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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by roachboy
.....also, maintaining the separation of topics directs attention more easily to american agricultural subsidies as a self-evident example of another gap--the one that separates the rhetoric of "the level playing field" and the reality of dumping (with all the attending destruction of food self-sufficiency, which flies in the face of imf/world bank talk talk talk about their "concern for poverty and ending hunger")....it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this "level playing field" means nothing, that it is a thin veneer behind which american economic domination is justified...and that, knowing something of the realities behind these word word words, points to yet another curious gap, the one that separates the articles of faith particular to domestic populist conservatism in the states and the policies undertaken by the political class which claims to represent these articles of faith.
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I understand, rb, and I'll stay on topic here, except for urging you to read this:
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/22/193331/112 because I think the rest of the world is beginning to "wise up". It is very well explained piece about what the US and allied Over developed countries have been up to, colonialism never really died:
rb, what kind of world would it be if ADM and Cargill never emerged?
Quote:
http://www.laborrights.org/projects/...aint_Jul05.pdf
I. NATURE OF THE ACTION
1. Plaintiffs John Doe I, John Doe II, and John Doe III (referred to herein as the
“Former Child Slave” Plaintiffs) <h3>are all former child slaves of Malian origin who were trafficked
and forced to work harvesting and/or cultivating cocoa beans on farms in Cote d’Ivoire, which
supply cocoa beans to the Defendant companies named herein.</h3> The Former Child Slave
Plaintiffs bring this action on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated former child
slaves of Malian origin against Defendants: Nestlé, S.A., Nestlé, U.S.A., and Nestlé Cote
d’Ivoire, S.A. (together as “Nestlé”); Cargill, Incorporated (“Cargill, Inc.”), Cargill Cocoa, and
Cargill West Africa, S.A. (together as “Cargill”); and Archer Daniels Midland Company
(“ADM”) (referred to collectively as the “Chocolate Importers” or Defendants) for the forced
labor and torture they suffered as a result of the wrongful conduct either caused and/or aided and
abetted by these corporate entities. Specifically, the Former Child Slave Plaintiffs assert claims
under the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”), 28 U.S.C. § 1350, and the Torture Victim Protection Act
(“TVPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1350, note. The Former Child Slaves also bring claims for forced labor
and involuntary servitude under the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 13, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589, 1590,
1595 and under California’s Constitution Article 1, Section 6, as well as for breach of contract,
negligence, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices under California’s Business &
Professions Code §§ 17200, et. seq.
2. The Former Child Slave Plaintiffs bring their ATS and TVPA actions in the
United States because such claims cannot be maintained in their home country of Mali as
currently there is no law in Mali whereby such Plaintiffs can seek civil damages for their injuries
against the major exporters of cocoa operating outside of Mali. Nor could claims be brought in
Cote d’Ivoire as the judicial system is notoriously corrupt and would likely be unresponsive to
the claims of foreign children against major cocoa corporations operating in and bringing
significant revenue to Cote d’Ivoire. It is also likely that both Plaintiffs and their attorneys would
be placed in danger following the civil unrest in Cote d’Ivoire and the general hostility by cocoa
producers in the region where Plaintiffs were forced to work. Further, the Former Child Slave
Plaintiffs bring their claims in the United States as the U.S. has provided a forum for such human...
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It's "all Illinois"
Quote:
http://www.illinois.gov/PressRelease...1&SubjectID=54
"1999 Illinois-Cuba Humanitarian Mission"
Report
of
Governor George H. Ryan
State of Illinois
October 23-27, 1999
Executive Summary
Illinois Governor George H. Ryan led a 45 member state delegation on an intensive, five-day humanitarian mission to Cuba October 23rd through the 27th, 1999. The diverse group - which included the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael Madigan (D-22), Illinois House Minority Leader Lee A. Daniels (R-46), Illinois Senate Minority Leader Emil Jones, Jr. (D-14), Illinois State Senator Todd Seiben (R-37), Illinois State Representative Edgar Lopez (D-4), Illinois State Representative Dan Rutherford (R-44), three members of the Governor's Cabinet, <h3>Allen Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland Corporation</h3>, Dan Martin, Director of E cosystems Conservation & Policy of the MacArthur Foundation, Anne Doris Davis, President of the Illinois Education Association, George Obernagle, President of the Illinois Corn Growers Association, Dr. David Chicoine, Dean of the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, Dr. Carl Getto, Dean of the College of Medicine at Southern Illinois University, and Bishop Joseph Perry representing Francis Cardinal George and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago - committed over $1 million worth of donated humanitarian assistance (food, medicine and school supplies) from the people of Illinois to the people of Cuba. All humanitarian aid not carried and distributed by the delegation during the mission was sent or is in the process of being sent through Catholic charities.
