Is Yum! destroying Kentucky forests?

According to the Dogwood Alliance, an NGO devoted to saving Southern U.S. forests and promoting sustainable forestry practices, Louisville-based Yum! Brands does not practice responsible corporate citizenship:

When it comes to their paper packaging decisions they are contributing to large scale clearcutting and conversion of natural forests to sterile pine plantations which has disastrous impacts on the biodiversity of Southern forests and communities.

While countless other companies like Staples, Office Depot, Random House, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Starbucks and others have developed sustainable paper purchasing policies and taken action to help protect forests, to date, Yum! Brands lags seriously behind.

When it comes to paper packaging choices, Yum! Brands has no clear plans for increasing its use of purchases of post consumer recycled paper or ensuring that its paper is certified by FSC standards –the only independent global certification system in the world accepted by the conservation, aboriginal and business communities.

Yum! is a major sponsor of University athletics. The basketball/volleyball practice facility is named after the corporation.

In the world of corporate social responsibility, it's never good to be compared unfavorably to Wal-mart, McDonald's or Starbucks. Each of those companies has previously been targeted in specific NGO campaigns.



Visit this blog's homepage.

Corporate Socialism

This seems like an appropriate week to blog about NY Times reporter David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch; How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill). The collapse of investment firms on Wall Street presents a rare populist moment. It is not necessarily a good time to write a blank check to the elites of the investment class.

On April 7, 2008, The Nation published a review of Johnston's book by Daniel Brook. He provides a succinct summary of the book:

Johnston's contention is an audacious one: the level of inequality and corruption in contemporary America puts us in league not with our putative economic peers, Canada, Europe and Japan, but with Brazil, Mexico and Russia, countries "in which adults have the right to vote, but real political power is wielded by a relatively narrow, and rich, segment of the population." And, as in these unequal "democracies," American elites routinely raid the public purse rather than rely on the free market to succeed. Since the "Reagan revolution," and under the guise of privatization, deregulation and "market-based solutions," wealthy interests have set up a system that Johnston dubs "corporate socialism," in which they succeed through monopoly, public subsidy and even outright theft rather than through competition. And this rigged system, Johnston argues, is what's driving the new inequality off the charts. "Subsidy economics," he writes, "is at the core of the economic malaise felt for so long by a majority of Americans."

Compared to what's being debated this week -- $700 billion in corporate welfare -- Johnston's anecdotes are small potatoes. However, his overall economic data is eye-opening:

...[Johnston's] analysis of tax data, which he recapitulates in Free Lunch, shows that it is not merely the poor and middle class who are being left behind. Even those Americans in the ninety-fifth and ninety-ninth percentiles on the income scale haven't received outsized economic benefits over the past twenty-five years. The only people leaping ahead in winner-take-all America are in the top 1 percent--and more specifically the top .1 and .01 percents.

Incidentally, this data might explain a recent Pew Research result reported in the December 2007 Atlantic Monthly-- "19 percent of the wealthiest third of Americans see themselves as have-nots, suggesting that financial security is sometimes in the eye of the beholder."

Johnston's book looks like it is well worth a look.

As for the $700 billion bailout package -- I'm pretty skeptical of such a plan emerging from the Bush Treasury Department. Think about the administration's post-crisis record -- 9/11, Iraq, Katrina -- and then layer that with Bush economics, secrecy and outright deception. These guys typically provide cover for "looters with limos".


Visit this blog's homepage.

Edwards: Corporate Responsibility

I haven't yet decided to back any of the 2008 presidential candidates, but John Edwards seems to be advocating a number of interesting ideas that merit serious consideration in the campaign.

In late October, for example, Edwards put forward a plan for corporate responsibility that seems to include a lot of good ideas. The AP story highlighting key plan elements, written by Amy Lorentzen, is still available on the Fox News website:

Require corporations to disclose lobbying activities, political contributions, environmental impacts and government contracts and subsidies.

Give shareholders new rights regarding corporate governance, allowing them more say in decisions such as executive compensation.

Modernize labor laws to help workers join unions and bargain for better pay and benefits.

Create universal retirement accounts that would require employers to offer savings plans for workers who can't access pensions. Edwards said the first $500 workers save would be matched dollar-for-dollar with a tax credit that would be paid for by capital gains taxes.

Those retirement accounts would be mobile, allowing workers to change jobs without losing their pension plans. Paired with a universal health care plan, these mobile new entitlements would provide a real increase in financial security and employment flexibility for American workers.

The intent of the transparency requirement is consistent with my own arguments about public accountability in international institutions: "sunshine will be a powerful disinfectant for corporate malfeasance."


Visit this blog's homepage.