REMEMBER, THE GOAL OF NEO-LIBERALISM IS TAKING THE US FROM A FIRST WORLD SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO A THIRD WORLD AUTOCRATIC PLUTOCRACY. THAT MEANS INSTEAD OF MODERN DAY AMERICA THEY LOOK TO MEDIEVAL EUROPE----THE DARK AGES ----FOR THEIR SOCIAL MODEL. THE MASSES IMPOVERISHED, HEAVILY TAXED WAITING FOR THE GENTRY TO SPONSOR PUBLIC PROJECTS WHILE THE CHURCH HANDLES THE POOR---AND NOT SO WELL!
Today's blog looks at billionaires as benevolent philanthropist.
This is indeed where neo-liberals are going. The next phase after -'we have all the money and will do as we please' - is building the image of billionaire as benevolent philanthropist----you know----THE MEDICIs. You could feel sorry for the delusions of grandeur from a moneyed-class equal to mafia-cartels, but this is life and death and fighting for democracy in America. We are seeing in US media a build-up of image of billionaires for social good. As they starve public coffers by fraud and tax evasion they are being allowed to 'donate' for the common good and corporate tax deductions.
Meanwhile, you and I have moved back to the vision of the US as first world social democracy. HMMMMM...did I see 900,000 registered democrats in Maryland? Do you really think they want to go with neo-liberalism and Medicis?
I DON'T THINK SO!!! SEE WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO KEEP CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND OUT OF ELECTION COVERAGE AND OFF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL!
What I am seeing and hoping to build with my candidacy is a structure around crony democratic politics in Maryland and the US. We do not need party machines and media money for campaigns. We need labor unions and justice organizations, churches and university political groups to network for the candidate working for labor and justice. Simple community networking and education about the need to ignore the onslaught of media campaign advertising by neo-liberal candidates with corporate war chests.
ALL OF MARYLAND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR ARE NEO-LIBERALS EXCEPT CINDY WALSH. SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG------GET RID OF CORPORATE CONTROL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Regarding Basu's singing of praises for US billionaires and funding of basic research:
NEO-LIBERALS MAKING BILLIONAIRES LOOK WARM AND FUZZY AS THEY PUSH AMERICAN CITIZENS TO CHARITY!
Who doesn't like a billionaire made rich from the massive corporate frauds of last decade exploding shareholder wealth from looting the US Treasury and American people. A billionaire that parks hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue off-shore to avoid paying taxes and who is guilty of more hundreds of billions of dollars in tax fraud and tax evasion. A billionaire that backs basic research that will earn his corporation trillions of dollars in profit at the expense of public health and interest. God bless those billionaires say Basu and corporate public media. Who needs those trillions of dollars stolen from the public that funded basic research in public universities and gave the development benefits to the public rather than private patenting to soak the public as consumer. WHAT AMERICAN PATRIOTS THESE BILLIONAIRES ARE! Sound like the North Korean Great Leader propaganda? YOU BETCHA!
Let's look at the tax policies at the Federal, state, and local level that that allow this fleecing of the US Treasury beyond an IRS that has been gutted of employees to keep from doing investigations of hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate tax fraud that when recovered will make state and local universities flush with cash in education Trusts and grants and public research funding.
YOU SEE, IT IS THE MONEY THAT MADE THESE BILLIONAIRES RICH THAT IS NOW MISSING FROM THE ECONOMY BRINGING DEBT AND DISMANTLING OF PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES AND PROGRAMS. UNIVERSITY TUITION TOO HIGH----BLAME THAT BILLIONAIRE.
Do you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when a corporate CEO from the likes Starbucks receives all kinds of media coverage for 'donating' to veterans charities because he is upset with the conditions for veterans at VA hospitals around the country? Let's see how Starbucks evades paying corporate taxes and bring that back to fund all the public VA hospitals.
Starbucks wakes up and smells the stench of tax avoidance controversy
Cafe chain executive to face questions from MPs, while protesters plan to turn branches into creches and refuges
Simon Neville and Shiv Malik
The Guardian, Sunday 11 November 2012
Starbucks
Police protect a Starbucks branch during an anti-cuts march last month after the company's low tax bill was revealed. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
On an average day its outlets are a hive of social activity, hosting everything from business meetings to reading groups looking for that all-important appointment with a morning caffeine rush, approvingly overlooked by a branded community bulletin board. But Starbucks should be careful what it wishes for.
The direct action group UK Uncut plans to turn dozens of the coffee empire's UK branches into creches, refuges and homeless shelters to highlight the chain's tax avoidance tactics.
The announcement of the action comes on the day a Starbucks executive faces questions from the House of Commons public accounts committee over why the company paid no corporation tax in the UK during the past three years, despite senior US management trumpeting the company's profitable operations in Britain.
MPs will also question management representatives from Google and Amazon, both of which have faced criticism for basing their European operations in countries that have lower tax rates such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
In his appearance before the committee, Starbucks' chief financial officer, Troy Alstead, will attempt to repair the company's reputation, which, according to research by YouGov, continues to suffer because of the controversy.
In a similar session last week, MPs accused HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officials of having cosy relationships with big businesses. Speaking about the arrangements with Starbucks, the Conservative MP Richard Bacon said: "It smells – and it doesn't smell of coffee. It smells bad."
UK Uncut has said it will start targeting Starbucks on the Saturday following the autumn statement by the chancellor, George Osborne, on 8 December. The campaign group is attempting to draw a link between government cuts, in particular those that affect women, and tax avoidance by multinational businesses.
Sarah Greene, a UK Uncut activist, said funding for refuges and rape crisis centres faced cuts unless companies paid their fair share of tax. HMRC estimates around £32bn was lost to tax avoidance last year.
Greene said the government could easily bring in billions that could fund vital services by clamping down on tax avoidance, but was instead "making cuts that are forcing women to choose between motherhood and work, and trapping them in abusive relationships".
The group, which rose to prominence after staging a sit-in at Vodafone stores, Sir Philip Green's Topshop and Fortnum & Mason, turned its attentions to Starbucks last month after an investigation by Reuters discovered the company had paid only £8.6m in corporation tax since launching in the UK 14 years ago, despite cumulative sales of £3bn.
Longstanding Uncut campaigner Anna Walker said the group wanted to "galvanise the anger" that women were feeling: "We've chosen to really highlight the impact of the cuts on women this time. So there is going to be a real focus on transforming Starbucks into those services that are being cut by the government … [such as] refuges and creches," she said.
Walker said the campaign group had been in touch with women's groups across the country in the lead-up to the direct action event and believed that, along with a pre-established network of activists, dozens of the company's coffee shops were likely to be targeted.
"Starbucks is a really great target because it is on every high street across the country and that's what UK Uncut finds really important: people can take action in their local areas," she said. "We're really hoping that women who are impacted by the cuts, who are seeing their Sure Start centres where their kids go being reduced in services, and people who use refuges, [will] be involved."
Several international organisations have faced criticism over their UK accounts, with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google and Ikea all paying little or no corporation tax despite large British operations.
However, according to pollsters at YouGov's BrandIndex, Starbucks has suffered the deepest damage to its image.
The organisation, which records the strength of companies' brand identities, revealed Starbucks' cachet plummeted following the tax revelations and continues to languish at near-record lows.
Its "buzz" score, which measures the number of negative and positive comments customers have heard, hit -16.7. That is only slightly higher than the lowest levels it hit during the most heated point of the controversy last month, at -28.6. A year ago its rating was at +3.1.
By comparison, Google and Amazon – both due at the select committee – have seen their ratings seemingly unaffected.
UK BrandIndex director Sarah Murphy said: "A brand's buzz score typically recovers quite quickly following a spate of bad press, but we aren't seeing that with Starbucks, which is quite unusual. Its scores started to level out around the end of last month, but whatever modest recovery Starbucks has made could well be in jeopardy if this story flares up again in the media."
The coffee store chain insists it pays the correct level of taxes. The group chief executive, Howard Schultz, has said in a statement: "Starbucks has always paid taxes in the UK despite recent suggestions to the contrary.
"Over the last three years alone, our company has paid more than £160m in various taxes, including national insurance contributions, VAT and business rates."
However, MPs will no doubt point out that VAT is paid by the customers at point of sale and collected by Starbucks.
Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, told parliament last month that Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google and Starbucks had avoided nearly £900m of tax. The prime minister, David Cameron responded to the claim by saying: "I'm not happy with the current situation. I think [HMRC] needs to look at it very carefully. We do need to make sure we are encouraging these businesses to invest in our country as they are but they should be paying fair taxes as well."
A spokeswoman for Starbucks said on Sunday: "While the subject of tax law can be extremely complex, Starbucks respects and complies with tax laws and accounting rules" in each of the 61 countries where we do business, including the UK – a market that we remain committed to for the long term. We've posted the facts about our tax practices in the UK on our website .
"Starbucks' economic impact in the UK spans far beyond our stores and partners (employees). We spend hundreds of millions of pounds with local suppliers on milk, cakes and sandwiches, and on store design and renovations. When you take into account the indirect employment created by Starbucks' investments in the UK, the company's extended economic impact to the UK economy exceeds £80m annually.
"We hope that UK Uncut will respect the wellbeing of our partners and customers, and recognise the value that we add to the economy, creating jobs and apprenticeships, as well as paying our fair share of taxes in the UK."
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How does a US global corporation go from being called a tax cheat and immoral in overseas press.....which is far more free and fair than a US state-run corporate media......to being the good guys in America donating all that money for tax write-offs instead of paying US taxes that would flood government coffers with revenue?
NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CONTROL US MEDIA AND HAVE MADE IT US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ALL THE TIME. THE US MEDIA IS NOW EQUAL TO ROMANIA AS FREE PRESS. ERGO, BASU'S LOVEFEST.
We all know that as all US commerce becomes consolidated and owned by the same few people at the top we will not be able to police US global corporations overseas and while they stagnate our US economy for growing profits overseas, all that wealth generated overseas does nothing for US yet we have the global headquarters ruling over all government and public policies and taxpayers subsidizing corporate wealth. The article above on the state of US corporations doing business in the UK paying no taxes is mirrored in America. The difference, the American people are electing the very neo-liberals turning their heads to this massive fraud and allowing media to ignore all of this.
EUROPE IS SEEING MORE ACCOUNTABILITY BECAUSE ITS CITIZENS HIT THE STREETS AND VOTE BAD POLS OUT OF OFFICE.
Starbucks, Google, Amazon accused of 'immoral' tax avoidance ...
www.csmonitor.com/.../1203/Starbucks...immoral-tax-avoidance
Starbucks, Google, and Amazon were among the major multinational corporations accused by lawyers of exploiting British tax laws to move UK-made profits ...
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Sending money stolen through tax fraud and shareholder wealth created by massive corporate fraud of US Treasury to charity just to write the donation off future taxes-----WHAT A GUY-----HOWARD SCHULTZ! Mind you, I have a history of Starbucks and its beginning in Seattle even having a Starbuck's green Jeep in my enthusiasm for fair trade coffee. THOSE DAYS ARE LONG GONE.
Do you know the entire GI Bill would be flush with money if Starbucks paid its corporate taxes and shouted to end massive corporate fraud?
THE LEVEL OF DISGRACE IN PUSHING AMERICAN VETERANS TO HAWKING FOR CHARITY IS UNMEASURABLE.
Starbucks CEO To Donate $30 Million To Support PTSD Research For Veterans
The Huffington Post | by Melissa McGlensey
Posted: 03/21/2014 6:18 pm EDT Updated: 03/21/2014 6:59 pm EDT
Starbucks Starbucks Coffee Howard Schultz Charity Military Veterans Veterans Video Impact News
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is making a large donation to help U.S. veterans.
Schultz spoke to CBS Evening News on Wednesday and announced his plan to allocate most of the $30 million donation toward researching solutions to brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD affects between 11 and 20 percent of military members who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Schultz told CBS that veterans often don't get the treatment or understanding they need and deserve.
"The truth of the matter is, and I say this with respect, more often than not, the government does a very -- a much better job of sending people to war than they do bringing them home, " he stated. "They're coming home to an American public that really doesn't understand and never embraced, what these people have done."
Schultz has shown support for troops in the past. Last year, Starbucks announced its initiative to hire 10,000 veterans and spouses of active military in five years.
The unemployment rate among post-9/11 veterans dropped to 9.0 percent last year, down from 9.9 percent the year before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number is about 1.6 percentage points above the civilian population.
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Bill Gates was given the 'good billionaire' logo by neo-liberals trying to push the Buffett 'billionaires need to pay what their secretary pays in taxes' at a time when the US needs billionaires to pay what they paid before the Reagan/Clinton era-----60-70% tax rate -----to bring back the massive frauds and swing the pendulum back to flush government coffers and a first world society. This is not targeted tax policy-----
IT IS SIMPLY RULE OF LAW AND JUSTICE BRINGING TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD BACK TO US TREASURY AND PUBLIC TRUSTS.
