A big surprise in this year’s elections is that American politics has become dominated by the least likely of participants: Shy people. That’s strange, since running for office is an ego game, attracting those at ease with self-promotion. But the hot new trend is to campaign anonymously, not even whispering your name to voters.
Of course, these are not the campaigns of actual candidates, nor are the campaigners even people. Rather, they are corporations, empowered by the Frankensteins on our Supreme Court to possess the political rights of us real human-type people. Using their shareholders’ money, corporate entities are spending hundreds-of-millions of dollars to elect or defeat whomever they choose.
You would know these corporations, for they are major brand-names from Big Oil, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc. Normally, they are not at all bashful about promoting their corporate brands, but – shhhh – they want to be totally secretive about their massive spending to decide who holds office in America. They realize that their self-serving campaigns would alienate their customers, employees, and shareholders, so they’re keeping their involvement hush-hush.
One agency could compel them to reveal their spending on what amounts to a corporate coup of our democratic elections: The Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is supposed to guard the right of investors to know how corporate executives are spending their money. But this watchdog isn’t barking, much less biting, thus allowing CEOs to take unlimited amounts of other people’s money, without their permission, and secretly pour it down the darkest hole in American politics.
SEC’s inaction is gutless, making it complicit in the corporate corruption of our governing system. To help make it do its duty, link up with Public Citizen: www.citizen.org.
“The S.E.C. and Political Spending,” The New York Times, October 29, 2014.

Surrealistic rule in the Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley, located somewhere between sensational and silly, has long been led by entrepreneurial billionaires with a surreal relationship to people in the normal workaday world.
Thus, the tech “geniuses” who rule the rarefied Silicon stratosphere not only hold some of the most insensitive and stupid beliefs – but occasionally utter them aloud. For example, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, recently gave an astonishing bit of advice to women working for high-tech firms. It’s not “good karma” for women to ask for pay raises, he lectured. Instead, just trust corporate bosses to do the right thing, “knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.”
Bizarrely, Nadella chose to cough up this completely clueless comment at a conference of women celebrating their role in the technology industry! Scorched immediately by media and public outrage, he tried to quell the firestorm by apologizing, then announcing that all Microsoft workers would henceforth receive “expanded training on how to foster an inclusive culture” in the workplace. Earth to Satya: It’s not your employees who need expanded training – it’s you.
Group therapy aside, improving Microsoft’s culture requires opening up a closed system, providing real steps to rectify the imbalances women face in an industry that’s notoriously unfriendly to them. For starters, note that at present only 29 percent of Microsoft’s employees are female and that women hold only 17 percent of its high-paying engineering and executive positions.
By the way, how did CEO Nadella get his $84 million-a-year pay package? I’m guessing he demanded it, “good karma” be damned. For more information on Silicon Valley’s embarrassing “female problem,” connect with the workplace advocacy group, UltraViolet: www.WeareUltraViolet.org.
“Microsoft CEO launches training after pay gaffe,” Austin American Statesman, October 18, 2014.
“Furor rages over CEO’s comments on women’s pay,” Austin American Statesman, October 11, 2014.
“Karma and the cloud at Microsoft,” USA Today, October 20, 2014.
“More Episodes of Clueless in Silicon Valley:  What does the reaction say about us?,” www.celavoice.org, October 28, 2014.

Silicon Valley Profits From Systemic Labor Exploitation

The demigods of Silicon Valley like to present themselves as miracle workers, able to create electronic wonders (and wondrous profits) from nothing but their vaunted imaginations and entrepreneurial prowess.
Well, yes, that – plus their routine exploitation of workers. From illegal conspiracies that shut off upward mobility for their US employees to their disgraceful use of sweatshop labor abroad, a key component of their business plan is to squeeze billions of dollars a year from their workforce. Such is the price of “miracles.”
A particularly crass example of this profiteering came to light in October, when a multimillion-dollar, multinational, digital printing outfit named Electronics for Imaging was nabbed and fined for a jaw-dropping act of wage theft. EFI executives had flown in eight IT workers from Bangalore, India, to Silicon Valley to help install the corporation’s computer system in its new headquarters.
Now, get ready, for here comes the jaw-dropper: EFI tried to get away with paying those workers what they would’ve made in India – $1.21 an hour – rather than paying California’s $8 an hour minimum wage. And get this: EFI even paid them in RUPEES, rather than dollars. Furthermore, the foreigners were made to work up to 122 hours a week, yet EFI paid no overtime wages.
Thanks to an anonymous tip, the Labor Department has now convicted EFI of gross labor law violations, forcing it to pay back the wages it stole. Yet the CEO, who raked in a $6 million paycheck as he ripped off the people he imported, offered no apology. EFI said it “unintentionally overlooked” US wage law, dismissing it as an “administrative error.”
No, it was a failure of moral character. But, since EFI was fined only $3,500, Silicon Valley will count that as an endorsement of its prevailing ethic of labor exploitation.
“EFI paid Indian employees working in us less than $2 an hour,” www.abc7news.com, October 22, 2014.
“Workers paid $1.21 an hour to install Fremont tech company’s computers,” www.mercurynews.com, October 22, 2014.
“US Tech Firm Fined for Underpaying Indian Workers,” www.abcnews.com, October 23, 2014.