Corporate Hall of Shame: The Results are in!

[Joanne98]

http://us.oneworld.net/external/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stopcorporateabuse.org%2Fcms%2Fpage1533.cfm

Nearly 8,600 voters have voiced their choice, and the 2007 inductees are ExxonMobil, Halliburton and Wal-Mart. Here are the results:

Corporation
Votes Cast

ExxonMobil
4,834

Halliburton
4,324

Wal-Mart
2,882

Kimberly-Clark
2,822

Coke
1,935

Ford
1,465

Nestlé
1,075

Merck
879

Write-Ins
313

Total Voters
8,592



Each voter could select up to three different nominees, or they could write in their own candidate. More than 300 people did so, with corporations such as Monsanto, Lockheed Martin and McDonald’s named the most frequently. And many of you posted comments.

Here’s why the new inductees led the voting:

Slick Lawyers — and a Lot of Hot Air
Even though ExxonMobil is the most profitable corporation in the world, the oil giant is still using its legal clout to avoid paying $4.5 billion in punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. At the same time, ExxonMobil is spending millions to delay action on global warming. As the only oil corporation that still denies the urgency of climate change, ExxonMobil spent nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 funding “junk science” from front groups that confuse the issue. Despite record oil-prices and industry profits, ExxonMobil continues to receive billions of dollars from publicly-funded corporate handouts, in the form of tax breaks and royalty relief (for oil taken from public lands).

Maximum Profits, Minimal Accountability
At Halliburton, war profiteering is big business. Since the Iraq war began, Halliburton has been awarded more than $20 billion in government contracts. Now Congress is investigating $2.7 billion in waste and overcharging by Halliburton — including bills for three times the meals that U.S. troops actually received in Iraq. With these sky-high prices comes an embarrassingly low level of service, such as water contaminated with feces that Halliburton delivered to troops for bathing, laundry and even making coffee. Now, after charging taxpayers billions of dollars for their government contracts, Halliburton has announced plans to cut and run, moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, which will likely make it easier for the company to pay less U.S. taxes. But Halliburton had been violating U.S. laws for years, operating in Iran until April 2007 under the guise of one of their subsidiaries.

Low Prices, Lower Ethics
The world’s largest retailer generates nearly a billion dollars per day in sales. In fact, 2.5 cents of every dollar spent in the United States passes through a Wal-Mart cash register. But the employees who run those cash registers, stock the shelves, and clean the floors aren’t sharing in the corporate wealth. Most of the retail giant’s workers have an annual income close to the poverty line. Fewer than half are covered by the corporation’s health plan. And now Wal-Mart is the subject of the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history, involving 1.2 million women who are current or former employees. Meanwhile, Congressional investigators estimate that each Wal-Mart store receives nearly half a million dollars a year in government subsidies. (Wal-Mart has padded its bottom line with more than $1.2 billion in tax breaks and other public subsidies, including deals that allow them to use sales taxes paid by some store customers to pay for improvements to the store property.)

For more on the Hall of Shame, click here.

Thank you to our allies who helped spread the word about the Hall of Shame and who are working to make the nominees more accountable.



Comments

Here are some of the comments you posted on the inductees

on ExxonMobil...

“Exxon is gouging America with unreasonably high fuel prices while spending millions to prevent better fuel efficiency.” – Austin, TX

“Exxon, you need to face the music and pay for the damages your oil spill caused. Much life was lost and the damage is still there.” – St. Charles, MO

“Exxon, for it’s flagrant destruction of environment and greedy avoidance of it’s responsibility.” – Seattle, WA

“Exxon has spent huge amounts of money to confuse ordinary people and governments into inaction, through funding of climate change ‘skeptics.’ If Exxon had used the money it wasted on funding skeptics to clean up its act, the world would be well on the way to reducing global greenhouse gases now.” – Alberta, Canada

“Being from Louisiana, I know all too well how Exxon has weaseled its way into local communities, does as little as possible even if it means compromising worker safety, and release of chemicals due. They have record profits and are eliminating jobs that are vital to the safety of their refineries.” – Greenwell Springs, LA

“Exxon endlessly appeals the court decisions that find them culpable for the 1989 oil spill — some of the defendants have died while Exxon's phalanx of lawyers refuses to take responsibility for their disaster.” – Fairbanks, AK

“Exxon wins hands down for causing the greatest potential harm to the most people. Their actions, if unabated, will contribute directly to the extinction of thousands of species and perhaps billions of people as weather patterns shift, seas rise, deserts encroach upon farmland and habitat is lost through global warming.” – Atlanta, GA

on Halliburton...

“Halliburton is the worst offender for it’s practices in the middle east. Our soldiers deserve far better!” – Ocean Shores, WA

“Halliburton has ripped off the American people with its padded government contracts.”

“Halliburton is so obviously criminal in its practices and performance. This company is the archetype of the worst kind of company in the U.S.”

“Halliburton is ripping off ALL American taxpayers and undermining U.S. troops in Iraq.”

“Halliburton (profit first, then cut and run) is cheating the American taxpayers in every possible way and making the misery in Iraq even worse.”

on Wal-Mart...

“They have set the pattern for predatory merchandising, using foreign labor (sometimes, even forced labor), and paying low wages to their employees, etc.” – Vacaville, CA

“Wal-Mart is the symbol of what's wrong with America. Wal-Mart is shameful.”

“After 15 years as a Wal-Mart customer, I stopped shopping there six months ago. What enrages and grieves me is their treatment of Third World workers, paying desperate people, even small children, 17 cents an hour while their CEO makes nearly $8,500 an hour.”

“Wal-Mart demands tax and infrastructure abatements by states and local governments for the ‘honor’ of opening new stores. This ‘honor’ has the effect of local, independently owned, and especially family businesses, out of business. There is no community that Wal-Mart enters that, within three years or less, is not markedly economically worse off.” – Baltimore, MD

“Wal-Mart is directly and indirectly responsible for more pollution, unhealthy labor practices, sweatshops, anti-environmental action, and detriment to our nation’s economy than any other corporation.” – Los Angeles, CA

“Despite a forceful PR push to position themselves as ‘sustainable,’ the company continues to sell cypress mulch that is destroying the Gulf Coast. Entire cypress forests, our best natural storm protection and important habitat for wildlife, are being clear-cut just to make garden mulch, and Wal-Mart is distributing the product throughout the country. They need to live up to their claims and stop selling this unsustainable and unnecessary product.” – New Orleans, LA
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[PM Martin]

1. I'm suprised that Merck wasn't higher.