The Governor and his party visited schools, hospitals, farms, churches and a synagogue; met with eight leading Cuban dissidents; had frank discussions with top Cuban government officials; a seven hour dinner meeting with Fidel Castro; and met with Cuban student leaders who attended a major address the Governor delivered at the University of Havana.
Although humanitarian in purpose, the mission was politically significant to many observers, Governor Ryan became the first sitting US governor to visit the island in over 40 years. The US government's policy - in place and essentially unchanged since 1960 - has been to apply economic and political pressure through the US imposed embargo to try to force Fidel Castro from power.
US policy towards Cuba has survived eight separate American presidents - from both political parties. It is a policy that has been largely driven by political strength of the Cuban exile community in South Florida. It clearly harms the economic interests of the American farmers by using food as a political weapon. And , it diminishes the United States' moral authority by continuing an embargo that has been condemned by virtually every other government in the world.
During a breakfast meeting at the residence of the Principal Officer of the US Interests Section in Havana, the Governor discussed the embargo with six ambassadors invited by the US State Department: Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Poland and the Vatican. All of them - without exception - agreed that the embargo is morally wrong, ineffective in its intended purpose, and should be lifted.
The Governor also met with eight leading Cuban dissidents invited by the US State Department to discuss human rights issues. Again, at the conclusion of the meeting, all eight participants - without exception - urged that the US Embargo be lifted....
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Former gov. Ryan, prosecuted for corruption by Libby prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, began serving his sentence last month.
Cuba has "dodged a bullet" by being embargoed by the US for 47 years. The tentacles of US agri-business have been kept almost entirely out of that country.
Guess who is the largest <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/snapshots/1270.html">auto insurer</a> in the US, is based in Illinois, is exempt from anti-trust regs with regard to "the business of insurance", is privately held, and has the largest reserve portfolio of any US insurer (more than $70 billion), and, as I know from looking at ADM as a possible stock trade in 1999 when ADM dropped to $8.00/share, the insurer owned the same percentage of ADM then, as it does now:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=adm nearly nine percent of all ADM shares.
Quote:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/spec...07/carney.html
Dwayne's World
News: Dwayne Andreas has made a fortune with the help of politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Bob Dole. But, he says, their talk of "free markets" is just wind.
By Dan Carney
July/August 1995 Issue
Just off Route 48 east of Decatur, Ill., the corn fields suddenly stop and the vast web of grain elevators, industrial stills, and office buildings that constitutes Archer Daniels Midland Co.'s headquarters begins. It is a colossal expanse of steel and concrete that alters both landscape and sky with its giant gray boxes spewing out clouds of steam.
This is the place where corn, wheat, and soybeans from the American breadbasket are brought to be manufactured into the "food products" that go into everything from Campbell's Soups to La Choy Chinese dinners. In the middle of the complex, in a building behind a bronze statue of Ronald Reagan, down the hall from the world's largest private commodity trading floor, Dwayne Orville Andreas runs the world.
"Tell me," Andreas says to his number two man, who has just returned from a tour of the company's plants in Eastern Europe, "what do they do for us in Bulgaria? Do they fix the prices? Or is there some kind of a free market?"
This type of brashness typifies Andreas and his company, whether the issue is possible price-fixing in Bulgaria or influence-peddling in Washington. For no other U.S. company is so reliant on politicians and governments to butter its bread. From the postwar food-aid programs that opened new markets in the Third World to the subsidies for corn, sugar, and ethanol that are now under attack as "corporate welfare," ADM's bottom line has always been interwoven with public policy. To reinforce this relationship, Andreas has contributed impressively to the campaigns of politicians, from Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.
