Tag: corporations

Coca-Cola accused of paying NAACP to call soda taxes ‘racist’

TrueMedicine Care co-founder Calley Means published a thread to Twitter on Monday, where he broke down the grip that soda companies have over food regulation. Means claimed that his Twitter Blue access and his account is now under review, suggesting that this was due to Coca-Cola being a major advertiser for Twitter.

“Early in my career, I consulted for Coke to ensure sugar taxes failed and soda was included in food stamp funding,” Means claimed.

“I say Coke’s policies are evil because I saw inside the room. The first step in playbook was paying the NAACP + other civil rights groups to call opponents racist. Coke gave millions to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation – both directly and through front groups like the American Beverage Association This picked up in 2011-2013 – when the Farm Bill and soda taxes were under consideration.”

Means included a screenshot from a Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) report as written about in Nutrition Insight in March of 2013.


Both the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation “received grants from Coca-Cola, with the national NAACP receiving at least $2.1 million from the soda giant since 1986, including $100,000 as recently as December. The Hispanic Federation also lists Coke as a donor, and in February 2012 its president, Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, left the nonprofit group to become director of Latin affairs at the company,” Nutrition Insight wrote.

CSPI’s report noted that Coca-Cola gave the American Academy of Family Physicians a $600,000 grant in 2009 for a new website, and gave a $1 million grant in 2003 to the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, which was “seemingly enough to get the president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry to suddenly hedge the group’s position on the extent to which soda causes cavities,” Nutrition Insight reported.

Keep reading

Drugmakers to raise prices of 350 drugs at start of 2023

Drugmakers are set to raise the prices of 350 drugs at the beginning of 2023.

Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Bristol Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca PLC, and Sanofi SA are among several drugmakers set to raise prices, according to healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors, Reuters reported. The price hikes are in response to a number of factors, mainly inflation, supply problems, and the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which will allow Medicare, the national government’s health insurance program for seniors and people with certain disabilities, to negotiate several drug prices directly starting in 2026.

Drug manufacturers usually try to avoid major price increases, as it draws the ire of the government and the public. Nevertheless, an associate firm of 3 Axis Advisors found that drugmakers raised the prices of 1,400 different drugs in 2022. Pharmaceutical companies now usually try to introduce new drugs at a high price, so further price increases won’t be needed.

“Drug makers have to take a harder look at calibrating those launch prices out of the gate … so they don’t box themselves into the point where in the future, they can’t price increase their way back into profitability,” President Antonio Ciaccia of 3 Axis Advisors told Reuters.

Keep reading

The DEI industrial complex

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, chief diversity officer hires tripled among the largest publicly traded companies. American companies paid an estimated $3.4 billion to firms for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs, according to Princeton professor Betsy Levy Paluck in an op-ed at the Washington Post.

And yet, moans Paluck, there is practically no research evaluating the results of these DEI initiatives.

DEI practitioner (and profiteer) Lily Zheng made a similar observation in a Harvard Business Review article earlier this month : “Despite the increase in organizations adopting DEI initiatives and the proliferation of DEI firms and practitioners, the big, poorly kept secret is that the majority of these initiatives are less effective than many make them out to be.” This, argues Zheng, is for two reasons. “On the one hand, there is a lack of standards, consistency, and accountability among DEI practitioners. And on the other, organizations keep asking for, and funding, interventions that don’t work.”

Keep reading

‘Power Run Amok’: Madison Square Garden Uses Face-Scanning Tech to Remove Perceived Adversaries

BARBARA HART WAS celebrating her wedding anniversary and waiting for Brandi Carlile to take the stage at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 22, when a pair of security guards approached her and her husband by their seats and asked for the couple to follow them. At first, Hart tells Rolling Stone she was excited, thinking it was some sort of surprise before the concert started. Her excitement turned to anxiety soon after, however, as she spoke with security and gathered that she’d been identified using facial-recognition technology. Then they escorted her out of the venue. 

Hart was initially confused, having no idea why she was flagged. She says security informed her that she was being ejected because of her job as an attorney at Grant & Eisenhofer, a law firm currently litigating against Madison Square Garden’s parent company in a Delaware class-action suit involving several groups of shareholders.