As Basu pretends that Bill Gates created the Gates Global Health Initiative for the good of mankind the first thing that comes to mind is that African and Asian PHARMA developed and patented by the Gates foundation has Bill Gates, Obama, and Clinton lobbying hardest this past decade to dismantle all of public health and protections of generic manufacturing and subsidy of PHARMA around the world with the Trans Pacific Trade Pact. It is Bill Gates building a PHARMA corporation that seeks to maximize profits by gutting all public health protections for medicine around the world. WHAT A GUY-----BILL GATES THAT GOOD BILLIONAIRE!
While in Washington State I attended Microsoft shareholder meetings that had stockholders angry that Bill was moving all Microsoft money to a trust that was then spending billions of dollars in Pharma and health care products in Africa and Asia. Warren Buffett moved his billions to this new economy as well. WHILE BEING TOUTED AS PHILANTHROPISTS THEY WERE SIMPLY GUARDING MONEY FROM TAXATION UNDER THE GUISE OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS WHILE THEY BUILT WHAT THEY KNEW WAS THE NEXT ECONOMIC ENGINE-----HEALTH AND EDUCATION. This was at the end of Reagan and the beginning of Clinton when the transition to privatization of public health and education to create the next Wall Street markets were made.
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU THINK A BILLIONAIRE USING PRIVATE NON-PROFITS AND THE GUISE OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO SHIELD MONEY FROM TAXATION ALL TO CREATE AND PATENT PHARMA TARGETING A DEVELOPING WORLD THEY WANT TO MAKE A MARKET IS A GOOD GUY------NO ONE!!!!
Bill Gates is the face of Race to the Top and education privatization for the same reason-----creating private education businesses centered online and developed by Microsoft and other tech institutions. The Industrial Philanthropists built the public structures of public universities, libraries, and K-12 and Bill Gates Foundation seeks to tear them down for profit. WHAT A GUY-----BILL GATES!
Keep in mind that all these excuses of republicans defunding the IRS or Wall Street regulatory agencies made by neo-liberals are a farce. Look to neo-liberal Maryland where fraud and corruption is king to see a dismantled and unfunded oversight.
RECOVERING CORPORATE FRAUD PAYS FOR ITSELF, NO REPUBLICANS OR TAXPAYER MONEY NEEDED. THAT FIRST BILLION IN RECOVERY PAYS FOR THE NEXT TRILLION DOLLARS IN RECOVERY!
Microsoft, HP skirted taxes via offshore units: U.S. Senate panel
By Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON Thu Sep 20, 2012 7:12pm EDT
A variety of logos hover above the Microsoft booth on the opening day of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 10, 2012. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
A variety of logos hover above the Microsoft booth on the opening day of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 10, 2012.
(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co pushed back against claims by a U.S. Senate panel on Thursday that they used offshore units and loopholes to shield billions of dollars in profits from U.S. taxes.
Calling tax avoidance rampant in the technology sector, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said tech companies used intellectual property, royalties and license fees in overseas tax havens to skirt taxes.
The panel subpoenaed internal documents from the companies and interviewed Microsoft and HP officials to compile its report, which uses the companies as case studies.
"The tax practices and gimmicks range from egregious to dubious validity," Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the panel, said at a news conference.
Officials at HP and Microsoft strongly denied any wrongdoing, noted tax officials had not objected to the structures and said there were valid reasons for tax planning.
Senator Tom Coburn, the top Republican on the panel, signed onto the new report but blamed Congress.
"Tax avoidance is not illegal. Congress has created this situation," Coburn said, criticizing the complex tax code and the 35 percent corporate tax rate, among of the world's highest, though few companies pay that statutory rate.
The subcommittee said that from 2009 to 2011, Microsoft shifted $21 billion offshore, almost half its U.S. retail sales revenue, saving up to $4.5 billion in taxes on goods sold in the United States.
This was accomplished, the report said, by aggressive transfer pricing, where companies value intra-company movement of assets. Corporate units must use a fair market price to value transfers, but critics say they are manipulated to minimize tax.
The report also said the software giant shifts royalty revenue to units in low-tax nations, such as Singapore and Ireland, avoiding billions of dollars of U.S. tax.
Levin said one Microsoft Singapore unit was legally headquartered in Bermuda and had no employees. Levin asked Microsoft's tax vice president, William Sample, if the reason was to cut its tax bill. "Yes, that is correct," Sample said.
Sample also said several offshore units employ hundreds of workers, which Levin noted was a tiny fraction of its workforce.
IRS CITES CHALLENGE
Internal Revenue Service officials are not allowed to comment on specific taxpayers, but Chief Counsel William Wilkins said enforcing transfer pricing law "has been the IRS's most significant international enforcement challenge."
U.S. companies have at least $1.5 trillion in profits sitting offshore. Most say they are keeping them there to avoid U.S. tax. Of the top 10 companies with the biggest offshore cash balances, five are in the technology sector.
"The high-tech industry is probably the No. 1 user of these offshore entities to transfer intellectual property," Levin said.
The panel said Hewlett-Packard funded U.S. operations with a stream of intra-company loans, using an exception in the law for short-term loans, to avoid billions of dollars in taxes.
Levin said more than 90 percent of HP's cash was sitting offshore, as opposed to about 65 percent of revenue coming from countries outside the United States.
An HP spokesman said in a statement that the hearing was a politically motivated attack.
"We are disappointed to see what appears to be a politically motivated attack on one of America's largest employers," HP spokesman Michael Thacker said before the hearing.
Lester Ezrati, an HP tax vice president, said HP used cash faster in the United States for valid reasons including that certain payments like pensions must be made with U.S. cash.
"HP has an overall strategy to minimize expenses and that is what generates where the cash is located," and "one of those expenses is taxes," Ezrati said.
REPATRIATED PROFITS TAXABLE
Under tax law, foreign profits are subject to U.S. tax when they are "repatriated," or brought into the United States, usually in the form of a dividend.
One internal document released by the panel suggested that HP routinely brought money into the U.S. without paying U.S. tax. An HP presentation noted that "without planning, repatriation of foreign earnings could lead to tax payments."
Loans by the foreign units to a related U.S. entity are considered a dividend for tax purposes but there is an exception for loans that are repaid within 30 days, according to the committee's tax experts.
HP set up a complicated series of short-term loans starting in 2008 to these businesses that were continuous without gaps, to get around that provision, the panel found.
Big companies have lobbied for a tax holiday to let them bring offshore profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate, arguing that the profits are trapped offshore. That effort has fallen flat amid reports suggesting such a program would cost the government significant revenue and not produce U.S. jobs.
The report on transfer pricing "mocks the notion that profits of U.S. multinationals are 'locked-up' or 'trapped' offshore," Levin said.
The subcommittee also criticized accounting giant Ernst & Young for blessing HP's practices.
Ernst & Young partner Beth Carr said that the firm stands firmly behind its auditing for HP.
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Below you see from 2002-2005 Bill Gates was positioning himself for the coming Affordable Care Act health legislation and privatization and making of global health corporations. Keep in mind that mental health pharma was just given a boost in rewriting the Psychiatric definition of what constitutes depression. increasing government subsidy of more depression PHARMA as Gates moves to Prozac. Medicare and Medicaid will now pay for depression medicine for what we all know is common sadness.
Bill Gates was simply moving his wealth to what he knew would be the new markets created by privatization of public health and education-----AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND RACE TO THE TOP.
ALWAYS WORKING FOR THE PUBLIC'S INTERESTS THOSE GOOD BILLIONAIRES! NEO-LIBERALS----WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND THIRD WORLD QUALITY OF LIFE. HOW DO THEY RUN AS DEMOCRATS?
Below you see a blogger that obviously attended the same Microsoft shareholder meetings I did.
created 04/07/2005 - 07:35, updated 31/08/2006 - 14:01 by cybe
Bill Gates is [alledgedly] giving 95% of his wealth for africa ......
I wonder if he is diversifying his investments and has bought shares in the pharmaceutical industry so he is just transferring his money into a new business venture whilst "looking" as though he is giving it away.
The Real Way to Health is a completely different one:- "Healing in His Wings"
Three articles below:
Bill Gates sells MSFT, takes Prozac
Bill Gates and Big Pharma
Bush's bogus AIDS offer, and why Bill Gates is making it worse.
The Gates And Buffet Foundation Shell Game
Bill Gates sells MSFT, takes Prozac
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2002/09/09/bill_gates_sells_msft_takes/
Published Monday 9th September 2002 19:48 GMT
Bill Gates has sold almost half a billion dollar's worth of Microsoft stock this year, and begun to invest heavily in big pharma. In the second half of this year he bought 2.5 million shares in Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, and also made major investments in Merck and Pfizer, notes /Information Week/.
The 9 million shares Gates relinquished represent only a tiny proportion of Chairman Bill's MSFT holdings, or about 1.36 per cent.
Eli Lily's patent on Prozac expired a year ago, but the company has sought to widen its appeal, combining its with other drugs and marketing it as a kind of MSG of anti-depressants.
"Companies are getting a lot more creative in ways to sustain the product lifespan of drugs," a J.P. Morgan told The Street.
In sickness and in wealth, big pharma remains the most profitable industry in America. No doubt Gates took comfort in the Bush administration's indulgent attitude towards the inflated prices charged by the pharmaceutical industry. Although nine out of ten drugs fail clinical tests, the industry - which argues that high prices are needed to justify R&D - spends two and half times as much on marketing than on research, according to Families USA .
(I'll defer to our very own Thomas C Greene, who covered the industry in detail).
A crack about anxiety-inducing computer software would simply be too cheap, so we won't dream of making it here.
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We must be very careful to follow where these last few years of US global corporation has led under Obama and neo-liberals in Congress. Remember, between the FED policy and trillions in fake job stimulus money that was just used to expand US global corporations overseas, the US has allowed global corporations to create a global network of empire that looks just like this one below. IT IS HORRENDOUS.
So, as Basu tells us on corporate 'public' media WYPR that billionaires are doing good in their bequests to basic research, the entire world knows what kind of empire Bill Gates is building!
'Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism'.
A Link Between Monsanto, Blackwater & Bill Gates?
By majestic on January 3, 2011 in News
There’s an unlikely story circulating on various underground news sites claiming that the controversial biotech company Monsanto has acquired infamous mercenary outfit Blackwater (now trading as Xe Services). The report apparently first appeared in La Jornada, one of Mexico City’s leading daily newspapers, described by Noam Chomsky as “the one independent newspaper in the whole hemisphere.” Pravda has translated the original Spanish text written by Silvia Ribeiro into English. From my reading of the Jeremy Scahill article that seems to form the basis of the report, the most you can deduce is that Monsanto hired the creeps at Blackwater to do dirty work for them, but the rumor keeps circulating, so could there be a grain of truth somewhere in this story?:
A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater’s Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.
Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.
One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.
Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”
However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.
No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.
Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.
It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.
Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.
Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.
Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.
* The author is a researcher at ETC Group
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I watched a TV commercial that had UnderArmour CEO standing on an African mountaintop stating that he wants to use his billions to help the poor worldwide. This is the same CEO who demands his UnderArmour headquarters in Baltimore be given tax-free status starving Baltimore City government coffers of money that would go to underserved communities and public schools.
IF THAT ISN'T OBSCENE ENOUGH-----UNDERARMOUR USES THE FACT THAT THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN DISMANTLED AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING VET CHARITY TO SUPPORT VETS.
So, rather than paying taxes that would support a strong, public supported VA, he is making profits off of his athletic brand and 'donating' money to vet charities for corporate tax write-offs. WHAT A GUY-------BILLIONAIRE PROFITS OFF OF VETS FORCED TO SEEK CHARITY IN LIEU OF VETERAN'S BENEFITS!
Below you see yet another corporation that is ground zero for making the American people impoverished and yet finding time to 'donate' to help the poor.
THIS IS NEO-LIBERALISM WHERE WEALTH AND PROFIT CREATE AN AUTOCRATIC SYSTEM MODELED ON MEDIEVAL EUROPE-----THEY CALLED IT THE DARK AGES.
UNDERARMOUR---GlassDoor
“Employee survey results were poor”
Director (Former Employee)
Baltimore, MD
I worked at Under Armour full-time for more than 3 years
Pros – Successful brand w/ currently valuable stock
Cons – Don't just go by these anonymous reviews. In a recent survey of all employees, findings were that an overwhelming majority feel "disengaged", "overworked" , "underpaid", and "under appreciated". What was the founder's response when he pulled Directors into a room? Instead of saying "here's what we're going to do", he said "it's your problem. You fix it." Needless to say there's extremely high turnover. Those that do stay wish they were somewhere else.