Standing just 5-foot-4 and raised a Mennonite, Andreas is a 77-year-old grandfather who, out of the context of his corporate empire, could easily be mistaken for a man of much more modest standing and concerns. This image vanishes, however, when he starts issuing opinions.
Sitting behind a lunch of soy burgers, soy taco meat, and soy cheese dessert, Andreas announces that global capitalism is a delusion. "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country."
It might seem odd that a man with personal assets well into nine figures would be so quick to hoist the red flag of socialism over the American heartland. But Andreas is essentially right. Agriculture is the last industry where the U.S. government so routinely sets prices and determines production levels, a complex arena in which doing business often has more to do with influencing legislation than with responding to supply and demand. Prospering in this environment is ADM's forte.
"We're the biggest [food and agriculture] company in the world," Andreas explains. <h33>"How is the government going to run without people like us?</h3> We make 35 percent of the bread in this country, and that much of the margarine, and cooking oil, and all the other things."
ADM is indeed a Goliath of world food production (it calls itself the "supermarket to the world"), with 1994 reported sales of $11.3 billion and profits of $484 million. Its total stock value is $9.7 billion, $417 million of which belongs to Andreas, or is held by him in a trust for his offspring.
For all this, though, ADM still functions like an overgrown mom-and-pop outfit. Four Andreases are senior executives in the company. Another serves on the board. Vice President Howard Buffett (son of investment guru Warren Buffett) seems to be treated like family--he's called "Howie" around the boardroom.
When I spoke with Andreas and two of his sons, they were all clearly uncomfortable dealing with a reporter. Michael Andreas said, only half-jokingly, "I never knew what a reporter looked like."
In addition to the executives' devotion to anonymity, the company markets no products under its own name, so ADM is familiar to most people only through the ads it runs on shows like "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." But ADM products are present in literally thousands of items found in supermarkets, liquor stores, even gas stations. In addition to milling much of the country's flour and manufacturing margarines and oils for such big-name brands as Crisco and Mazola, ADM processes ingredients found in such products as Nabisco Cheese Nips, Life cereal, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
ADM's protein enhancers are common in pet foods, and its texturized vegetable protein is the stuff burritos and meatless burgers are made of. If you look at the side of a can of Coca-Cola you will see that ADM corn sweetener is the second ingredient listed, after water. If you tank up on gasohol, the odds are 60 percent that the ethanol in the blend is made by ADM. And if you decide to get tanked on martinis, you will find that ADM is also the nation's largest producer of the grain alcohol used to make gin, vodka, and liqueurs.
"Did somebody dream there is some way that the government doesn't need us?" Andreas continues. "What in the hell would they do with the farm program without us?"
For all ADM's size, the question now is not whether the government can survive without ADM but whether ADM can survive without the government. Three subsidies that the company relies on are now being targeted by watchdogs ranging from Ralph Nader to the libertarian Cato Institute.
The first subsidy is the Agriculture Department's corn-price support program. Despite ADM's close association with corn, this is the least important subsidy to the company. In the short run, ADM might actually benefit if this program is cut back since it might reduce the price the company pays for raw corn. But over time, the lack of a government regulation could lead to wild price fluctuations that would make long-term planning difficult for the company.
Of more benefit to ADM is the Agriculture Department's sugar program. The program runs like a mini-OPEC: setting prices, limiting production, and forcing Americans to spend $1.4 billion per year more for sugar, according to the General Accounting Office. The irony is that, aside from a small subsidiary in Metairie, La., ADM has no interest in sugar. Its concern is to keep sugar prices high to prevent Coke and all the other ADM customers that replaced cane sugar with corn sweeteners from switching back. "The sugar program acts as an umbrella for them," says Tom Hammer, president of the Sweetener Users Association. "It protects them from economic competition."
