Watching Mike Papantonio on the weekly show “America’s Lawyer” is an antidote to the narcotic called “corporate advertising.” Think of each installment as a new chapter in the book entitled “How Giant Corporations Screw You.”
Listening to the corporate ads that envelope us, you would think that this is the best of all possible worlds, and all your problems will be solved if you simply just buy-buy-buy.
Listening to “America’s Lawyer,” you’re forced to recognize that corporations push dangerous drugs and defective products on us, and filthify (neologism!!) our air, water, land and food. (In that sense, “American Lawyer” is an extension of Mike Papantonio’s popular progressive radio show “Ring of Fire,” which has been exposing corporate malfeasance since 2003.)
Take the BP oil spill. Oil company BP was fined $34 billion for that disaster.
Take the housing crisis of the last decade, with property values plunging all around the country. Wall Street bank Chase was fined $13 billion for lying to investors about the quality of Chase mortgages.
Take prescription drugs. Drug companies Pfizer, Glaxo and Johnson & Johnson have been fined more than $2 billion each for illegal marketing of their drugs.
Take illegal drugs. The bank HSBC was fined almost $2 billion for laundering drug cartel money.
Take international trade. Manufacturer Siemens was fined $1.6 billion for bribing officials to buy Siemens products.
Or consider the headline in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Opioid Makers Sued for Stoking Addiction.”
And those are just some of the illegal crimes. Think of all the legal ones that go unpunished . . . .
You won’t hear any of this from Capitol Hill. Honestly, in my last four years in Congress, I don’t remember a single anti-corporate speech on the Floor of the House. So if you want the truth, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Some interesting items recently on “America’s Lawyer”:
· Remington rifles have a built-in defect that makes them dangerous to the people holding the trigger;
· Dow Chemical pesticides are wreaking havoc;
· Trucking companies are responsible for 4000 road deaths each year; and
· Corporations who underpay workers (“wage theft”) usually get away with it.
All this is taking place in broad daylight. We could try to do something about it (like instituting a wage theft board that punishes cheating employers, like I did in my district last year).
Or we could try to puzzle out what “covfefe” means.
Alan Grayson is a congressman from Florida.
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