Advice to Senior Management – Listen to employee issues and do something about. Currently you're doing neither.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
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TAX CREDITS FOR HIRING VETS IS LIKE ENTERPRISE ZONE TAX CREDITS FOR HIRING THE UNDERSERVED ------AS IN BALTIMORE'S INNER HARBOR THESE CONTRACTS ARE ALL IGNORED AND THE JOBS ARE FILLED WITH FRAUD AND WORKPLACE ABUSE.
All across the country veterans are being hired into the worst of jobs and working conditions as corporations get tax credits for simply hiring. Those fighting to keep public military positions are being harassed and denied civil liberties and workplace safety. Remember, the Bush Administration made military service contracts NULL and VOID requiring national guard and military to serve extended service tours knowing these troops would be battle weary and did while dismantling Va facilities. AS Obama does the same, O'Malley travels overseas to recruit Veterans to substandard online degrees and career colleges.
UNDERARMOUR
Shop the Wounded Warrior project
Between August 2012 and December 2014, Under Armour® will make a donation of over $1 Million to Wounded Warrior Project™ benefitting injured service members and their families.
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The neo-liberals spent all last decade shouting against the abuses of the US troops by neo-conservatives and now neo-conservatives are blaming neo-liberals for the outrageous move to dismantle all that is public veterans administration.
TAG TEAM OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS----STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES---RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!
Below you see the same labor and justice conditions that existed under Bush are now super-sized under Obama and neo-liberals in Congress. Do you hear your incumbent shouting out against the deliberate attack of public sector workers in order to get them to quit and be replaced by private contractors and to protect yet more people breaking the US laws from prosecution?
General News 3/1/2014 at 17:57:53
Veterans Speak Out Against a Debilitating Federal Workplace Harming the Health of America's Returning Military
By Ward Jordan
opednews.com
(WASHINGTON, DC) -- In a recently released statement veterans, members of The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C), called for the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration to stop the political power play and to mandate that federal supervisory and management officials face discipline for willfully breaking civil rights and whistleblower-protection laws.
"The unrestrained retaliatory actions the VA supervisors take against subordinate employees cripples the agency's healthcare system and stifles many employees from exposing unfair customs, unsafe conditions and unlawful practices," said Oliver Mitchell, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a former employee with the Veterans Affairs' Greater West Los Angeles Medical Center Imaging Service, Radiology Section. While serving as a Patient Services Assistant, Mitchell received "excellent" performance ratings. "Things changed rapidly after I refused an order to purge patient documents," Mitchell explained. "The harassment started and VA officials detailed me repeatedly after I filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC)."
According to Mitchell, both the VA's Office of Inspector General and the OSC failed to properly pursue the matter even after hearing Mitchell's submitted audio tape of employees discussing how to destroy veteran patients' records. "Although I declined to purge patient records, VA officials hired another employee to delete valid MRI requests from the system as a means of reducing the backlog," said Mitchell, now homeless after being constructively removed from the U.S. Veterans Affairs pursuant to terms put in a settlement agreement.
"The constructive discharge is a popular tactic used in discharging complaining parties," said Janel Smith, a disabled Air Force veteran and the Vice President of the Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C).
Ralph Saunders, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a former employee with the VA's New Orleans Medical Center, agreed that reprisal against employees who file complaints is a daunting problem. According to Saunders, VA personnel once destroyed his medical documents and subjected him to endless reprisal after he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint against a manager who had denied him requested time off from work to accommodate his wife's heart-surgery operation. Saunders prevailed in his discrimination complaint (Saunders v Shinseki, Case Number 200L-0629-2004-100828).
Unequivocally, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found managers (Cassandra Holiday, Jeanette Butler, and Linda Cosey) guilty of "abusing the rules" and "retaliating against Saunders for his protected EEO activity." The EEOC also found "evidence that officials retaliated against other employees who filed EEO complaints." Saunders, who had worked sixteen years with the VA before officials targeted him for removal from federal service, is presently challenging the VA on a settlement-breach issue.
"Retaliation by rogue VA managers is destroying the lives of men and women who served honorably on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces," said Isaac Decatur, a U.S. Navy veteran, who after eighteen years with the department was fired from Veterans Affairs' Durham, North Carolina, office after filing an EEO complaint (Decatur v Shinseki, 0120073404).
"I wrote to President Obama about the VA's failure to take discipline against the supervisors who engaged in the blacklisting of employees and who the EEOC found guilty of discrimination," said Decatur. "My letter to the President spurred a reply letter from the EEOC in which the federal agency, charged with enforcing federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, openly asserted: While EEOC orders agencies to consider; we have no authority to issue discipline."
"Some of these VA managers need to face conspiracy criminal charges for destroying veterans' records and engaging in various illegal activities," said Chauncey L. Robinson, who served in the Persian Gulf War. Robinson reported that he has been waiting twenty-one years for the VA to process his claim for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a heart condition. "VA officials destroyed my records," said Robinson, who joined other veterans in a class-action lawsuit that asserts the VA has been systematically violating veterans' due process for decades (Gary Kendall v Eric A. Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Case No. CV07-103-S-EJL).
"The ill-treatment of VA's workforce harms the well-being of VA's employees as well as the veterans deserving of timely health care and benefits," said Al Hunt, III, a Gulf War veteran and a former VA supervisor with the New Orleans Medical Center. Hunt explained that he was forced to resign from the VA due to discriminatory practices and harassment. "I refused to be complicit in a managerial scheme to write-up and fire black veterans who bravely served our country solely because they had exposed civil rights abuses in the VA workplace," Hunt said.
"Internal federal workplace dysfunction will continue to adversely impact public programs and services until supervisors and managers are held accountable for violating civil rights and whistleblower-protection laws." said Tanya Ward Jordan, the President and Founder of the volunteer support and advocacy group, C4C.
-------------------------------------------------------
About The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C)
The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C) is a Washington, DC-based volunteer organization comprised of present and former federal employees who have been injured or ill-treated due to workplace race discrimination and /or reprisal. C4C recently produced a YouTube video to expose how an internal broken workplace system harms the public. The video is entitled -- Veterans Affairs Dishonoring America's Veterans and Civil Servants.
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Below is possibly more than you want to know about Bill Gates as US corporate lobby to end public health and capture health patents and curb generics but it is one of the best overviews. Keep in mind this was written in 2011 and we now know TPP is worse than this article shows.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett placed hundreds of billions of dollars into trusts under the guise of private non-profits and health care that are now these very patents and intellectual rights protections sought for the PHARMA and health industry. So, rather than paying taxes and allowing the public do the research to produce these PHARMA results as it always has, these billionaires privatized the research and seeks patents and protections on what would be a trillion-dollar PHARMA industry in developing worlds.
AS BILL GATES SAID AT THE 1990s SHAREHOLDER MEETING QUESTIONING HIS MOVING OF ALL THAT MONEY INTO TRUSTS RATHER THAN REINVESTING IT IN TECH INNOVATION-----'WE ARE MOVING TO AFRICA AS THE NEXT MARKET AND WE HAVE TO MAKE IT LIVABLE FOR US EMPLOYEES BEING SENT THERE TO WORK. Meanwhile, all of the African citizens that were helped by these research and development activities are now seeing funding disappear and are not feeling to advantages of all that patented research.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Threatens Access to Medicines
The eighth round of closed-door negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be held in
Chicago from September 6-15, 2011. Negotiations during this round are expected to be substantial, as the
current nine negotiating countries, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United
States and Vietnam, plan to present the outlines of an agreement at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) Leaders’ meeting in Honolulu, November 8-13 2011.1
According to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), “U.S. involvement in the TPP is predicated on the
expansion of the agreement to include more economies across the Asia-Pacific region,”2 and should “set the
standard for 21st-century trade agreements going forward.”3 It is therefore expected that the norms that emerge
from these negotiations will serve as a baseline for future trade agreements, potentially impacting a much wider
group of countries, including developing countries where MSF has medical operations and beyond. For
example, Japan and South Korea are reportedly currently considering joining the TPP.
TPP negotiating parties are under no obligation to subject their negotiating positions to public scrutiny; only the
final agreed-upon text will be made publicly available. However, a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now
available to the public,4 indicates that the U.S. is demanding aggressive intellectual property provisions that go
beyond what international trade law requires. Furthermore, the U.S. position represents a major retreat from
previous U.S. commitments to global health, including the 2007 bipartisan New Trade Policy, in which
Congress and the Bush administration agreed to abide by important public health safeguards in future trade
agreements.
1. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES
Vital Importance of Affordable Medicines
Affordable, quality generic medicines are a critical component of treatment programs. About 80% of the HIV
medicines that MSF uses are generics, and MSF routinely relies on generic drugs to treat TB, malaria, and a
wide range of infectious diseases. In fact, all the major donors and leading international treatment providers,
including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for
AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), UNITAID and UNICEF, rely on quality affordable generic drugs for the programs they
support. PEPFAR, which purchases 80-90 percent of its ARVs drugs from generic suppliers, has reported
significant savings through the purchase of generic medicines.5
The first generation of HIV drugs have come down in price by 99 percent over the last decade, from
U.S.$10,000 per person per year in 2000 to roughly $60 today, thanks to generic production in India, Brazil and
Thailand, where these drugs were not patented. This dramatic price drop has been instrumental in helping scale
up HIV/AIDS treatment for more than six million people in developing countries. About 80 percent of donorfunded
anti-AIDS drugs and 92 percent of drugs to treat children with AIDS across the developing world comes
from generic manufacturers.
1 http://www.ustr.gov/tpp
2 http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2010/june/ustr-ron-kirk-comments-trans-pacific-partnership-talk
3 http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2009/november/ustr-news-kirk-comments-trans-pacific-partnership
4 Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
5 http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/304/3/313.short
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
Public Health Safeguards Threatened
Since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the conclusion of the Agreement on Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1995, the most comprehensive multilateral
agreement on intellectual property to date, developing countries have struggled to strike a balance between
protecting public health and making their patent laws TRIPS compliant. Patents and other intellectual property
(IP) regulations pose significant barriers to access to life-saving medicines, and flexibilities in patent systems are
recognized as important public policy tools in the fight to protect public health interests. Even developed
countries like the U.S. have utilized TRIPS-compliant legal flexibilities to protect public health and other
national interests.
The WTO 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health was signed to reaffirm that the TRIPS
Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health, and that it
can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members' right to protect public
health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.
These commitments were reaffirmed and
strengthened in the 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public
Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.
However, over the last decade, many developing countries have come under pressure in trade negotiations not to
use TRIPS flexibilities and to implement even tougher rules than those set out in TRIPS – these are known as
“TRIPS plus.” The U.S. and the European Union routinely use bilateral and regional trade agreements to limit
or circumvent developing countries’ abilities to implement the Doha Declaration and safeguard public health.
The U.S. and the E.U. both have large pharmaceutical industries lobbying for stricter patent regulations, and
these interests not only tip the balance away from public health protections and threaten access to medicines, but
also work to counter the efforts of global health programs.
In fact, studies have shown that U.S. bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have already
undermined access to medicines in developing countries. For example, Oxfam found in a 2007 study6 that
during the five-year period since Jordan implemented TRIPS plus measures included in the U.S.-Jordan FTA,
medicines prices rose 20 percent, without any corresponding benefit in terms of domestic innovation or access
to new products. In addition, the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH) found in a 2009
study7 that once Guatemala enacted data exclusivity, on the basis of the Dominican Republic-Central America-
United States (CAFTA-DR) FTA, prices for some medicines rose significantly – even though just a handful of
medicines were under patent protection.
Recognizing the damaging effects that trade agreements have had on public health, the Bush administration and
the U.S. Congress signed a bipartisan agreement on May 10th, 2007, known as the 2007 New Trade Policy to
scale-back the harshest IP protections in order to strike a better balance between protection of IP and public
health needs. The agreement specifies that the USTR should modify its intellectual property demands in trade
agreement negotiations so that important public health safeguards are included. Yet in several meetings with
U.S. civil society, the USTR has stated on the record that they are considering options in the TPP that would
shift U.S. policy away from the 2007 New Trade Policy.
MSF is concerned that the U.S. demands for the TPP negotiations threaten to roll back vitally important public
health safeguards in developing countries, creating a fundamental contradiction between U.S. trade policy and
U.S. commitments and priorities on global health.