The third subsidy that ADM depends on is the 54-cent-per-gallon tax credit the federal government allows to refiners of the corn-derived ethanol used in auto fuel. For this subsidy, the federal government pays $3.5 billion over five years. Since ADM makes 60 percent of all the ethanol in the country, the government is essentially contributing $2.1 billion to ADM's bottom line. No other subsidy in the federal government's box of goodies is so concentrated in the hands of a single company.
Robert Shapiro, author of a corporate welfare report for the Progressive Policy Institute, describes ADM's federally supported journey this way: "ADM begins by buying the corn at subsidized prices. Then it uses the corn to make corn sweeteners, which are subsidized by the sugar program. Then it uses the remainder for the big subsidy, which is ethanol."
The grease--or perhaps oleo--that helps keep these kinds of programs going is the money Andreas, his family, his company, and his company's subsidiaries provide politicians who have influence over agricultural policy. During the 1992 election, Andreas gave more than $1.4 million in "soft money" (which goes to party organizations rather than individual candidates, and is exempt from limits) and $345,650 more in contributions to congressional and senatorial candidates, using multiple donors in his family and his companies. In the nonpresidential 1994 election, the company and its people gave $656,768 in soft money and another $224,170 in contributions to individual candidates. More recently, Speaker Newt Gingrich's GOPAC received at least $70,000 from Andreas. (Gingrich has released the names of individual donors, but not yet of corporate ones.) "These guys are state-of-the-art," says Fred Wertheimer, the longtime Common Cause president who recently stepped down. "They play this game to the hilt."
ADM's next challenge is the 1996 presidential race. President Clinton has been extraordinarily generous to ADM click to show , last year pushing through a mandate that 30 percent of the gasoline sold in the nation's most polluted cities contain ethanol products by 1996--and receiving a $100,000 check at essentially the same time. (Andreas insists the timing was coincidental.) Sen. Phil Gramm has not shown up on ADM's radar screen yet, but the company has begun to show up on his. Last summer, Gramm stunned his home-state oil companies by stalling on his position on the ethanol mandate. Although he eventually announced that he would support the oil companies against the mandate, he made a point of stating that there was really no good way to vote.
ADM's ultimate presidential candidate, though, is Bob Dole, who has long been one of ethanol's biggest champions. He promoted the 54-cent subsidy and helped keep it from applying to methanol as well. In 1980 he sponsored a tariff on imported alcohol fuels. During the 1990 Clean Air Act debate and the 1992 national energy strategy debate, he pushed pro-ethanol amendments. Dole also has close personal ties with Andreas. Andreas contributes to Dole's foundation for helping the disabled and frequently vacations with him, sometimes providing his own airplane for the trips. In 1982, Andreas helped expedite Dole's purchase of a condominium in the Sea View Hotel in Bal Harbour, Fla. Sea View is managed by an Andreas-owned company, and Andreas also has a condo in the building. Other past and present Sea View tenants include former Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill, television journalist David Brinkley, and ADM board member and Washington superlawyer Robert Strauss.
Andreas has a long history of political philanthropy. In a recently released deposition, Richard Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, recalled a 1972 personal visit from Andreas in which he delivered an unmarked envelope containing $100,000 in $100 bills. The cash spent a year or so in a White House safe before Nixon, with the Watergate investigation closing in around him, decided to give it back.
Another $25,000 of Andreas' money, however, was traced to a bank account used by the Watergate burglars. This was a revelation--and no doubt a disappointment--to Nixon's presidential opponent, Hubert Humphrey, who had been close friends with Andreas for years. The two, neighbors in Minneapolis in the 1940s and 1950s, had traveled the world together promoting food-aid programs. (Both the Watergate money and the envelope full of cash came at an inopportune time. Andreas had just been indicted, though never convicted, for making illegal campaign contributions.)
Andreas portrays his large gifts as a necessity to silence the pleas of powerful people. Often, he says, solicitations come through someone affiliated with a major ADM customer. Take the $100,000 check to Clinton, says Andreas. The solicitation came from Vernon Jordan, Clinton's transition chief and golfing buddy--and a member of the board of ADM customer Sara Lee. "What are you going to say to Vernon Jordan: 'We've decided to quit you guys'? Of course, I gave him the money."
