Multinational Monitor |
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JUL/AUG 2008 FEATURES: No Escape: Marketing to Kids in the Digital Age The Youngest Market: Baby Food Peddlers Undermine Breastfeeding Intoxicating Brands: Alcohol Advertising and Youth How Things Work: The FTC's Revolving Door Fighting Demons: Addressing the Perils of Financial Innovation INTERVIEWS: Commercializing Childhood: The Corporate Takeover of Kids' Lives Pill Pushers: Pharmaceutical Marketing in an Overmedicated Nation Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping The Debt Creators: Shady Lending, Misleading Marketing and Hard Times DEPARTMENTS: Editorial The Front |
LAWRENCE SUMMERS MEMORIAL AWARD*The July/August Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to Roy Innis, chair of the Congress of Racial Equality, for comments made during his address to the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Resource Development Council for Alaska. “There is an excellent example of this attack on economic civil rights right here in Alaska: the recent listing of the Polar Bear under the Endangered Species Act. … In raising [energy] prices, this listing will also visit the worst economic harm upon the low-income families and further handcuff the poor into the bondage of poverty. .. I call on every one gathered
here today, and every caring, thoughtful citizen in our great nation to
join with me in challenging these Energy Killers, these modern day Bull
Connors and George Wallaces, who are standing in the door, trying to
prevent poor Americans from achieving Martin Luther King’s dream of
equal opportunity and true environmental justice.” *In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?” wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration and is the outgoing president of Harvard University. “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.” Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic. |
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