Tag Archives: firm

The Trump Files: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word "Trump"

by SelenaMaria01 Posted on June 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is notoriously protective of his brand, so when he learned in 1988 that a small Georgia-based company was selling business cards dubbed “Trump Cards,” he played a card of his own: he launched a legal war against the firm, Positive Concepts, Ltd., in a bid to get the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel its trademark registration.

Trump’s lawyers claimed PCL deliberately chose the moniker in order “to benefit…from the worldwide fame, distinction and glamour of Donald J. Trump and his ‘TRUMP’ name.”

PCL’s lawyer, Kevin L. Ward, said at the time that the tycoon was trying to create a “trump” monopoly: “Donald Trump simply wants to own the word ‘trump,’ and anybody who wants anything to do with it will have to face Donald Trump. We can’t give up a word in the English language just because somebody has the power and money to do so.”

The battle between the business card-maker and the real estate mogul eventually concluded in true Trumpian fashion—with a deal. In exchange for royalties and the rights to the trademark, Trump dropped his objection, licensed PCL to make the cards, and officially endorsed them, according to reports by the Associated Press.

Ward, the attorney who represented PCL, told Mother Jones that both sides were happy with the result of the settlement. He nevertheless pointed out that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “trump”—referring to a playing card of a suit that outranks the others in the deck—dates back to the 16th century, long before Donald Trump could stake his claim on it.

The former President of PCL, Edward Zito, did not respond to requests for comment.

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The Trump Files: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word "Trump"

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Bobby Jindal Sums Up His Struggling Campaign in One Chart

by CEIBenitop Posted on October 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Things are looking up for Bobby Jindal, according to Bobby Jindal.

The Louisiana governor tweeted this afternoon about his campaign performance: “Momentum is building in Iowa.” The tweet was accompanied by a chart showing Jindal’s support among Iowa voters increasing exponentially.

The poll Jindal is proudly presenting is the latest NBC/Marist survey in Iowa, which shows him with a whopping 6 percent of the vote, tied with two candidates and behind four others. That looks impressive next to the 1 percent he got in a poll from the firm in July. But it’s less impressive if you consider the 4.7 percent margin of error, which could more than account for his rise from the September poll that had him at 4 percent. Likewise if you look at the polling average from Real Clear Politics, which puts Jindal at 3.5 percent in Iowa (in ninth place). A Gravis poll concluded on September 27 listed Jindal at only 2 percent (tied for eighth place).

But who cares? Just look at this chart!

Continued – 

Bobby Jindal Sums Up His Struggling Campaign in One Chart

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Mitt Romney Has a Huge New Conflict-of-Interest Problem

by SteveJensen Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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In 2012, Mitt Romney’s career as a businessman who earned many millions of dollars became a net loss, as political foes slammed him for running Bain Capital, a private equity firm that invested in US companies that downsized and shifted jobs overseas and that obtained financial stakes in foreign companies that depended on US outsourcing for profits. At the same time, Romney, who refused to do a full release of his tax returns, was hit with questions (he didn’t answer) about mysterious personal investments in offshore accounts. Should he mount a third presidential effort, as he has told GOP funders he is considering, all of these issues are likely to return. But there’s another matter that will be be added to the pile of financial controversies for Romney to face: Solamere Capital, the $700 million private equity firm cofounded by his son Taggart that Romney has helped run since March 2013. Who has Romney been investing with, and what has he been investing in? These are questions that Romney 2016 will confront and that, no doubt, the firm will not want to answer.

In March 2013, Mitt Romney became chair of Solamere’s executive committee and a member of its investment committee, and Solamere’s bare website currently lists him as the executive partner group chairman. The site only describes the company as “a collection of families and influential business leaders leveraging their broad networks and industry expertise to invest strategic capital.” But the firm has recruited scores of investors willing to give the Romneys millions, and it has invested in an untold number of other funds and companies. Any of these parties—the investors or the investments—could pose a conflict of interest for a presidential candidate or raise a significant question. Has Solamere invested in companies that outsource? Or in overseas firms that compete with US firms? Has it drawn investments from people or corporations at home or abroad that want to curry favor with a possible president? Might the companies and private equity firms Solamere invests in have an interest in lobbying a future Romney administration? There is no way for the public to know; the firm does not disclose any information on its investors or investments. So how will Romney respond to these and other questions about his work for Solamere?