Madison Square Garden Entertainment, owned by James Dolan (who has been known to kick out fans who anger him), confirms to RS that it enacted a policy in recent months forbidding anyone in active litigation against the company from entry to the company’s venues — which include the New York arena that gives the company its name, along with Radio City Music Hall, Beacon Theatre, and the Chicago Theatre. The company’s use of facial recognition tools itself dates back to at least 2018, when the New York Times reported on it; anyone who enters the venue is subject to scanning, and that practice now seems to coincide with the policy against opposing litigants.

“This is retaliatory behavior of powerful people against others, and that should be concerning to us,” says Hart, who also spoke of the incident in a sworn affidavit last month, as Reuters reported. Hart recalls that she declined to give MSG security her ID, but that they were able to correctly identify her anyway; she says security mentioned her picture appearing on Grant & Eisenhofer’s website, leading her to the conclusion that facial recognition was involved. “It was a very eerie experience to be on the receiving end of at that moment.”

Keep reading

‘The USA Inc.?’ Reporter Exposes How America Was Hijacked, Turned Into a Corporation During Civil War

The Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves to see the state of our nation today.

They built a republic where God is above all and where the people, created in His image, are sovereign. The people in turn created their government to serve under them; it was to be small, frugal, and limited—as we would expect our contractor to be. Looking at today’s sprawling administrative state overreach though—with vaccine mandates, endless spending, and leaders who think they are God—something doesn’t jive.

So what happened?

The answer is sequestered but simple: the republic was colonized by commercial law. This obscure fact was swept under the rug and kept shuttered in the dark for over 150 years. Yet, a burgeoning subset of Americans is uncovering this controversial chapter of American history, while also reclaiming their freedom by readjusting their status from “U.S. citizen” to “state national.” The status of state national is both old and new. Now, it denotes one who owes allegiance to the state they inhabit. But it also harks back to what the Founding Fathers envisioned a sovereign people to be.

Today, state nationals have been revealing a hidden history: In short, the British never lost the Revolutionary War; they just deployed corporatocracy. The powers of Europe bid their time: the spat between the Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Anti-Federalists was merely an entrée for a grand usurpation that began during the Civil War. Through legal chicanery, agents of the Crown managed to recast Americans as British subjects lost at sea. America was hijacked by commercial law and became the “United States of America Inc.”

It sounds far-fetched, but one state national, Ann Vandersteel, 55, a reporter and chairwoman of the Zelenko Freedom Foundation, shared her experience after reclaiming her freedom. In 2021, she got a call from former congressional candidate Bobby Lawrence, a state national guru, who laid out said history and supplied her with her freedom bundle, the legal documentation she needed to readjust her status. She dove in and spent a year verifying and cutting through red tape, before emerging a free woman on the other shore. She shared some of her journey with The Epoch Times.

Keep reading

Walmart, GM Lobby U.S. to Hide Import Data that Could Reveal Slave, Child Labor

The Associated Press (AP) reported Tuesday that a coalition of major U.S. companies, including Walmart and General Motors, is quietly lobbying the government to make certain import data confidential — a change that would make it much more difficult for journalists and human rights activists to link imported goods to abusive labor practices abroad, including forced labor in China’s Xinjiang province and child labor in Africa.

Human rights lawyer Martina Vandenberg called the closed-door proposals “outrageous” and said American corporations should be “ashamed that their answer to this abuse is to end transparency.”

“Curtailing access to this information will make it harder for the public to monitor a shipping industry that already functions largely in the shadows,” agreed University of British Columbia professor Peter Klein, a prominent analyst of global supply chains.

In essence, the corporate executives who make up the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee proposed “modernizing” import/export procedures in a variety of ways, one of which would make “data collected from vessel manifests confidential.”

This would frustrate the current practice of journalists using shipping manifests to determine where goods manufactured or harvested with abusive labor practices were sent, a key tactic in pressuring U.S. companies to stop allowing forced labor into their supply chains.

As the AP pointed out, this seems directly contrary to CBP’s commitment to “boost visibility into global supply chains, support ethical sourcing practices and level the playing field for domestic U.S. manufacturers.” Corporate public relations departments have also been assuring American consumers they wish to cleanse their supply chains of forced labor and child labor.