Medical Innovation Threatened
MSF is also concerned about the effects that intellectual property norms have on innovation for essential
medical technologies. The USTR presents its efforts to demand stronger regimes for intellectual property
protection in developing countries as a tool to protect innovation. MSF recognizes the importance of innovation
6 http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/bp102_jordan_us_fta
7 http://www.cpath.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/cpathhaonline8-25-09.pdf
8 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
and the need to finance research and development. We are a humanitarian medical organization that needs and
welcomes biomedical innovation to better treat our patients. However, the reality is that intellectual property
protection in the medical field keeps prices high and limits access to treatment, and furthermore does not
stimulate innovation for many of the diseases affecting people in developing countries, where patients have
limited purchasing power. By seeking greater and higher intellectual property norms in developing countries,
the U.S. government is perpetuating a failed business model that links innovation costs to high prices, and does
not address the innovation needs of developing countries.
2. THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES
The TPP negotiations are being conducted in secret, so MSF other interested stakeholders don’t have access to
the U.S. or other countries’ demands. However, according to a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now available
to the public at http://keionline.org/node/1091, as well as correspondence and discussions between Congress and
the USTR, the U.S. is expected to demand the following TRIPS plus measures to be included in the
Intellectual Property Chapter of the TPP:
a) Broadening the scope of patentability: the U.S. wants to make it easier to patent new forms of old
medicines that offer no added therapeutic efficacy for patients
The TRIPS agreement includes important flexibilities for governments to decide what type of “innovation”
deserves to be protected by patents in a given country. Essential terms such as ‘novelty,’ ‘inventive step,’ and
‘industrial applicability’ are left undefined as standards to be best determined by individual governments within
the context of existing national legislation and circumstances.
However, the U.S. is seeking to erode this flexibility by requesting that TPP partners introduce new rules that
would severely limit the ability of each country to define what is ‘patentable.’
For example, the U.S. proposal for the TPP requests the patenting of a “new form, use, or method of using” an
existing product - even if there is no increase in efficacy. This technique, known as “evergreening,” allows
pharmaceutical companies to obtain or extend monopoly protection for old drugs simply by making minor
modifications to existing formulas. Evergreening significantly delays the arrival of more affordable generic
medicines onto the market.
Novartis has been battling the Indian government on its implementation of this flexibility since 2006, when its
patent for the cancer drug imatinib mesylate (Gleevec) was rejected on the grounds it was based on a drug
compound that already existed. Having lost its case in 2007 and the patent appeal in 2009, Novartis is now
attempting to ensure the words ‘therapeutic efficacy’ are interpreted in a way that allows even small changes to
an old medicine – such as imatinib mesylate – to be patentable10.
Additionally, the US seeks to require that parties make patents available on plants and animals, as well as
diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals despite the fact that Article
27 of the TRIPS Agreement explicitly allows for the exclusion of these inventions from patent protection11.
Aside from the serious ethical concerns for surgeons performing procedures on patients, this text is not even
compatible with the U.S. policy not to enforce patents against medical professionals.
b) Restrictions on pre-grant patent oppositions: the U.S. wants to make it harder to challenge unjustified
patents
The TRIPS agreement allows countries and third parties (including generic companies and civil society organizations such as patient groups) to file an opposition to the granting of a patent - either before it has been
Article 8.1, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://www.msfaccess.org/about-us/media-room/press-releases/drug-company-novartis-tries-weaken-indian-patent-law-protects
Article 8.2, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://keionline.org/node/1216
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
granted (pre-grant opposition) or after (post-grant opposition). Patent opposition procedures have been
successfully used in several countries to prevent patents being granted undeservedly.
For example, in June 2008 the Indian patent office rejected a patent for the hemihydrate (syrup) form of
Nevirapine (NVP), a widely-used antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, based on pre-grant oppositions by civil society
groups. The price of NVP has decreased dramatically over the past years as a result of generic competition.
Similarly, the Indian patent office rejected the patent application for Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate (TDF), an
important HIV drug highly recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), and Darunavir (DRV), a
third-line ARV, based on pre-grant oppositions.
Patent oppositions are an essential public health safeguard that can accelerate the entry of generic competition,
improve the patent system through public participation, and help reduce over-patenting.
However, the U.S. government is now seeking to clamp down on this flexibility and prevent pre-grant oppositions in TPP partner countries,13 making it more costly and cumbersome to oppose a patent. In addition, patent offices will not have the benefit of the expertise of opponents/competitors to the applicant who may be
able to identify inaccuracies in the application before a patent is approved.
c) Imposing new forms of IP enforcement: the U.S. wants to allow customs officials to seize shipments of drugs on mere suspicion of IP infringement and to increase damages for IP infringement
The TRIPS agreement allows for governments to have a great amount of flexibility when designing the mechanisms that the country will allow for the enforcement of IP rights. However, the U.S., through the TPP and other tools (e.g. ACTA14), is demanding that countries enforce IP rights with new forms of enforcement beyond what TRIPS requires.
For example, the U.S. is requesting that TPP countries grant customs officials the ex officio right to detain
shipments of medicines at the border, even in transit, if the goods are suspected of being counterfeits or if they
are considered “confusingly similar” to trademarked goods.
Under TRIPS, “counterfeit” products are defined as those resulting from criminal – and not civil – trademark
infringement, which occurs knowingly and on a commercial scale. The U.S.’s proposed TPP IP chapter allows border officials to rely on a different, more lenient standard - “confusingly similar” – in order to seize consignments. This standard conflates pure commercial trademark disputes, which do not represent a threat to
public health or patent rights, with criminal offenses, such as production of counterfeit, falsified or substandard
medicines.
In fact, customs and border officials are often not fully trained or equipped to make accurate assessments with
regard to intellectual property infringement and may be overzealous in the protection of brand name companies.
For example, during 2008 and 2009, at least 19 shipments of generic medicines from India to other countries
were impounded while in transit in Europe on grounds that the shipments were suspected of infringing patent
rights. In one instance, German customs authorities wrongfully seized a drug shipment of “Amoxicillin” on the
suspicion that it infringed the brand name “Amoxil” – the cargo was detained for four weeks while further
investigation took place, eventually revealing that there was no trademark infringement. In another instance,
the Dutch customs authorities seized a shipment of the AIDS drug abacavir sulfate while it was en route (via
Europe) from India to a Clinton Foundation project in Nigeria.
Article 8.7, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would impose limits on price-reducing generic competition and jeopardize the free flow of legitimate medicines across borders.
Article 14.4, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
16 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/2011Special301MSF_Final.pdf
17 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/2011Special301MSF_Final.pdf
18 http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2672.extract
19 http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/IPR/pdf/ipr13.pdf
20 http://www.safemedicines.org/nigeriabound-hivaids-drugs-seized-in-netherlands.html
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
In addition, under the U.S.’s proposed TPP regulations, shipments that are legitimate in the country of origin
and the country of ultimate destination would still be subject to detention in the transit country. Unwarranted
interception of legitimate in-transit pharmaceutical supplies can undermine legitimate trade in generic
medicines.
Furthermore, the U.S. is requesting TPP countries to mandate that judicial authorities consider valuing damages
based on “the suggested retail price or other legitimate measure of value submitted by the right holder” in cases
of infringement of intellectual property rights,” a mechanism that strongly favors the rights holder and
increases damage amounts. Each country should have the flexibility to individually determine the appropriate
measure for damages for IP infringement.
d) Expanding data exclusivity: the U.S. is seeking to expand a backdoor way to grant monopoly status
Data exclusivity is a TRIPS plus provision that restricts access to essential clinical trial data pertaining to the
safety and efficacy of drugs. Data exclusivity measures prevent generic manufacturers from using existing
clinical research to gain regulatory approval of their medicines, forcing them to perform duplicate clinical trials
or wait for the “data monopoly” period to end.
In the absence of data exclusivity measures, when a generic manufacturer applies to register and sell a version of
a previously-registered medicine, they only have to provide data showing that their product is equivalent to the
original. The drug regulatory authority relies on the clinical trial data provided by the original manufacturer to
evaluate the safety and efficacy of the generic drug.
The introduction of data exclusivity provisions essentially creates a new system for granting monopolies by
blocking registration of generic medicines until the data exclusivity period ends, even if the patent monopoly
has already ended or been overcome, for example with the use of a compulsory license. Under these terms,
generic competition is stifled not only for old medicines no longer under patent protection, but also for new
medicines that don’t warrant patent protection.
Data exclusivity prevents the registration of generic versions of a medicine for many years (the U.S. is asking
for up to 12 years of data exclusivity for some classes of drugs), unless the generic manufacturer repeats the
necessary clinical trials. This is not only extremely costly, but also arguably unethical, as it forces duplication
of clinical trials for patients and animals in order to prove something that is already known.
In addition, while there are clear methods and procedures by which patents can be challenged and overcome –
such as patent oppositions and compulsory licenses – rules governing data exclusivity for pharmaceutical test
data do not always provide the same public health safeguards.
Although it is not yet clear what the U.S. demands for data exclusivity will be for the TPP, the U.S. has
traditionally pressed for a minimum term of five years, similar to U.S. law for certain products. However,
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has been aggressively lobbying for the TPP
to require 12 years of data exclusivity for a subset of pharmaceutical drugs, called biologic (also called
biosimilar or biopharmaceutical) drugs.
In August 2011, several members of the House of Representatives,
led by Rep. Henry Waxman, urged president Obama to refrain from negotiating any provisions on exclusivity
for biologics in the TPP, noting that a 12-year exclusivity period would impede the ability of Congress to
achieve the administration's proposal that the exclusivity period for biologics be reduced to seven years, as
reflected in the FY2012 budget proposal, without running afoul of U.S. trade obligations. It is also unclear if
the U.S will allow the public health safeguards for data exclusivity specified in the 2007 New Trade Policy.
Article 12.3 (b), Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://www.who.int/medicines/services/expertcommittees/pharmprep/QAS04_093Rev4_final.pdf
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/05/phrma-wants-12-years-data-protection-in-tpp-talks
http://www.waxman.house.gov/UploadedFiles/TPP_Biologics_Letter_08-04-11.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
e) Requesting patent term extensions: the U.S. is seeking to keep generic competitors out of the market,
for longer
The TRIPS Agreement requires patents to last 20 years. Although it is not yet clear what the U.S. demands for
patent term extensions in the TPP will be, the U.S. is expected to seek to extend the monopoly patent period in
order to compensate for administrative delays in the regulatory process, even though the 2007 New Trade Policy
made patent extensions optional for countries negotiating trade agreements with the U.S. Such extensions delay
the entry of generic medicines, punishing patients for bureaucratic delays.
f) Requesting patent linkage: the U.S. is seeking to turn drug regulatory authorities into ‘patent police’
Patent linkage provisions prevent drug regulatory authorities from approving new drugs if they could potentially
infringe existing patents. Such provisions effectively require drug regulatory authorities, which are responsible
for evaluating the safety, quality, and efficacy of medicines, to take on the responsibility of policing patents, an
area normally under the purview of separate patent authorities. Linking drug registration and patent status can
delay generic entry into the market and is an aggressive TRIPS plus measure.
The 2007 New Trade Policy made patent linkage optional for countries negotiating trade agreements with the
U.S. Most countries in Europe do not impose linkage between patent status and drug registration. If a linkage
obligation is included in the TPP, it will impose on developing countries more restrictive conditions for the
registration of generic medicines than are found in Europe3. OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BACKTRACKING ON U.S. COMMITMENTS TO ACCESS TO
MEDICINES
The TPP is the first trade agreement negotiated under the Obama administration. Leaked U.S. positions and
correspondence and discussions between Congress and the USTR indicate that the U.S. is prepared to walk
away from its previous public health commitments, including the 2007 New Trade Policy.
The bipartisan May 10th, 2007 New Trade Policy,25 signed by the Bush administration and U.S. Congress,
specified that the USTR should modify its intellectual property demands in trade agreement negotiations so that
important public health safeguards are included. The 2007 New Trade Policy aims to scale-back the harshest IP
protections for developing countries in order to strike a better balance between protection of IP and public health
needs. Although it did not go far enough, it was a step in the right direction. In particular:26
Patent linkage provisions were made voluntary (whereas they had been mandatory in previous US trade
agreements).
Patent term extension provisions were made voluntary (whereas they had been mandatory in previous
US trade agreements).
Data exclusivity was limited to five years for new chemical entities; concurrent periods of exclusivity
were mandated, and public health exceptions were allowed to ensure governments could still implement
public health safeguards such as compulsory licenses.
When the 2007 New Trade Policy was announced, the House Ways and Means Committee called it “a
fundamental shift in U.S. trade policy.”27 However, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has been aggressively
lobbying against the 2007 New Trade Policy being applied to the TPP negotiation countries.