These protestations leave ADM's detractors unimpressed. "If Mr. Andreas thinks this whole system is a political shakedown, then he should join us in fighting for campaign reform," says Common Cause's Wertheimer.
Recently ADM has been sending signals it wants to spend more of its time and energy seeking greener pastures abroad. Whether this is because Andreas sees an end to the corporate welfare gravy train here, or simply because the growth potential is greater abroad is not clear. But ADM claims to have plants in every single former Warsaw Pact country, is selling ever-increasing amounts of food to China, and is working hand in glove with the European Union.
But the most intriguing--and perhaps most ominous--push ADM is making is in biotechnology. Instead of having to buy soybeans, the company wants to make its own protein in giant vats that are the functional equivalent of cow stomachs. If ADM can pull this off, Andreas might not be so upset when he finds out that Bulgaria doesn't fix prices. With a monopoly on human-engineered protein, ADM will be able to fix its own.
Dan Carney is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. |
Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...gewanted=print
January 26, 1999
Top Archer Daniels Midland Executive Steps Down
By KURT EICHENWALD
Dwayne O. Andreas, who directed the transformation of the Archer Daniels Midland Corporation from a modest regional grain processor to a global agribusiness giant, yesterday stepped down as chairman of the company after more than a quarter of a century at the helm.
Mr. Andreas, who will remain tied to the company as chairman emeritus and a member of the board, was succeeded by his nephew, G. Allen Andreas, who has served as chief executive of the company for almost two years.
Wall Street analysts had widely expected the succession, a fact that in itself may be the final testament to the influence retained by Dwayne Andreas, long one of the most powerful and politically connected executives in America.
Over the last four years, Mr. Andreas saw his hopes of turning the corporate reins over to his son Michael shatter amid a price-fixing scandal. That scandal, which resulted in the conviction of Michael and two other executives on Federal antitrust charges, raised questions among some institutional shareholders about the future role of the Andreas family in the company.
But Mr. Andreas, who is now 80 years old, threw his influence behind his nephew, a respected executive who had won plaudits from his efforts to build Archer Daniel's business in Europe. By 1997, with the approval of company directors, Dwayne Andreas turned the job of chief executive over to Allen, telling friends that he intended to continue as chairman for a year or two.
Since that time, analysts said, Dwayne Andreas has been taking less and less of a role in the daily operations of the company, ceding those duties to his nephew. In essence, these analysts said, yesterday's announcement merely formalizes the role established in recent years.
''I call it a change in form, but not substance,'' said Leonard Teitelbaum, a managing director and analyst with Merrill Lynch & Company.
With his new duties, Dwayne Andreas will continue exerting an enormous level of influence at the company. ''Anybody who thinks that Dwayne Andreas is going to try out for captain of his shuffleboard team is sadly mistaken,'' Mr. Teitelbaum said. ''He is too big an influence in worldwide agriculture.''
In an interview, Allen Andreas said that he expects to continue working closely with his uncle. ''It's a great opportunity for both of us,'' he said. ''He and I have been close associates, and I expect to continue to use his wise advice and counsel.''
Dwayne Andreas's decision to step down crystallized over the Christmas holidays, according to friends and directors. ''He just decided it was time,'' said Robert Strauss, an Archer Daniels director and former chairman of the Democratic Party. ''I don't think he had to wrestle with it. He just woke up one day and it felt like the right thing to do.''
According to participants in yesterday's board meeting, the votes to accept the resignation and name a new chairman were followed by several directors offering plaudits to Dwayne Andreas. Mr. Strauss praised him for his ability to move so easily through different worlds -- agricultural, political and international. Andrew Young, the former United Nations Representative, told of Mr. Andreas's anonymous contributions of money to rebuild black churches when they were being subjected to arson.
Directors and analysts said that the transfer of power to a new generation should be particularly important now, as falling margins are creating new challenges for agriculture companies. ''Allen is more youthful,'' Mr. Webb said in an interview, ''And that vigor is a positive thing for us right now with all the dynamics that are happening in the agricultural industry.''