Keep reading

When Corporate America Pulls A PayPal, There’s No Escaping The Digital Gulag

Last week, PayPal published a new user agreement that would allow the company to debit up to $2,500 from a user’s account for engaging in “restricted activities,” including spreading “misinformation.” 

The announcement drew much criticism, including from one of PayPal’s cofounders, David Marcus, who tweeted, “@Paypal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity.” The soon-to-be owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, tweeted a reply, “Agreed.” 

Many angry users posted screenshots of them closing their PayPal accounts in protest of the company’s anti-free speech policy and caused #BankruptPayPal to trend. It seemed that the backlash had been severe enough that on Sunday, PayPal walked back the policy, claiming the new user agreement “went out in error” and the company wouldn’t punish users for spreading misinformation.

That said, people who cherish free speech should not declare victory. After all, PayPal only partially reversed its policy. The company will still fine users up to $2,500 for other offenses listed under its user agreement, including activities presumably promoting “hate” and “intolerance.” After all, PayPal has a long history of labeling speech disagreeing with the woke ideology as “hateful” and “intolerant.” 

Last month, PayPal, its subsidiary Venmo, and Google joined in banning the accounts of “Gays Against Groomers,” accusing the group of violating their user agreements without providing evidence. Gays Against Groomers is “a coalition of gays against the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children” and vocally opposes the hosting of drag queen story times at school.  

In the same month, PayPal also shut down several accounts in the United Kingdom, including the accounts of Free Speech Union and its founder Toby Young. Young and the organization are known to fight back against cancel culture while advocating on behalf of academics who criticize transgenderism. Additionally, PayPal banned a parents’ group, UsForThemUK, that fought to keep schools open during lockdowns and confiscated its funds. One of the group’s cofounders said: “It is extremely hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically motivated cancellation of an organization that in some way offends PayPal.”

You don’t have to agree with the views of anyone banned by PayPal to be troubled by the company’s anti-free speech approach. And even though all eyes are currently on PayPal, the payment processor isn’t the only woke business seeking to regulate speech in the name of ideological conformity. 

Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter have de-platformed many voices they don’t like, including the former president of the United States. For most people, being banned from social media doesn’t have many real-life consequences, so companies have increasingly resorted to imposing financial pain on dissenters.

Keep reading

St. Louis preparing to sue Hyundai and Kia over rampant car thefts in the city

Car thefts have skyrocketed in St. Louis in recent months, with city leadership threatening lawsuits against Kia and Hyundai for an alleged defect that makes certain makes of the cars easier to steal.

“Our drivers probably get about five of these things a day. Just Kias and Hyundais getting stolen,” tow truck driver Mark Hartmann told KMOV last week of thefts in the city. 

Auto thefts in St. Louis have doubled this year, according to KMOV. In July alone, the city averaged about 21 Kia and Hyundai theft incidents each day. That number increased to 23 thefts each day in August, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch previously reported. 

In August, St. Louis leaders threatened to sue Hyundai and Kia, demanding the car companies address a defect that allegedly makes stealing vehicles made before 2021 easier to steal. KMOV reported last week that plans to sue the carmakers over the city’s spike in auto thefts are still in the works.  

Keep reading

Homeowners find out their town has promised their houses to big corporation

Eminent domain is the legal concept that government can take people’s private property – with just compensation – when it is needed for a public benefit like a road or a bridge.

But in recent years governments repeatedly have used the scheme to take private property – and then have turned it over to another private owner, and such disputes have come up repeatedly in court.

There’s another fight erupting now.

This time it’s the Institute for Justice that is fighting on behalf of homeowners who live along Burnet Road in Onandaga County, New York.

That’s because county officials – and Micron Technology – have announced plans for the company to build a microchip facility in the White Pine Commerce Park in Clay.

The proposed construction site includes not only parts of the commerce park, which largely has been vacant since the 1990s, but the private properties of multiple homeowners.

“My father built this home, and my family has lived here for decades. I’m not going to sit back and let the county take my family’s home and hand it over to a private corporation,” explained one homeowner, Paul Richer, in a statement released by the IJ.

Keep reading