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Mitt Romney Has a Huge New Conflict-of-Interest Problem

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Is Europe’s Central Bank Finally Getting Worried About Deflation?

by WillUHJbrl Posted on August 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Brad DeLong notes that Mario Draghi, the head of Europe’s central bank, went off text in his speech at Jackson Hole. Here’s his summary of Draghi’s extended ad-lib:

The speech text says:

  1. The ECB knows that inflation has declined.
  2. The decline in inflation has not led to any decline in expectations of inflation.
  3. THE ECB will, if necessary, within its mandate, use QE and other policies to keep expectations of inflation from declining.

The speech as delivered says:

  1. The ECB knows that inflation has declined.
  2. My usual line is that the decline in inflation is due to temporary factors that will be reversed.
  3. That explanation is now long in the tooth: the longer “temporary” lasts the greater the danger.
  4. In fact, it is too late to “safeguard the firm anchoring of inflation expectations”.
  5. Inflationary expectations have already declined.
  6. We will use all the tools we have to reverse this.

Is this deviation a mere line wobble….Is this deviation an audience effect….Or does it signal a recognition on Draghi’s part that the Eurozone is heading for a triple dip, and that if he doesn’t assemble a coalition to do much more very quickly to boost aggregate demand we will have to change the name “The Great Recession” to something including the D-word, and he will go down in history as the worst central banker since the 1930s?

I would like to know…

I suppose we’d all like to know. The Germans better start taking this stuff seriously pretty soon. They can’t stick their heads in the sand and live in the past forever.

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Is Europe’s Central Bank Finally Getting Worried About Deflation?

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Today’s USDA Meat Safety Chief is Tomorrow’s Agribiz Consultant

by Apollinaryial Posted on December 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Deloitte Touche is one of the globe’s “big four” auditing and consulting firms. It’s a player in the Big Food/Ag space—Deloitte’s clients include “75% of the Fortune 500 food production companies.” The firm’s US subsidiary, Deloitte & Touche LLP, has a shiny new asset to dangle before its agribusiness clients: It has hired the US Department of Agriculture’s Undersecretary for Food Safety, Elisabeth Hagan. She will “join Deloitte’s consumer products practice as a food safety senior advisor,” the firm stated in a press release. The firm also trumpeted her USDA affiliation:

“Elisabeth will bring to Deloitte an impressive blend of regulatory level oversight and hands-on experience, stemming from her role as the highest ranking food safety official in the U.S.,” said Pat Conroy, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP, and Deloitte’s U.S. consumer products practice leader.

Last month, Hagan announced her imminent resignation from her USDA post, declaring she would be “embarking in mid-December on a new challenge in the private sector.” Now we know what that “challenge” is. It’s impressive that Deloitte managed to bag a sitting USDA undersecretary—especially the one holding the food safety portfolio, charged with overseeing the nation’s slaughterhouses. Awkwardly, Hagan is still “currently serving” her USDA role, the Deloitte press release states. I’m sure the challenge of watchdogging the meat industry while preparing to offer it consulting services won’t last long. The USDA has not announced a time frame for replacing Hagan.

Hagan won’t be the only member of Deloitte’s US food-safety team with ties to the federal agencies charged with overseeing the food industry. You know those new poultry-slaughter rules that Hagan’s erstwhile fiefdom, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, keeps touting, the ones that would save Big Poultry a quarter-billion dollars a year but likely endanger consumers and workers alike, as I laid out most recently here? Craig Henry, a director within Deloitte’s food & product safety practice, served on the USDA-appointed National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, which advised the FSIS on precisely those rules, as this 2012 Federal Register notice shows.

Then there’s Faye Feldstein, who serves Deloitte as a senior adviser for food safety issues, the latest post in what her Deloitte bio call a “33-year career in senior positions in the food industry and in federal and state regulatory agencies.” Before setting up shop as a consultant, Feldstein served a ten-year stint at the Food and Drug Administration in various food-safety roles. Before that, she worked for 12 years at W.R. Grace, a chemical conglomerate with interests in food additives and packaging.

Apart from Hagan’s new career direction, some food-safety advocates have offered praise for her tenure at USDA. They point out that, under her leadership, the FSIS cracked down on certain strains of E. Coli in ground beef, an an important and long-overdue move explained in this post by the veteran journalist Maryn McKenna. On his blog, Bill Marler, a prominent litigator of food-borne illness cases on behalf of consumers, called Hagan “one of the very best who has ever held that position,” adding that she’ll be “sorely missed.”