Dwayne Andreas, who a company spokeswoman said was not available for comment, has been part of the industry since childhood. The son of Mennonite farmers, he helped build a family feed company, and later joined Cargill Inc. as an executive. Long before globalization became the mantra of corporate America, he pushed agricultural companies to seek new markets overseas -- indeed, a dispute about his desire to seek new business in the then Soviet Union contributed to his departure from Cargill.
He joined Archer Daniels in 1965, and within five years, was named chairman and chief executive. Over the decades that followed, Mr. Andreas built the company's financial fortunes and political influence. Mr. Andreas considered courting politicians as part of his job. With an ease that bred envy among other corporations, Mr. Andreas helped navigate Archer Daniels between the Republicans and Democrats while helping to form this country's agricultural policies.
Renowned for generosity in political contributions, the company, Mr. Andreas and his family forged ties with politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Ronald Reagan; Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich. In the 1972 campaign, it was $25,000 contributed to the Nixon campaign from Dwayne Andreas that ended up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar.
The price-fixing scandal arose in 1995, when Federal agents raided the company's headquarters in Decatur, Ill. It soon emerged that a senior executive, Mark Whitacre, had been working as an informant for the Government, secretly taping price-fixing meetings.
In 1996, the company admitted fixing prices for two commodities, and agreed to pay a record $100 million fine.
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Quote:
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/cou...20Whitacre.htm
HEADLINE: Three Sentenced in Archer Daniels Midland Case
BYLINE: By KURT EICHENWALD
DATELINE: CHICAGO, July 9
BODY:
Three former executives of the Archer Daniels Midland Company, including the son of its former chairman, Dwayne Andreas, were sentenced today to terms ranging from two to two and a half years in prison for their roles in a worldwide scheme to fix prices of a feed additive manufactured by the company.
Michael Andreas, the former vice chairman and heir apparent at the company, and Terrance Wilson, the retired chief of its corn processing division, were sentenced to two years and ordered to pay the maximum fine of $350,000 each. A third former executive, Mark Whitacre, was sentenced to two and a half years, but not ordered to pay a fine. Mr. Whitacre, who is already serving nine years in prison for illegally taking millions of dollars from Archer Daniels, was ordered to serve 20 months of the new sentence on top of his current term.
The sentences handed down by Federal Judge Blanche Manning added a new twist to a series of events that have bedeviled the case from the beginning: Mr. Whitacre, who received the longest sentence, was also the Government informant who alerted Federal investigators to the price-fixing conspiracy in 1992.
In a ruling that perplexed prosecutors, Judge Manning determined that Mr. Whitacre was a manager of the conspiracy, which under the Federal guidelines for sentencing requires an increase in his prison term. But she ruled that neither Mr. Andreas nor Mr. Wilson, who prosecutors contended were the masterminds of the scheme, had controlling roles. Judge Manning did not explain the reasons for her decision.
The three men were convicted last September of conspiring with Japanese and Korean competitors to fix the price of the feed additive lysine, and to assign each company its production volume.
Neither Mr. Andreas nor Mr. Wilson showed any reaction to the sentence. Mr. Whitacre was sentenced by telephone. The men had faced maximum sentences of three years in prison.
The case has had an enormous impact on Archer Daniels, whose influence extends to almost every grocery store aisle. For decades, the grain giant was run as a virtual family fiefdom under the iron-fisted control of Dwayne Andreas, one of the nation's most politically powerful executives, who is known to Presidents and prime ministers alike.
But as details of the criminal investigation of the company emerged -- as well as evidence of the involvement in the conspiracy of an Andreas family member -- the company was placed under enormous pressure to become more open and responsive to shareholders. In 1996, the company pleaded guilty to price fixing and paid a $100 million fine. Dwayne Andreas has since retired, turning the reins of the company over to his nephew, G. Allen Andreas.
Prosecutors praised today's sentences, saying that they underscored the significance of the crime.
"This is a particularly reprehensible crime that victimized people throughout the world," said James Griffin, a lead prosecutor in the case.
The sentence, he said, "sends a very serious deterrent message to those who may consider engaging in this kind of criminal activity."
