Also in this Issue
- Talking Book Word Up: KTCA's Daniel Bergin documents African American letters in Literature & Life. (Culturata)
- More articles from this issue...
More Clinton Watch Articles
- Peace on Earth? Thanks to Clinton's foreign policy, 1998 could be the year of living dangerously for much of the world. (Dec 24, 1997)
- Will They Ever Learn? Polls show that a majority of swing voters disapprove of Janet Reno's decision not to seek an outside prosecutor for Donorgate. That's bad news for the liberals who keep pooh-poohing the corruption issue. (Dec 17, 1997)
- The Pretenders You'd think that Clinton's decision amounting to a death sentence for thousands of HIV-positive Americans might generate a public outcry. Instead, the chattering classes were obsessed with Dick Gephardt's speech at Harvard. (Dec 10, 1997)
- Merchants of Death (Dec 3, 1997)
- Dirty Little Hands Maybe it's time Americans took a page from Italy's experience. There, the anti-corruption drive "Operation Clean Hands" was placed in the hands of a permanent ethics czar to shield it from political influence. (Nov 26, 1997)
- Suddenly Saddam It should be remembered that the first plant Saddam used to make chemical weapons was built by the American multinational Bechtel with money supplied by the U.S. Agriculture Department. (Nov 19, 1997)
- Party of Losers A recent Supreme Court decision upholding tight Minnesota rules on cross-party endorsements quashed the possibility of third parties playing a balance-of-power role in most states. Thus, the only hope for a renewal of progressive electoral politics is for left Democrats to form permanent alliances fighting primaries against Me-Too Clinton clones. (Nov 12, 1997)
- Jokers Wild Gambling-rich tribes opposing a casino in Hudson--including the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota and the Mille Lacs Chippewa--hired heavy-hitting lobbyist Patrick O'Connor, who personally spoke to the president about the matter at a fundraiser in Minneapolis. (Nov 5, 1997)
Email Newsletter
Stay up-to-date with City Pages. Signing up is simple, and you can opt out anytime. Give it a try...
Prosecutors were finally able to nail Tyson Foods--one of the three corporate behemoths that launched and sustained Bill Clinton's political career.
Birds of a Feather
JUST BEFORE NEW Year's champagne corks started popping came the news that Tyson Foods, the Arkansas poultry giant, had pleaded guilty to charges of "making illegal gifts"--that's what you and I would call giving bribes--to Clinton's first secretary of agriculture, Mike Espy. The event got little attention outside the Beltway. Even the august New York Times ran only a terse four-paragraph AP dispatch buried inside, and with most political reporters on vacation hardly any news stories bothered to place this astonishing development in its proper context.
What's unusual about the Tyson plea is that it marks the first time prosecutors were able to nail one of the three corporate behemoths that launched and sustained Bill Clinton's political career. Together with Stephens Inc. and WalMart, Tyson Foods was, as Forbes once put it, one of the "undeniably formidable business juggernauts" in Arkansas whose "mind-boggling concentrations of wealth and influence "had everything to do with a no-holds-barred unfettered approach to free enterprise" and to which Bill Clinton was always ready to listen.
The world's largest producer and processor of poultry is headed by notorious influence-buyer Don Tyson, who operates from an exact replica of the White House's Oval Office (except that the doorknobs are shaped like hen's eggs). The primitive paternalism of the firm's corporate culture was once thus described by journalist Norman Solomon: It "keeps its farmers in near-indentured servitude... works its underpaid, frequently injured workers at an extraordinary pace... and discharges half a million tons of chicken shit into Arkansas rivers every year." In his brilliant book Partners in Power: The Clintons and their America, Roger Morris details how the Clinton/Tyson relationship made the nation's second-poorest state subservient to corporate power. "Regulatory enforcement was virtually nonexistent [and] the chicken industry virtually made its own rules. Even the state inspection laboratory was controlled by poultry producers."
The insider-trading scam that made Hillary Clinton a $100,000 profit on a $1,000 investment in commodities futures was engineered by Tyson's corporate counsel, Jim Blair, who was also one of Gov. Clinton's closest confidantes on everything from appointments to legislation. In return for bundles of campaign cash and legal bribes like the commodities deal, Tyson got millions' worth of tax breaks from the tiny state, and Clinton imposed blinders on those charged with enforcing anti-pollution laws.
In its guilty plea, Tyson Foods agreed to pay a penalty of $6 million. Unfortunately, that's just a drop in the bucket for the poultry conglomerate, and the profits Tyson made thanks to favors from the Clinton administration made the fine little more than the normal cost of doing business. For example, the Clinton administration delayed for two years implementation of more stringent federal clean-poultry statutes, an action worth a small fortune to Tyson.
But the most revolting scandal was the infamous "Chickens for Chechens" deal. At a 1995 summit meeting in Egypt, Bill Clinton agreed to make clear his public support for the re-election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, then the target of world obloquy for his murderous war on the secessionist Chechens. In return, leaked notes of the meeting revealed, Yeltsin agreed to lift Russia's embargo against American chicken, which was judged too polluted to meet Russia's environmental laws. Ninety percent of U.S. poultry exported to Russia comes from Tyson Foods. In other words, Clinton gave Yeltsin a blank check to kill as many Chechens as he wanted, provided the Russians bought Don Tyson's dirty chickens.
Bribe-takers sometimes go to jail; bribe-givers rarely do, and the fine imposed on Tyson Foods in the Espy case points up the laxity of our laws against corporate corruption and white-collar crime. If the establishment media--what Noam Chomsky rightly calls "the business press"--provided even the bare-bones facts on corporate criminals like the Tyson empire, perhaps voters would come to understand that real, structural reform only begins with changing how we finance campaigns and political parties.
About Doug Ireland
From the Archive
- Peace on Earth? Thanks to Clinton's foreign policy, 1998 could be the year of living dangerously for much of the world. (Clinton Watch - Dec 24, 1997)
- Will They Ever Learn? Polls show that a majority of swing voters disapprove of Janet Reno's decision not to seek an outside prosecutor for Donorgate. That's bad news for the liberals who keep pooh-poohing the corruption issue. (Clinton Watch - Dec 17, 1997)
- The Pretenders You'd think that Clinton's decision amounting to a death sentence for thousands of HIV-positive Americans might generate a public outcry. Instead, the chattering classes were obsessed with Dick Gephardt's speech at Harvard. (Clinton Watch - Dec 10, 1997)
- Merchants of Death (Clinton Watch - Dec 3, 1997)
- Dirty Little Hands Maybe it's time Americans took a page from Italy's experience. There, the anti-corruption drive "Operation Clean Hands" was placed in the hands of a permanent ethics czar to shield it from political influence. (Clinton Watch - Nov 26, 1997)
- Suddenly Saddam It should be remembered that the first plant Saddam used to make chemical weapons was built by the American multinational Bechtel with money supplied by the U.S. Agriculture Department. (Clinton Watch - Nov 19, 1997)
- Party of Losers A recent Supreme Court decision upholding tight Minnesota rules on cross-party endorsements quashed the possibility of third parties playing a balance-of-power role in most states. Thus, the only hope for a renewal of progressive electoral politics is for left Democrats to form permanent alliances fighting primaries against Me-Too Clinton clones. (Clinton Watch - Nov 12, 1997)
- Jokers Wild Gambling-rich tribes opposing a casino in Hudson--including the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota and the Mille Lacs Chippewa--hired heavy-hitting lobbyist Patrick O'Connor, who personally spoke to the president about the matter at a fundraiser in Minneapolis. (Clinton Watch - Nov 5, 1997)
- More articles from the Doug Ireland Archive...
