriction on the purchase of condoms in the United States; anyone, even a child, can legally walk into a pharmacy and purchase a condom.

White sees this moment as an opportunity for Twitter. “Twitter’s current policies are out-dated, irresponsible and even dangerous,” she says. “For Twitter, this presents a chance to demonstrate an enlightened, mature, up-to-date understanding of user safety and extend their global reach to their users on matters of sexual health—by providing info with true life-saving potential.”

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Condom Companies: Twitter Is Censoring Us

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Whistleblower Suit Alleges Corruption, Cronyism, and Affairs in Gov. Susana Martinez’s Administration

by wqds234der Posted on May 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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A recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit filed in New Mexico state court makes a series of explosive allegations against appointees of rising GOP star Gov. Susana Martinez, accusing high-ranking officials in her administration of public corruption, mismanagement, and intimidation. It claims that officials at the state’s economic development agency engaged in extramarital affairs that could expose the state to sexual harassment charges and that officials tried to silence employees who reported contracting violations and other wrongdoing.

The 22-page complaint—filed February 10 on behalf of two former state employees—claims that a company co-founded by Martinez appointee Jon Barela, secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, secretly benefited from a state tax credit program. The complaint also alleges that aides to Martinez instructed a state employee to use his personal email for sensitive government work to avoid being subject to public records requests; that Barela and his deputy, Barbara Brazil, ignored waste and mismanagement at the state’s Spaceport project in southern New Mexico; and that Brazil ran several Dairy Queen franchises she had an interest in “while simultaneously being paid by the State of New Mexico.”

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Whistleblower Suit Alleges Corruption, Cronyism, and Affairs in Gov. Susana Martinez’s Administration

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