Nonetheless, the prosecutors expressed disappointment at Judge Manning's ruling that neither Mr. Andreas nor Mr. Wilson was in charge of the conspiracy, and some confusion about why she held that Mr. Whitacre was.
"I'm not quite sure why the judge did that," Scott Lassar, the United States Attorney for Chicago, said when asked about Judge Manning's ruling on Mr. Whitacre.
He added that the Government had asked for all three executives to be deemed managers of the conspiracy, and that Mr. Whitacre was the only defendant who did not object to that designation.
The puzzlement about the ruling stems in part from the evidence presented at trial. Mr. Whitacre was only liable for his actions during the time before he informed the Government of the scheme. Based on the trial evidence, only two price-fixing meetings took place in that period, and Mr. Whitacre took a back seat to Mr. Wilson in both instances.
Bill Walker, a lawyer for Mr. Whitacre, said that he was stunned by the sentence. "I'm taken aback by it," he said. "I'm still in the blizzard, trying to figure this out." Lawyers for Mr. Andreas and Mr. Wilson said that they were disappointed by the outcome, but that they planned to appeal the verdict.
Mr. Whitacre first alerted the Government to price fixing at Archer Daniels in 1992. For the next two and a half years, he worked as a Government informant, secretly recording meetings with competitors and conversations at the highest reaches of the company.
Soon after raids on Archer Daniels in 1995, Mr. Whitacre was discredited as a witness, and he eventually lost his immunity from prosecution when it was disclosed that he had been illegally taking millions of dollars from the company, even while working as an informant. Mr. Whitacre contended that the money was provided as part of an under-the-table bonus plan at the company, but Government investigators concluded that was not true. In 1997, Mr. Whitacre pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to prison.
At yesterday's hearing, Mr. Andreas spoke publicly for the first time since the investigation began. Reading from a statement, he portrayed himself as having been blindsided by new Government interpretations of antitrust rules.
"I love this country, your honor, and I thought I knew its rules," Mr. Andreas told Judge Manning. "I did not want to commit a crime and I did not think that I had committed a crime."
But Government prosecutors dismissed that notion. They pointed to a videotape of a meeting between executives from Archer Daniels and Ajinimoto, a Japanese competitor, that was shown at the trial. In the tape, made in October 1993, Mr. Andreas directed an effort to allocate shares of the lysine market in the coming year, a critical element of a price-fixing conspiracy.
Before his sentencing, Mr. Wilson made no attempt to deny his responsibility. "When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging, and I have no intention of making it deeper and wider," he said to Judge Manning. "I accept total and complete responsibility for my actions."
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Quote:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html
A Case Study In Corporate Welfare
by James Bovard
James Bovard is an associate policy analyst with the Cato Institute. His most recent book is Shakedown: How the Government Screws You from A to Z (Viking, 1995).
Executive Summary
The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30
One of the most politically charged debates in Washington revolves around business subsidies known as "corporate welfare." A number of policy organizations have published studies examining the corporate welfare phenomenon: what qualifies as corporate welfare, how much it costs taxpayers, and how much it damages the economy. This study examines the dynamics of corporate welfare somewhat differently by investigating ADM as a classic case study of how those subsidies are obtained, how the welfare state encourages such "rent seeking," and how such practices fundamentally corrupt the political life of a nation. Congress's expressed desire to foster a free marketplace cannot be taken seriously until ADM's corporate hand is removed from the federal till.
Introduction
ADM is certainly the nation's most arrogant welfare recipient. .....
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ADM is the tenth worst corporate air polluter in the US:
Quote:
http://www.peri.umass.edu/Toxic-100-Table.265.0.html
THE TOXIC 100: Top Corporate Air Polluters in the United States
Largest corporations ranked by toxic score, 2002
>>Toxic 100 Press Release
>> For details on how this table was prepared, see Technical Notes.
>> Search detailed company reports.
Complete responses & non-responses by Top 10 companies and rejoinders
by PERI, moderated by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre....
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....and there is another US "agri-monster", privately held Cargill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill
Last edited by host; 12-01-2007 at 02:48 PM..
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