USTR has stated
that they are considering options in the TPP that would shift U.S. policy away from the 2007 New Trade Policy
and toward greater protection of intellectual property rights for brand-name pharmaceutical companies in the
25 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
26
For an analysis of the May 10 agreement, see: Fabiana Jorge. New U.S. trade policy: A turning point?. Journal of Generic Medicines
(2007) 5, 5–8. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jgm.4950093. Available at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jgm/journal/v5/n1/abs/4950093a.html
27 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
Several Members of US Congress have also warned against this possibility and written to the
Obama administration to demand that it uphold the 2007 New Trade Policy28.
Today's blog looks at billionaires as benevolent philanthropist.
This is indeed where neo-liberals are going. The next phase after -'we have all the money and will do as we please' - is building the image of billionaire as benevolent philanthropist----you know----THE MEDICIs. You could feel sorry for the delusions of grandeur from a moneyed-class equal to mafia-cartels, but this is life and death and fighting for democracy in America. We are seeing in US media a build-up of image of billionaires for social good. As they starve public coffers by fraud and tax evasion they are being allowed to 'donate' for the common good and corporate tax deductions.
Meanwhile, you and I have moved back to the vision of the US as first world social democracy. HMMMMM...did I see 900,000 registered democrats in Maryland? Do you really think they want to go with neo-liberalism and Medicis?
I DON'T THINK SO!!! SEE WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO KEEP CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND OUT OF ELECTION COVERAGE AND OFF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL!
What I am seeing and hoping to build with my candidacy is a structure around crony democratic politics in Maryland and the US. We do not need party machines and media money for campaigns. We need labor unions and justice organizations, churches and university political groups to network for the candidate working for labor and justice. Simple community networking and education about the need to ignore the onslaught of media campaign advertising by neo-liberal candidates with corporate war chests.
ALL OF MARYLAND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR ARE NEO-LIBERALS EXCEPT CINDY WALSH. SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG------GET RID OF CORPORATE CONTROL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Regarding Basu's singing of praises for US billionaires and funding of basic research:
NEO-LIBERALS MAKING BILLIONAIRES LOOK WARM AND FUZZY AS THEY PUSH AMERICAN CITIZENS TO CHARITY!
Who doesn't like a billionaire made rich from the massive corporate frauds of last decade exploding shareholder wealth from looting the US Treasury and American people. A billionaire that parks hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue off-shore to avoid paying taxes and who is guilty of more hundreds of billions of dollars in tax fraud and tax evasion. A billionaire that backs basic research that will earn his corporation trillions of dollars in profit at the expense of public health and interest. God bless those billionaires say Basu and corporate public media. Who needs those trillions of dollars stolen from the public that funded basic research in public universities and gave the development benefits to the public rather than private patenting to soak the public as consumer. WHAT AMERICAN PATRIOTS THESE BILLIONAIRES ARE! Sound like the North Korean Great Leader propaganda? YOU BETCHA!
Let's look at the tax policies at the Federal, state, and local level that that allow this fleecing of the US Treasury beyond an IRS that has been gutted of employees to keep from doing investigations of hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate tax fraud that when recovered will make state and local universities flush with cash in education Trusts and grants and public research funding.
YOU SEE, IT IS THE MONEY THAT MADE THESE BILLIONAIRES RICH THAT IS NOW MISSING FROM THE ECONOMY BRINGING DEBT AND DISMANTLING OF PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES AND PROGRAMS. UNIVERSITY TUITION TOO HIGH----BLAME THAT BILLIONAIRE.
Do you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when a corporate CEO from the likes Starbucks receives all kinds of media coverage for 'donating' to veterans charities because he is upset with the conditions for veterans at VA hospitals around the country? Let's see how Starbucks evades paying corporate taxes and bring that back to fund all the public VA hospitals.
Starbucks wakes up and smells the stench of tax avoidance controversy
Cafe chain executive to face questions from MPs, while protesters plan to turn branches into creches and refuges
Simon Neville and Shiv Malik
The Guardian, Sunday 11 November 2012
Starbucks
Police protect a Starbucks branch during an anti-cuts march last month after the company's low tax bill was revealed. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
On an average day its outlets are a hive of social activity, hosting everything from business meetings to reading groups looking for that all-important appointment with a morning caffeine rush, approvingly overlooked by a branded community bulletin board. But Starbucks should be careful what it wishes for.
The direct action group UK Uncut plans to turn dozens of the coffee empire's UK branches into creches, refuges and homeless shelters to highlight the chain's tax avoidance tactics.
The announcement of the action comes on the day a Starbucks executive faces questions from the House of Commons public accounts committee over why the company paid no corporation tax in the UK during the past three years, despite senior US management trumpeting the company's profitable operations in Britain.
MPs will also question management representatives from Google and Amazon, both of which have faced criticism for basing their European operations in countries that have lower tax rates such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
In his appearance before the committee, Starbucks' chief financial officer, Troy Alstead, will attempt to repair the company's reputation, which, according to research by YouGov, continues to suffer because of the controversy.
In a similar session last week, MPs accused HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officials of having cosy relationships with big businesses. Speaking about the arrangements with Starbucks, the Conservative MP Richard Bacon said: "It smells – and it doesn't smell of coffee. It smells bad."
UK Uncut has said it will start targeting Starbucks on the Saturday following the autumn statement by the chancellor, George Osborne, on 8 December. The campaign group is attempting to draw a link between government cuts, in particular those that affect women, and tax avoidance by multinational businesses.
Sarah Greene, a UK Uncut activist, said funding for refuges and rape crisis centres faced cuts unless companies paid their fair share of tax. HMRC estimates around £32bn was lost to tax avoidance last year.
Greene said the government could easily bring in billions that could fund vital services by clamping down on tax avoidance, but was instead "making cuts that are forcing women to choose between motherhood and work, and trapping them in abusive relationships".
The group, which rose to prominence after staging a sit-in at Vodafone stores, Sir Philip Green's Topshop and Fortnum & Mason, turned its attentions to Starbucks last month after an investigation by Reuters discovered the company had paid only £8.6m in corporation tax since launching in the UK 14 years ago, despite cumulative sales of £3bn.
Longstanding Uncut campaigner Anna Walker said the group wanted to "galvanise the anger" that women were feeling: "We've chosen to really highlight the impact of the cuts on women this time. So there is going to be a real focus on transforming Starbucks into those services that are being cut by the government … [such as] refuges and creches," she said.
Walker said the campaign group had been in touch with women's groups across the country in the lead-up to the direct action event and believed that, along with a pre-established network of activists, dozens of the company's coffee shops were likely to be targeted.
"Starbucks is a really great target because it is on every high street across the country and that's what UK Uncut finds really important: people can take action in their local areas," she said. "We're really hoping that women who are impacted by the cuts, who are seeing their Sure Start centres where their kids go being reduced in services, and people who use refuges, [will] be involved."
Several international organisations have faced criticism over their UK accounts, with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google and Ikea all paying little or no corporation tax despite large British operations.
However, according to pollsters at YouGov's BrandIndex, Starbucks has suffered the deepest damage to its image.
The organisation, which records the strength of companies' brand identities, revealed Starbucks' cachet plummeted following the tax revelations and continues to languish at near-record lows.
Its "buzz" score, which measures the number of negative and positive comments customers have heard, hit -16.7. That is only slightly higher than the lowest levels it hit during the most heated point of the controversy last month, at -28.6. A year ago its rating was at +3.1.
By comparison, Google and Amazon – both due at the select committee – have seen their ratings seemingly unaffected.
UK BrandIndex director Sarah Murphy said: "A brand's buzz score typically recovers quite quickly following a spate of bad press, but we aren't seeing that with Starbucks, which is quite unusual. Its scores started to level out around the end of last month, but whatever modest recovery Starbucks has made could well be in jeopardy if this story flares up again in the media."
The coffee store chain insists it pays the correct level of taxes. The group chief executive, Howard Schultz, has said in a statement: "Starbucks has always paid taxes in the UK despite recent suggestions to the contrary.
"Over the last three years alone, our company has paid more than £160m in various taxes, including national insurance contributions, VAT and business rates."
However, MPs will no doubt point out that VAT is paid by the customers at point of sale and collected by Starbucks.
Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, told parliament last month that Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google and Starbucks had avoided nearly £900m of tax. The prime minister, David Cameron responded to the claim by saying: "I'm not happy with the current situation. I think [HMRC] needs to look at it very carefully. We do need to make sure we are encouraging these businesses to invest in our country as they are but they should be paying fair taxes as well."
A spokeswoman for Starbucks said on Sunday: "While the subject of tax law can be extremely complex, Starbucks respects and complies with tax laws and accounting rules" in each of the 61 countries where we do business, including the UK – a market that we remain committed to for the long term. We've posted the facts about our tax practices in the UK on our website .
"Starbucks' economic impact in the UK spans far beyond our stores and partners (employees). We spend hundreds of millions of pounds with local suppliers on milk, cakes and sandwiches, and on store design and renovations. When you take into account the indirect employment created by Starbucks' investments in the UK, the company's extended economic impact to the UK economy exceeds £80m annually.
"We hope that UK Uncut will respect the wellbeing of our partners and customers, and recognise the value that we add to the economy, creating jobs and apprenticeships, as well as paying our fair share of taxes in the UK."
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How does a US global corporation go from being called a tax cheat and immoral in overseas press.....which is far more free and fair than a US state-run corporate media......to being the good guys in America donating all that money for tax write-offs instead of paying US taxes that would flood government coffers with revenue?
NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CONTROL US MEDIA AND HAVE MADE IT US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ALL THE TIME. THE US MEDIA IS NOW EQUAL TO ROMANIA AS FREE PRESS. ERGO, BASU'S LOVEFEST.
We all know that as all US commerce becomes consolidated and owned by the same few people at the top we will not be able to police US global corporations overseas and while they stagnate our US economy for growing profits overseas, all that wealth generated overseas does nothing for US yet we have the global headquarters ruling over all government and public policies and taxpayers subsidizing corporate wealth. The article above on the state of US corporations doing business in the UK paying no taxes is mirrored in America. The difference, the American people are electing the very neo-liberals turning their heads to this massive fraud and allowing media to ignore all of this.
EUROPE IS SEEING MORE ACCOUNTABILITY BECAUSE ITS CITIZENS HIT THE STREETS AND VOTE BAD POLS OUT OF OFFICE.
Starbucks, Google, Amazon accused of 'immoral' tax avoidance ...
www.csmonitor.com/.../1203/Starbucks...immoral-tax-avoidance
Starbucks, Google, and Amazon were among the major multinational corporations accused by lawyers of exploiting British tax laws to move UK-made profits ...
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Sending money stolen through tax fraud and shareholder wealth created by massive corporate fraud of US Treasury to charity just to write the donation off future taxes-----WHAT A GUY-----HOWARD SCHULTZ! Mind you, I have a history of Starbucks and its beginning in Seattle even having a Starbuck's green Jeep in my enthusiasm for fair trade coffee. THOSE DAYS ARE LONG GONE.
Do you know the entire GI Bill would be flush with money if Starbucks paid its corporate taxes and shouted to end massive corporate fraud?
THE LEVEL OF DISGRACE IN PUSHING AMERICAN VETERANS TO HAWKING FOR CHARITY IS UNMEASURABLE.
Starbucks CEO To Donate $30 Million To Support PTSD Research For Veterans
The Huffington Post | by Melissa McGlensey
Posted: 03/21/2014 6:18 pm EDT Updated: 03/21/2014 6:59 pm EDT
Starbucks Starbucks Coffee Howard Schultz Charity Military Veterans Veterans Video Impact News
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is making a large donation to help U.S. veterans.
Schultz spoke to CBS Evening News on Wednesday and announced his plan to allocate most of the $30 million donation toward researching solutions to brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD affects between 11 and 20 percent of military members who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Schultz told CBS that veterans often don't get the treatment or understanding they need and deserve.
"The truth of the matter is, and I say this with respect, more often than not, the government does a very -- a much better job of sending people to war than they do bringing them home, " he stated. "They're coming home to an American public that really doesn't understand and never embraced, what these people have done."
Schultz has shown support for troops in the past. Last year, Starbucks announced its initiative to hire 10,000 veterans and spouses of active military in five years.
The unemployment rate among post-9/11 veterans dropped to 9.0 percent last year, down from 9.9 percent the year before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number is about 1.6 percentage points above the civilian population.
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Bill Gates was given the 'good billionaire' logo by neo-liberals trying to push the Buffett 'billionaires need to pay what their secretary pays in taxes' at a time when the US needs billionaires to pay what they paid before the Reagan/Clinton era-----60-70% tax rate -----to bring back the massive frauds and swing the pendulum back to flush government coffers and a first world society. This is not targeted tax policy-----
IT IS SIMPLY RULE OF LAW AND JUSTICE BRINGING TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD BACK TO US TREASURY AND PUBLIC TRUSTS.
