Category Archives: Corporations

New York Times: “How Delaware Thrives as a Corporate Tax Haven”

I’ve written a few times about Delaware’s shameful status as a safe harbor for corporate misconduct.   Delawareans seem willing to go along with this–I suppose because they think they are getting lower taxes out of it.  I Most people don’t seem to consider that this is not only helping schemers rip off others elsewhere, but it also tends to deny Delawareans access to justice in our own courts.

Is resentment getting to the point where something may get done about it at the federal level?  Hard to say.  But it IS amusing to see representatives of the Cayman Islands complaining about Delaware, as in the NYT story below.

“You can have companies in Delaware that have no U.S. bank accounts, no requirements for documentation and no one knows who owns them,” says Anthony B. Travers, chairman of the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange and former chairman of that country’s Financial Services Association. “There should be a level playing field and Delaware should have to comply with the same standards as the Caymans.” Continue reading

Alert 681: "Revived" Common Cause Delaware gives award to the least-deserving person in Delaware

Alert 681: "Revived" Common Cause Delaware gives award to the least-deserving person in Delaware

A sad mockery of what Common Cause used to be….is supposed to be

Have an opinion about this:  Jeff Raffel:  302-831-1685 (office), raffel@udel.edu

Few independent Delaware NGOs seem to be functioning well

Can Delaware be an alive, vibrant place with so little courage and so much sucking up?

Continue reading

Earth Day thoughts: Fix a poor "recycling" bill

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Earth Day thoughts

SB 234, latest Delaware “recycling” bill, shuts down container deposit program rather than fixing it.  This isn’t good enough.  Please ask Senators to hold off voting on this bill until it can be fixed.

Last week was the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970.  Few serious environmental campaigners have much interest any more in Earth Day, which is mostly now celebrated by big polluters “greenwashing” themselves.  But it is still a good time to reflect on where we are and how we arrived. Continue reading

DuPont at work in West Virginia

Worker killed by poison gas leak
February 5, 2010

Federal jury finds Bureau of Land Management, DuPont negligent in damaged farmland case

AP:  http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HERBICIDE_LAWSUIT?SITE=PAREA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal jury has found the Bureau of Land Management and E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co. negligent in the use of an herbicide blamed for damaging thousands of acres of crops across a broad swath of southern Idaho. Continue reading

“NEWS FROM GOVERNOR MARKELL – ECONOMIC OMBUDSPERSON ANNOUNCED”

This just out from Governor Markell’s office.  (Emphasis in red added.)  Exactly what it will mean in practice is uncertain, but the rhetoric is straight “Republican:” businesses/corporations over humans/health/environment.  This sort of language is almost always bad news.  One token mention of “citizens” is in the last line.  It is true, of course, that Delaware’s economy is stagnant and this is not good.  Whether Markell’s various initiatives can stimulate the economy without destroying the remaining vestiges of human citizen control over Delaware remains to be seen. Continue reading

Alert 662: The big bad guys, a sick river, some good guys, and “Cooling towers”

Many readers will know about this issue–Green Delaware has written about it quite a bit, and recently even the mainstream press has been paying some attention.

Technically, the problem is simple:  Big bad industrial sites–mainly, in Delaware, Conectiv’s Edge-Moor Power Plant, Valero’s Delaware City Refinery, and NRG’s Indian River Power Plant–pump hundreds of millions of gallons of water out of the Delaware River and Rehoboth Bay every day.  DuPont, Sunoco, and others are also offenders.  The biggest single offender is the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear complex across the river in New Jersey. Continue reading