But if the USDA does make good on its oft-stated intention to finalize those awful new poultry rules, I think Hagan will be remembered most for pushing them ahead, to the delight of the poultry industry and the despair of worker and consumer-safety advocates.

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Today’s USDA Meat Safety Chief is Tomorrow’s Agribiz Consultant

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Huge paper company promises to stop being deforesting jerks

by rikkiqlyons Posted on February 5, 2013

Huge paper company promises to stop being deforesting jerks

By Susie Cagle

Over the last 20 years, a third of the forest cover on the Indonesian island of Sumatra — home to endangered tigers and orangutans — was destroyed. The clear-cutting of the rainforest helped make Indonesia the world’s fourth-biggest carbon emitter. And much of it was done in the name of paper — Asia Pulp & Paper, to be exact. But not anymore. From The Washington Post:

Asia Pulp & Paper, the third-largest pulp and paper company in the world, announced Tuesday that it is halting operations in Indonesia’s natural rain forests, a victory for advocates who have been negotiating with the company for the past year.

The Singapore-based company, which controls logging concessions spanning nearly 6.4 million acres in Indonesia, said it also has agreed to protect forested peatland, which stores massive amounts of carbon, and to work with indigenous communities to protect their native land. …

Aida Greenbury, the firm’s managing director for sustainability, said that a coalition of environmentalists, customers and some of the firm’s own employees had pushed for an end to native forest logging.

“We heard very loud and clear what they want us to do,” she said. “It is an investment for the sustainability of our business, not only an investment in the environment and the social impact we’re creating.”

Here’s more from the righteous rabble-rousers at Greenpeace, who worked with the World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Action Network to shove APP’s clear-cutters out of the forests:

Today’s victory was an amazing milestone in a 40-country, ten-year campaign. In the U.S., Greenpeace and WWF cut over 75% of APP’s market, largely through persuading Mattel, Hasbro, Lego, K-Mart, Staples, Kroger, and other companies to cancel their contracts with APP or refuse to enter into business with the company. RAN topped it up, persuading Disney to dump APP as well. In total, over 100 companies pulled away from APP. APP struck back, forming front groups to attack Greenpeace and WWF for our work together.

So a deal is great news, right? Well, maybe. As The Washington Post notes, it all depends on APP’s ongoing level of commitment.

Christopher Barr, executive director of the U.S-based forestry research firm Woods and Wayside International, said people should approach “what APP does with a healthy dose of skepticism. They have a history of setting sustainability targets that either get pushed back or don’t get met.”

Barr noted the firm is seeking to build a third pulp mill in Sumatra.

When asked whether she believed the new policy would boost the firm’s chances of getting the permit, Greenbury replied, “We hope so,” but she added that the company was doing it for broader reasons.

“It is our intention to set a new benchmark for the pulp and paper mill industry globally,” she said

By not destroying pristine rainforest and habitat for endangered animals? That would be a new benchmark indeed, APP.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Cool job posting: Earn $20 pretending to hate wind energy

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 24, 2013

Cool job posting: Earn $20 pretending to hate wind energy

By Philip Bump

Important job opportunity, everyone. From Craigslist:

Our firm needs 100 volunteers to attend and participate in a rally in front of the British Consulate/Embassy in Midtown Manhattan on the East Side on Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 12 noon. The event is being held in order to protest wind turbines that are being built in Scotland and England. Your participation will be to ONLY stand next to or behind the speakers and elected officials/celebrities that will be speaking at the rally.

“Volunteers” will each get $20. That’s the going rate in New York City for a closely held political principle.

ray_from_la

This is sort of what protestors look like.

Later in the ad, the firm behind the job request is identified as Ovation. It’s a common enough name that it’s hard to pin down the who’s coordinating this thing. I’ve emailed to see if we can find out more information, but am not holding my breath for a response.

The main question is this: Who hired Ovation to stage this totally authentic rally? Are there any morally questionable opponents of wind energy in the U.K. who are centered in midtown New York City and are willing to use money to buy allies, but not really very much money? Not that I can think of.

Source

Earn Quick and Easy $20 for an hour or less of work (Midtown East), Craiglist

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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