As Basu pretends that Bill Gates created the Gates Global Health Initiative for the good of mankind the first thing that comes to mind is that African and Asian PHARMA developed and patented by the Gates foundation has Bill Gates, Obama, and Clinton lobbying hardest this past decade to dismantle all of public health and protections of generic manufacturing and subsidy of PHARMA around the world with the Trans Pacific Trade Pact. It is Bill Gates building a PHARMA corporation that seeks to maximize profits by gutting all public health protections for medicine around the world. WHAT A GUY-----BILL GATES THAT GOOD BILLIONAIRE!
While in Washington State I attended Microsoft shareholder meetings that had stockholders angry that Bill was moving all Microsoft money to a trust that was then spending billions of dollars in Pharma and health care products in Africa and Asia. Warren Buffett moved his billions to this new economy as well. WHILE BEING TOUTED AS PHILANTHROPISTS THEY WERE SIMPLY GUARDING MONEY FROM TAXATION UNDER THE GUISE OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS WHILE THEY BUILT WHAT THEY KNEW WAS THE NEXT ECONOMIC ENGINE-----HEALTH AND EDUCATION. This was at the end of Reagan and the beginning of Clinton when the transition to privatization of public health and education to create the next Wall Street markets were made.
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU THINK A BILLIONAIRE USING PRIVATE NON-PROFITS AND THE GUISE OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO SHIELD MONEY FROM TAXATION ALL TO CREATE AND PATENT PHARMA TARGETING A DEVELOPING WORLD THEY WANT TO MAKE A MARKET IS A GOOD GUY------NO ONE!!!!
Bill Gates is the face of Race to the Top and education privatization for the same reason-----creating private education businesses centered online and developed by Microsoft and other tech institutions. The Industrial Philanthropists built the public structures of public universities, libraries, and K-12 and Bill Gates Foundation seeks to tear them down for profit. WHAT A GUY-----BILL GATES!
Keep in mind that all these excuses of republicans defunding the IRS or Wall Street regulatory agencies made by neo-liberals are a farce. Look to neo-liberal Maryland where fraud and corruption is king to see a dismantled and unfunded oversight.
RECOVERING CORPORATE FRAUD PAYS FOR ITSELF, NO REPUBLICANS OR TAXPAYER MONEY NEEDED. THAT FIRST BILLION IN RECOVERY PAYS FOR THE NEXT TRILLION DOLLARS IN RECOVERY!
Microsoft, HP skirted taxes via offshore units: U.S. Senate panel
By Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON Thu Sep 20, 2012 7:12pm EDT
A variety of logos hover above the Microsoft booth on the opening day of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 10, 2012. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
A variety of logos hover above the Microsoft booth on the opening day of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 10, 2012.
(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co pushed back against claims by a U.S. Senate panel on Thursday that they used offshore units and loopholes to shield billions of dollars in profits from U.S. taxes.
Calling tax avoidance rampant in the technology sector, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said tech companies used intellectual property, royalties and license fees in overseas tax havens to skirt taxes.
The panel subpoenaed internal documents from the companies and interviewed Microsoft and HP officials to compile its report, which uses the companies as case studies.
"The tax practices and gimmicks range from egregious to dubious validity," Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the panel, said at a news conference.
Officials at HP and Microsoft strongly denied any wrongdoing, noted tax officials had not objected to the structures and said there were valid reasons for tax planning.
Senator Tom Coburn, the top Republican on the panel, signed onto the new report but blamed Congress.
"Tax avoidance is not illegal. Congress has created this situation," Coburn said, criticizing the complex tax code and the 35 percent corporate tax rate, among of the world's highest, though few companies pay that statutory rate.
The subcommittee said that from 2009 to 2011, Microsoft shifted $21 billion offshore, almost half its U.S. retail sales revenue, saving up to $4.5 billion in taxes on goods sold in the United States.
This was accomplished, the report said, by aggressive transfer pricing, where companies value intra-company movement of assets. Corporate units must use a fair market price to value transfers, but critics say they are manipulated to minimize tax.
The report also said the software giant shifts royalty revenue to units in low-tax nations, such as Singapore and Ireland, avoiding billions of dollars of U.S. tax.
Levin said one Microsoft Singapore unit was legally headquartered in Bermuda and had no employees. Levin asked Microsoft's tax vice president, William Sample, if the reason was to cut its tax bill. "Yes, that is correct," Sample said.
Sample also said several offshore units employ hundreds of workers, which Levin noted was a tiny fraction of its workforce.
IRS CITES CHALLENGE
Internal Revenue Service officials are not allowed to comment on specific taxpayers, but Chief Counsel William Wilkins said enforcing transfer pricing law "has been the IRS's most significant international enforcement challenge."
U.S. companies have at least $1.5 trillion in profits sitting offshore. Most say they are keeping them there to avoid U.S. tax. Of the top 10 companies with the biggest offshore cash balances, five are in the technology sector.
"The high-tech industry is probably the No. 1 user of these offshore entities to transfer intellectual property," Levin said.
The panel said Hewlett-Packard funded U.S. operations with a stream of intra-company loans, using an exception in the law for short-term loans, to avoid billions of dollars in taxes.
Levin said more than 90 percent of HP's cash was sitting offshore, as opposed to about 65 percent of revenue coming from countries outside the United States.
An HP spokesman said in a statement that the hearing was a politically motivated attack.
"We are disappointed to see what appears to be a politically motivated attack on one of America's largest employers," HP spokesman Michael Thacker said before the hearing.
Lester Ezrati, an HP tax vice president, said HP used cash faster in the United States for valid reasons including that certain payments like pensions must be made with U.S. cash.
"HP has an overall strategy to minimize expenses and that is what generates where the cash is located," and "one of those expenses is taxes," Ezrati said.
REPATRIATED PROFITS TAXABLE
Under tax law, foreign profits are subject to U.S. tax when they are "repatriated," or brought into the United States, usually in the form of a dividend.
One internal document released by the panel suggested that HP routinely brought money into the U.S. without paying U.S. tax. An HP presentation noted that "without planning, repatriation of foreign earnings could lead to tax payments."
Loans by the foreign units to a related U.S. entity are considered a dividend for tax purposes but there is an exception for loans that are repaid within 30 days, according to the committee's tax experts.
HP set up a complicated series of short-term loans starting in 2008 to these businesses that were continuous without gaps, to get around that provision, the panel found.
Big companies have lobbied for a tax holiday to let them bring offshore profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate, arguing that the profits are trapped offshore. That effort has fallen flat amid reports suggesting such a program would cost the government significant revenue and not produce U.S. jobs.
The report on transfer pricing "mocks the notion that profits of U.S. multinationals are 'locked-up' or 'trapped' offshore," Levin said.
The subcommittee also criticized accounting giant Ernst & Young for blessing HP's practices.
Ernst & Young partner Beth Carr said that the firm stands firmly behind its auditing for HP.
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Below you see from 2002-2005 Bill Gates was positioning himself for the coming Affordable Care Act health legislation and privatization and making of global health corporations. Keep in mind that mental health pharma was just given a boost in rewriting the Psychiatric definition of what constitutes depression. increasing government subsidy of more depression PHARMA as Gates moves to Prozac. Medicare and Medicaid will now pay for depression medicine for what we all know is common sadness.
Bill Gates was simply moving his wealth to what he knew would be the new markets created by privatization of public health and education-----AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND RACE TO THE TOP.
ALWAYS WORKING FOR THE PUBLIC'S INTERESTS THOSE GOOD BILLIONAIRES! NEO-LIBERALS----WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND THIRD WORLD QUALITY OF LIFE. HOW DO THEY RUN AS DEMOCRATS?
Below you see a blogger that obviously attended the same Microsoft shareholder meetings I did.
created 04/07/2005 - 07:35, updated 31/08/2006 - 14:01 by cybe
Bill Gates is [alledgedly] giving 95% of his wealth for africa ......
I wonder if he is diversifying his investments and has bought shares in the pharmaceutical industry so he is just transferring his money into a new business venture whilst "looking" as though he is giving it away.
The Real Way to Health is a completely different one:- "Healing in His Wings"
Three articles below:
Bill Gates sells MSFT, takes Prozac
Bill Gates and Big Pharma
Bush's bogus AIDS offer, and why Bill Gates is making it worse.
The Gates And Buffet Foundation Shell Game
Bill Gates sells MSFT, takes Prozac
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2002/09/09/bill_gates_sells_msft_takes/
Published Monday 9th September 2002 19:48 GMT
Bill Gates has sold almost half a billion dollar's worth of Microsoft stock this year, and begun to invest heavily in big pharma. In the second half of this year he bought 2.5 million shares in Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, and also made major investments in Merck and Pfizer, notes /Information Week/.
The 9 million shares Gates relinquished represent only a tiny proportion of Chairman Bill's MSFT holdings, or about 1.36 per cent.
Eli Lily's patent on Prozac expired a year ago, but the company has sought to widen its appeal, combining its with other drugs and marketing it as a kind of MSG of anti-depressants.
"Companies are getting a lot more creative in ways to sustain the product lifespan of drugs," a J.P. Morgan told The Street.
In sickness and in wealth, big pharma remains the most profitable industry in America. No doubt Gates took comfort in the Bush administration's indulgent attitude towards the inflated prices charged by the pharmaceutical industry. Although nine out of ten drugs fail clinical tests, the industry - which argues that high prices are needed to justify R&D - spends two and half times as much on marketing than on research, according to Families USA .
(I'll defer to our very own Thomas C Greene, who covered the industry in detail).
A crack about anxiety-inducing computer software would simply be too cheap, so we won't dream of making it here.
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We must be very careful to follow where these last few years of US global corporation has led under Obama and neo-liberals in Congress. Remember, between the FED policy and trillions in fake job stimulus money that was just used to expand US global corporations overseas, the US has allowed global corporations to create a global network of empire that looks just like this one below. IT IS HORRENDOUS.
So, as Basu tells us on corporate 'public' media WYPR that billionaires are doing good in their bequests to basic research, the entire world knows what kind of empire Bill Gates is building!
'Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism'.
A Link Between Monsanto, Blackwater & Bill Gates?
By majestic on January 3, 2011 in News
There’s an unlikely story circulating on various underground news sites claiming that the controversial biotech company Monsanto has acquired infamous mercenary outfit Blackwater (now trading as Xe Services). The report apparently first appeared in La Jornada, one of Mexico City’s leading daily newspapers, described by Noam Chomsky as “the one independent newspaper in the whole hemisphere.” Pravda has translated the original Spanish text written by Silvia Ribeiro into English. From my reading of the Jeremy Scahill article that seems to form the basis of the report, the most you can deduce is that Monsanto hired the creeps at Blackwater to do dirty work for them, but the rumor keeps circulating, so could there be a grain of truth somewhere in this story?:
A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater’s Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.
Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.
One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.
Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”
However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.
No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.
Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.
It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.
Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.
Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.
Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.
* The author is a researcher at ETC Group
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I watched a TV commercial that had UnderArmour CEO standing on an African mountaintop stating that he wants to use his billions to help the poor worldwide. This is the same CEO who demands his UnderArmour headquarters in Baltimore be given tax-free status starving Baltimore City government coffers of money that would go to underserved communities and public schools.
IF THAT ISN'T OBSCENE ENOUGH-----UNDERARMOUR USES THE FACT THAT THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN DISMANTLED AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING VET CHARITY TO SUPPORT VETS.
So, rather than paying taxes that would support a strong, public supported VA, he is making profits off of his athletic brand and 'donating' money to vet charities for corporate tax write-offs. WHAT A GUY-------BILLIONAIRE PROFITS OFF OF VETS FORCED TO SEEK CHARITY IN LIEU OF VETERAN'S BENEFITS!
Below you see yet another corporation that is ground zero for making the American people impoverished and yet finding time to 'donate' to help the poor.
THIS IS NEO-LIBERALISM WHERE WEALTH AND PROFIT CREATE AN AUTOCRATIC SYSTEM MODELED ON MEDIEVAL EUROPE-----THEY CALLED IT THE DARK AGES.
UNDERARMOUR---GlassDoor
“Employee survey results were poor”
Director (Former Employee)
Baltimore, MD
I worked at Under Armour full-time for more than 3 years
Pros – Successful brand w/ currently valuable stock
Cons – Don't just go by these anonymous reviews. In a recent survey of all employees, findings were that an overwhelming majority feel "disengaged", "overworked" , "underpaid", and "under appreciated". What was the founder's response when he pulled Directors into a room? Instead of saying "here's what we're going to do", he said "it's your problem. You fix it." Needless to say there's extremely high turnover. Those that do stay wish they were somewhere else.
Advice to Senior Management – Listen to employee issues and do something about. Currently you're doing neither.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
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TAX CREDITS FOR HIRING VETS IS LIKE ENTERPRISE ZONE TAX CREDITS FOR HIRING THE UNDERSERVED ------AS IN BALTIMORE'S INNER HARBOR THESE CONTRACTS ARE ALL IGNORED AND THE JOBS ARE FILLED WITH FRAUD AND WORKPLACE ABUSE.
All across the country veterans are being hired into the worst of jobs and working conditions as corporations get tax credits for simply hiring. Those fighting to keep public military positions are being harassed and denied civil liberties and workplace safety. Remember, the Bush Administration made military service contracts NULL and VOID requiring national guard and military to serve extended service tours knowing these troops would be battle weary and did while dismantling Va facilities. AS Obama does the same, O'Malley travels overseas to recruit Veterans to substandard online degrees and career colleges.
UNDERARMOUR
Shop the Wounded Warrior project
Between August 2012 and December 2014, Under Armour® will make a donation of over $1 Million to Wounded Warrior Project™ benefitting injured service members and their families.
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The neo-liberals spent all last decade shouting against the abuses of the US troops by neo-conservatives and now neo-conservatives are blaming neo-liberals for the outrageous move to dismantle all that is public veterans administration.
TAG TEAM OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS----STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES---RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!
Below you see the same labor and justice conditions that existed under Bush are now super-sized under Obama and neo-liberals in Congress. Do you hear your incumbent shouting out against the deliberate attack of public sector workers in order to get them to quit and be replaced by private contractors and to protect yet more people breaking the US laws from prosecution?
General News 3/1/2014 at 17:57:53
Veterans Speak Out Against a Debilitating Federal Workplace Harming the Health of America's Returning Military
By Ward Jordan
opednews.com
(WASHINGTON, DC) -- In a recently released statement veterans, members of The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C), called for the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration to stop the political power play and to mandate that federal supervisory and management officials face discipline for willfully breaking civil rights and whistleblower-protection laws.
"The unrestrained retaliatory actions the VA supervisors take against subordinate employees cripples the agency's healthcare system and stifles many employees from exposing unfair customs, unsafe conditions and unlawful practices," said Oliver Mitchell, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a former employee with the Veterans Affairs' Greater West Los Angeles Medical Center Imaging Service, Radiology Section. While serving as a Patient Services Assistant, Mitchell received "excellent" performance ratings. "Things changed rapidly after I refused an order to purge patient documents," Mitchell explained. "The harassment started and VA officials detailed me repeatedly after I filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC)."
According to Mitchell, both the VA's Office of Inspector General and the OSC failed to properly pursue the matter even after hearing Mitchell's submitted audio tape of employees discussing how to destroy veteran patients' records. "Although I declined to purge patient records, VA officials hired another employee to delete valid MRI requests from the system as a means of reducing the backlog," said Mitchell, now homeless after being constructively removed from the U.S. Veterans Affairs pursuant to terms put in a settlement agreement.
"The constructive discharge is a popular tactic used in discharging complaining parties," said Janel Smith, a disabled Air Force veteran and the Vice President of the Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C).
Ralph Saunders, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a former employee with the VA's New Orleans Medical Center, agreed that reprisal against employees who file complaints is a daunting problem. According to Saunders, VA personnel once destroyed his medical documents and subjected him to endless reprisal after he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint against a manager who had denied him requested time off from work to accommodate his wife's heart-surgery operation. Saunders prevailed in his discrimination complaint (Saunders v Shinseki, Case Number 200L-0629-2004-100828).
Unequivocally, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found managers (Cassandra Holiday, Jeanette Butler, and Linda Cosey) guilty of "abusing the rules" and "retaliating against Saunders for his protected EEO activity." The EEOC also found "evidence that officials retaliated against other employees who filed EEO complaints." Saunders, who had worked sixteen years with the VA before officials targeted him for removal from federal service, is presently challenging the VA on a settlement-breach issue.
"Retaliation by rogue VA managers is destroying the lives of men and women who served honorably on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces," said Isaac Decatur, a U.S. Navy veteran, who after eighteen years with the department was fired from Veterans Affairs' Durham, North Carolina, office after filing an EEO complaint (Decatur v Shinseki, 0120073404).
"I wrote to President Obama about the VA's failure to take discipline against the supervisors who engaged in the blacklisting of employees and who the EEOC found guilty of discrimination," said Decatur. "My letter to the President spurred a reply letter from the EEOC in which the federal agency, charged with enforcing federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, openly asserted: While EEOC orders agencies to consider; we have no authority to issue discipline."
"Some of these VA managers need to face conspiracy criminal charges for destroying veterans' records and engaging in various illegal activities," said Chauncey L. Robinson, who served in the Persian Gulf War. Robinson reported that he has been waiting twenty-one years for the VA to process his claim for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a heart condition. "VA officials destroyed my records," said Robinson, who joined other veterans in a class-action lawsuit that asserts the VA has been systematically violating veterans' due process for decades (Gary Kendall v Eric A. Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Case No. CV07-103-S-EJL).
"The ill-treatment of VA's workforce harms the well-being of VA's employees as well as the veterans deserving of timely health care and benefits," said Al Hunt, III, a Gulf War veteran and a former VA supervisor with the New Orleans Medical Center. Hunt explained that he was forced to resign from the VA due to discriminatory practices and harassment. "I refused to be complicit in a managerial scheme to write-up and fire black veterans who bravely served our country solely because they had exposed civil rights abuses in the VA workplace," Hunt said.
"Internal federal workplace dysfunction will continue to adversely impact public programs and services until supervisors and managers are held accountable for violating civil rights and whistleblower-protection laws." said Tanya Ward Jordan, the President and Founder of the volunteer support and advocacy group, C4C.
-------------------------------------------------------
About The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C)
The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C) is a Washington, DC-based volunteer organization comprised of present and former federal employees who have been injured or ill-treated due to workplace race discrimination and /or reprisal. C4C recently produced a YouTube video to expose how an internal broken workplace system harms the public. The video is entitled -- Veterans Affairs Dishonoring America's Veterans and Civil Servants.
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Below is possibly more than you want to know about Bill Gates as US corporate lobby to end public health and capture health patents and curb generics but it is one of the best overviews. Keep in mind this was written in 2011 and we now know TPP is worse than this article shows.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett placed hundreds of billions of dollars into trusts under the guise of private non-profits and health care that are now these very patents and intellectual rights protections sought for the PHARMA and health industry. So, rather than paying taxes and allowing the public do the research to produce these PHARMA results as it always has, these billionaires privatized the research and seeks patents and protections on what would be a trillion-dollar PHARMA industry in developing worlds.
AS BILL GATES SAID AT THE 1990s SHAREHOLDER MEETING QUESTIONING HIS MOVING OF ALL THAT MONEY INTO TRUSTS RATHER THAN REINVESTING IT IN TECH INNOVATION-----'WE ARE MOVING TO AFRICA AS THE NEXT MARKET AND WE HAVE TO MAKE IT LIVABLE FOR US EMPLOYEES BEING SENT THERE TO WORK. Meanwhile, all of the African citizens that were helped by these research and development activities are now seeing funding disappear and are not feeling to advantages of all that patented research.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Threatens Access to Medicines
The eighth round of closed-door negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be held in
Chicago from September 6-15, 2011. Negotiations during this round are expected to be substantial, as the
current nine negotiating countries, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United
States and Vietnam, plan to present the outlines of an agreement at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) Leaders’ meeting in Honolulu, November 8-13 2011.1
According to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), “U.S. involvement in the TPP is predicated on the
expansion of the agreement to include more economies across the Asia-Pacific region,”2 and should “set the
standard for 21st-century trade agreements going forward.”3 It is therefore expected that the norms that emerge
from these negotiations will serve as a baseline for future trade agreements, potentially impacting a much wider
group of countries, including developing countries where MSF has medical operations and beyond. For
example, Japan and South Korea are reportedly currently considering joining the TPP.
TPP negotiating parties are under no obligation to subject their negotiating positions to public scrutiny; only the
final agreed-upon text will be made publicly available. However, a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now
available to the public,4 indicates that the U.S. is demanding aggressive intellectual property provisions that go
beyond what international trade law requires. Furthermore, the U.S. position represents a major retreat from
previous U.S. commitments to global health, including the 2007 bipartisan New Trade Policy, in which
Congress and the Bush administration agreed to abide by important public health safeguards in future trade
agreements.
1. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES
Vital Importance of Affordable Medicines
Affordable, quality generic medicines are a critical component of treatment programs. About 80% of the HIV
medicines that MSF uses are generics, and MSF routinely relies on generic drugs to treat TB, malaria, and a
wide range of infectious diseases. In fact, all the major donors and leading international treatment providers,
including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for
AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), UNITAID and UNICEF, rely on quality affordable generic drugs for the programs they
support. PEPFAR, which purchases 80-90 percent of its ARVs drugs from generic suppliers, has reported
significant savings through the purchase of generic medicines.5
The first generation of HIV drugs have come down in price by 99 percent over the last decade, from
U.S.$10,000 per person per year in 2000 to roughly $60 today, thanks to generic production in India, Brazil and
Thailand, where these drugs were not patented. This dramatic price drop has been instrumental in helping scale
up HIV/AIDS treatment for more than six million people in developing countries. About 80 percent of donorfunded
anti-AIDS drugs and 92 percent of drugs to treat children with AIDS across the developing world comes
from generic manufacturers.
1 http://www.ustr.gov/tpp
2 http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2010/june/ustr-ron-kirk-comments-trans-pacific-partnership-talk
3 http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2009/november/ustr-news-kirk-comments-trans-pacific-partnership
4 Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
5 http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/304/3/313.short
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
Public Health Safeguards Threatened
Since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the conclusion of the Agreement on Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1995, the most comprehensive multilateral
agreement on intellectual property to date, developing countries have struggled to strike a balance between
protecting public health and making their patent laws TRIPS compliant. Patents and other intellectual property
(IP) regulations pose significant barriers to access to life-saving medicines, and flexibilities in patent systems are
recognized as important public policy tools in the fight to protect public health interests. Even developed
countries like the U.S. have utilized TRIPS-compliant legal flexibilities to protect public health and other
national interests.
The WTO 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health was signed to reaffirm that the TRIPS
Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health, and that it
can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members' right to protect public
health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.
These commitments were reaffirmed and
strengthened in the 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public
Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.
However, over the last decade, many developing countries have come under pressure in trade negotiations not to
use TRIPS flexibilities and to implement even tougher rules than those set out in TRIPS – these are known as
“TRIPS plus.” The U.S. and the European Union routinely use bilateral and regional trade agreements to limit
or circumvent developing countries’ abilities to implement the Doha Declaration and safeguard public health.
The U.S. and the E.U. both have large pharmaceutical industries lobbying for stricter patent regulations, and
these interests not only tip the balance away from public health protections and threaten access to medicines, but
also work to counter the efforts of global health programs.
In fact, studies have shown that U.S. bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have already
undermined access to medicines in developing countries. For example, Oxfam found in a 2007 study6 that
during the five-year period since Jordan implemented TRIPS plus measures included in the U.S.-Jordan FTA,
medicines prices rose 20 percent, without any corresponding benefit in terms of domestic innovation or access
to new products. In addition, the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH) found in a 2009
study7 that once Guatemala enacted data exclusivity, on the basis of the Dominican Republic-Central America-
United States (CAFTA-DR) FTA, prices for some medicines rose significantly – even though just a handful of
medicines were under patent protection.
Recognizing the damaging effects that trade agreements have had on public health, the Bush administration and
the U.S. Congress signed a bipartisan agreement on May 10th, 2007, known as the 2007 New Trade Policy to
scale-back the harshest IP protections in order to strike a better balance between protection of IP and public
health needs. The agreement specifies that the USTR should modify its intellectual property demands in trade
agreement negotiations so that important public health safeguards are included. Yet in several meetings with
U.S. civil society, the USTR has stated on the record that they are considering options in the TPP that would
shift U.S. policy away from the 2007 New Trade Policy.
MSF is concerned that the U.S. demands for the TPP negotiations threaten to roll back vitally important public
health safeguards in developing countries, creating a fundamental contradiction between U.S. trade policy and
U.S. commitments and priorities on global health.
Medical Innovation Threatened
MSF is also concerned about the effects that intellectual property norms have on innovation for essential
medical technologies. The USTR presents its efforts to demand stronger regimes for intellectual property
protection in developing countries as a tool to protect innovation. MSF recognizes the importance of innovation
6 http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/bp102_jordan_us_fta
7 http://www.cpath.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/cpathhaonline8-25-09.pdf
8 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
and the need to finance research and development. We are a humanitarian medical organization that needs and
welcomes biomedical innovation to better treat our patients. However, the reality is that intellectual property
protection in the medical field keeps prices high and limits access to treatment, and furthermore does not
stimulate innovation for many of the diseases affecting people in developing countries, where patients have
limited purchasing power. By seeking greater and higher intellectual property norms in developing countries,
the U.S. government is perpetuating a failed business model that links innovation costs to high prices, and does
not address the innovation needs of developing countries.
2. THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES
The TPP negotiations are being conducted in secret, so MSF other interested stakeholders don’t have access to
the U.S. or other countries’ demands. However, according to a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now available
to the public at http://keionline.org/node/1091, as well as correspondence and discussions between Congress and
the USTR, the U.S. is expected to demand the following TRIPS plus measures to be included in the
Intellectual Property Chapter of the TPP:
a) Broadening the scope of patentability: the U.S. wants to make it easier to patent new forms of old
medicines that offer no added therapeutic efficacy for patients
The TRIPS agreement includes important flexibilities for governments to decide what type of “innovation”
deserves to be protected by patents in a given country. Essential terms such as ‘novelty,’ ‘inventive step,’ and
‘industrial applicability’ are left undefined as standards to be best determined by individual governments within
the context of existing national legislation and circumstances.
However, the U.S. is seeking to erode this flexibility by requesting that TPP partners introduce new rules that
would severely limit the ability of each country to define what is ‘patentable.’
For example, the U.S. proposal for the TPP requests the patenting of a “new form, use, or method of using” an
existing product - even if there is no increase in efficacy. This technique, known as “evergreening,” allows
pharmaceutical companies to obtain or extend monopoly protection for old drugs simply by making minor
modifications to existing formulas. Evergreening significantly delays the arrival of more affordable generic
medicines onto the market.
Novartis has been battling the Indian government on its implementation of this flexibility since 2006, when its
patent for the cancer drug imatinib mesylate (Gleevec) was rejected on the grounds it was based on a drug
compound that already existed. Having lost its case in 2007 and the patent appeal in 2009, Novartis is now
attempting to ensure the words ‘therapeutic efficacy’ are interpreted in a way that allows even small changes to
an old medicine – such as imatinib mesylate – to be patentable10.
Additionally, the US seeks to require that parties make patents available on plants and animals, as well as
diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals despite the fact that Article
27 of the TRIPS Agreement explicitly allows for the exclusion of these inventions from patent protection11.
Aside from the serious ethical concerns for surgeons performing procedures on patients, this text is not even
compatible with the U.S. policy not to enforce patents against medical professionals.
b) Restrictions on pre-grant patent oppositions: the U.S. wants to make it harder to challenge unjustified
patents
The TRIPS agreement allows countries and third parties (including generic companies and civil society organizations such as patient groups) to file an opposition to the granting of a patent - either before it has been
Article 8.1, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://www.msfaccess.org/about-us/media-room/press-releases/drug-company-novartis-tries-weaken-indian-patent-law-protects
Article 8.2, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://keionline.org/node/1216
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
granted (pre-grant opposition) or after (post-grant opposition). Patent opposition procedures have been
successfully used in several countries to prevent patents being granted undeservedly.
For example, in June 2008 the Indian patent office rejected a patent for the hemihydrate (syrup) form of
Nevirapine (NVP), a widely-used antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, based on pre-grant oppositions by civil society
groups. The price of NVP has decreased dramatically over the past years as a result of generic competition.
Similarly, the Indian patent office rejected the patent application for Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate (TDF), an
important HIV drug highly recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), and Darunavir (DRV), a
third-line ARV, based on pre-grant oppositions.
Patent oppositions are an essential public health safeguard that can accelerate the entry of generic competition,
improve the patent system through public participation, and help reduce over-patenting.
However, the U.S. government is now seeking to clamp down on this flexibility and prevent pre-grant oppositions in TPP partner countries,13 making it more costly and cumbersome to oppose a patent. In addition, patent offices will not have the benefit of the expertise of opponents/competitors to the applicant who may be
able to identify inaccuracies in the application before a patent is approved.
c) Imposing new forms of IP enforcement: the U.S. wants to allow customs officials to seize shipments of drugs on mere suspicion of IP infringement and to increase damages for IP infringement
The TRIPS agreement allows for governments to have a great amount of flexibility when designing the mechanisms that the country will allow for the enforcement of IP rights. However, the U.S., through the TPP and other tools (e.g. ACTA14), is demanding that countries enforce IP rights with new forms of enforcement beyond what TRIPS requires.
For example, the U.S. is requesting that TPP countries grant customs officials the ex officio right to detain
shipments of medicines at the border, even in transit, if the goods are suspected of being counterfeits or if they
are considered “confusingly similar” to trademarked goods.
Under TRIPS, “counterfeit” products are defined as those resulting from criminal – and not civil – trademark
infringement, which occurs knowingly and on a commercial scale. The U.S.’s proposed TPP IP chapter allows border officials to rely on a different, more lenient standard - “confusingly similar” – in order to seize consignments. This standard conflates pure commercial trademark disputes, which do not represent a threat to
public health or patent rights, with criminal offenses, such as production of counterfeit, falsified or substandard
medicines.
In fact, customs and border officials are often not fully trained or equipped to make accurate assessments with
regard to intellectual property infringement and may be overzealous in the protection of brand name companies.
For example, during 2008 and 2009, at least 19 shipments of generic medicines from India to other countries
were impounded while in transit in Europe on grounds that the shipments were suspected of infringing patent
rights. In one instance, German customs authorities wrongfully seized a drug shipment of “Amoxicillin” on the
suspicion that it infringed the brand name “Amoxil” – the cargo was detained for four weeks while further
investigation took place, eventually revealing that there was no trademark infringement. In another instance,
the Dutch customs authorities seized a shipment of the AIDS drug abacavir sulfate while it was en route (via
Europe) from India to a Clinton Foundation project in Nigeria.
Article 8.7, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would impose limits on price-reducing generic competition and jeopardize the free flow of legitimate medicines across borders.
Article 14.4, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
16 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/2011Special301MSF_Final.pdf
17 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/2011Special301MSF_Final.pdf
18 http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2672.extract
19 http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/IPR/pdf/ipr13.pdf
20 http://www.safemedicines.org/nigeriabound-hivaids-drugs-seized-in-netherlands.html
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
In addition, under the U.S.’s proposed TPP regulations, shipments that are legitimate in the country of origin
and the country of ultimate destination would still be subject to detention in the transit country. Unwarranted
interception of legitimate in-transit pharmaceutical supplies can undermine legitimate trade in generic
medicines.
Furthermore, the U.S. is requesting TPP countries to mandate that judicial authorities consider valuing damages
based on “the suggested retail price or other legitimate measure of value submitted by the right holder” in cases
of infringement of intellectual property rights,” a mechanism that strongly favors the rights holder and
increases damage amounts. Each country should have the flexibility to individually determine the appropriate
measure for damages for IP infringement.
d) Expanding data exclusivity: the U.S. is seeking to expand a backdoor way to grant monopoly status
Data exclusivity is a TRIPS plus provision that restricts access to essential clinical trial data pertaining to the
safety and efficacy of drugs. Data exclusivity measures prevent generic manufacturers from using existing
clinical research to gain regulatory approval of their medicines, forcing them to perform duplicate clinical trials
or wait for the “data monopoly” period to end.
In the absence of data exclusivity measures, when a generic manufacturer applies to register and sell a version of
a previously-registered medicine, they only have to provide data showing that their product is equivalent to the
original. The drug regulatory authority relies on the clinical trial data provided by the original manufacturer to
evaluate the safety and efficacy of the generic drug.
The introduction of data exclusivity provisions essentially creates a new system for granting monopolies by
blocking registration of generic medicines until the data exclusivity period ends, even if the patent monopoly
has already ended or been overcome, for example with the use of a compulsory license. Under these terms,
generic competition is stifled not only for old medicines no longer under patent protection, but also for new
medicines that don’t warrant patent protection.
Data exclusivity prevents the registration of generic versions of a medicine for many years (the U.S. is asking
for up to 12 years of data exclusivity for some classes of drugs), unless the generic manufacturer repeats the
necessary clinical trials. This is not only extremely costly, but also arguably unethical, as it forces duplication
of clinical trials for patients and animals in order to prove something that is already known.
In addition, while there are clear methods and procedures by which patents can be challenged and overcome –
such as patent oppositions and compulsory licenses – rules governing data exclusivity for pharmaceutical test
data do not always provide the same public health safeguards.
Although it is not yet clear what the U.S. demands for data exclusivity will be for the TPP, the U.S. has
traditionally pressed for a minimum term of five years, similar to U.S. law for certain products. However,
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has been aggressively lobbying for the TPP
to require 12 years of data exclusivity for a subset of pharmaceutical drugs, called biologic (also called
biosimilar or biopharmaceutical) drugs.
In August 2011, several members of the House of Representatives,
led by Rep. Henry Waxman, urged president Obama to refrain from negotiating any provisions on exclusivity
for biologics in the TPP, noting that a 12-year exclusivity period would impede the ability of Congress to
achieve the administration's proposal that the exclusivity period for biologics be reduced to seven years, as
reflected in the FY2012 budget proposal, without running afoul of U.S. trade obligations. It is also unclear if
the U.S will allow the public health safeguards for data exclusivity specified in the 2007 New Trade Policy.
Article 12.3 (b), Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://www.who.int/medicines/services/expertcommittees/pharmprep/QAS04_093Rev4_final.pdf
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/05/phrma-wants-12-years-data-protection-in-tpp-talks
http://www.waxman.house.gov/UploadedFiles/TPP_Biologics_Letter_08-04-11.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
e) Requesting patent term extensions: the U.S. is seeking to keep generic competitors out of the market,
for longer
The TRIPS Agreement requires patents to last 20 years. Although it is not yet clear what the U.S. demands for
patent term extensions in the TPP will be, the U.S. is expected to seek to extend the monopoly patent period in
order to compensate for administrative delays in the regulatory process, even though the 2007 New Trade Policy
made patent extensions optional for countries negotiating trade agreements with the U.S. Such extensions delay
the entry of generic medicines, punishing patients for bureaucratic delays.
f) Requesting patent linkage: the U.S. is seeking to turn drug regulatory authorities into ‘patent police’
Patent linkage provisions prevent drug regulatory authorities from approving new drugs if they could potentially
infringe existing patents. Such provisions effectively require drug regulatory authorities, which are responsible
for evaluating the safety, quality, and efficacy of medicines, to take on the responsibility of policing patents, an
area normally under the purview of separate patent authorities. Linking drug registration and patent status can
delay generic entry into the market and is an aggressive TRIPS plus measure.
The 2007 New Trade Policy made patent linkage optional for countries negotiating trade agreements with the
U.S. Most countries in Europe do not impose linkage between patent status and drug registration. If a linkage
obligation is included in the TPP, it will impose on developing countries more restrictive conditions for the
registration of generic medicines than are found in Europe3. OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BACKTRACKING ON U.S. COMMITMENTS TO ACCESS TO
MEDICINES
The TPP is the first trade agreement negotiated under the Obama administration. Leaked U.S. positions and
correspondence and discussions between Congress and the USTR indicate that the U.S. is prepared to walk
away from its previous public health commitments, including the 2007 New Trade Policy.
The bipartisan May 10th, 2007 New Trade Policy,25 signed by the Bush administration and U.S. Congress,
specified that the USTR should modify its intellectual property demands in trade agreement negotiations so that
important public health safeguards are included. The 2007 New Trade Policy aims to scale-back the harshest IP
protections for developing countries in order to strike a better balance between protection of IP and public health
needs. Although it did not go far enough, it was a step in the right direction. In particular:26
Patent linkage provisions were made voluntary (whereas they had been mandatory in previous US trade
agreements).
Patent term extension provisions were made voluntary (whereas they had been mandatory in previous
US trade agreements).
Data exclusivity was limited to five years for new chemical entities; concurrent periods of exclusivity
were mandated, and public health exceptions were allowed to ensure governments could still implement
public health safeguards such as compulsory licenses.
When the 2007 New Trade Policy was announced, the House Ways and Means Committee called it “a
fundamental shift in U.S. trade policy.”27 However, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has been aggressively
lobbying against the 2007 New Trade Policy being applied to the TPP negotiation countries.
USTR has stated
that they are considering options in the TPP that would shift U.S. policy away from the 2007 New Trade Policy
and toward greater protection of intellectual property rights for brand-name pharmaceutical companies in the
25 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
26
For an analysis of the May 10 agreement, see: Fabiana Jorge. New U.S. trade policy: A turning point?. Journal of Generic Medicines
(2007) 5, 5–8. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jgm.4950093. Available at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jgm/journal/v5/n1/abs/4950093a.html
27 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011
Several Members of US Congress have also warned against this possibility and written to the
Obama administration to demand that it uphold the 2007 New Trade Policy28.
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