Dirt Diggers Digest No. 49
February 24, 2004
Editor: Philip Mattera
1. Delaware expands web access to corporate records
2. Bush Files site posts documents collected by Paul O'Neill
3. Dialog begins offering flat-rate deals to smaller institutions
4. Cintas files defamation lawsuit against social investing firm
5. Report describes failure of export credit agencies to fight bribery
6. CNN website has list of companies engaged in offshoring
7. Research job opening at the DataCenter [omitted from web archive]
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1. Delaware expands web access to corporate records
Delaware, which describes itself as the "corporate capital of the world,"
recently began providing expanded internet access to company records.
The website of the Delaware Secretary of State now has a page
<https://sos-res.state.de.us/tin/GINameSearch.jsp> that allows free
searching of company names to retrieve basic information such as the
entity's name and that of its registered agent. However, you have to pay
$10 to check on a firm's status; $20 gets you more detailed information,
including a filing history. This service helps fill a gap that exists even on
high-priced public records databases.
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2. Bush Files site posts documents collected by Paul O'Neill
Author Ron Suskind, who, with the help of former Treasury Secretary
Paul O'Neill, wrote the recent Bush Administration expose The Price of
Loyalty, has created a website where he is posting some of the
thousands of internal documents O'Neill took with him when he left
office <http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/>.
The Bush Files site includes some material on the Administration's
mixed feelings about cracking down on corporate evildoers during the
revelations about business corruption in 2002. See, for example:
http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/archives/000079.html.
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3. Dialog begins offering flat-rate deals to smaller institutions
Dialog, which claims to be the largest collection of commercial information
databases (with 14 terabytes of content), announced recently that it has
begun offering fixed-fee pricing plans to smaller institutional customers
<http://www.dialog.com/pressroom/2004/dialog_choice_020304.shtml>.
The new service, called Dialog Choice, will provide customized pricing
for individual or groups of files chosen by the customer (at the moment,
only about 70 of Dialog's hundreds of databases are available). The
prices for Dialog Choice are still far from inexpensive, so researchers
on more limited budgets may want to stick with the non-subscription
pay-as-you-go option called Dialog Open Access
<http://www.dialog.com/products/openaccess/>.
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4. Cintas files defamation lawsuit against social investing firm
Earlier this month, uniform supply company Cintas Corp. filed a
defamation suit against a socially responsible investing firm in
connection with statements made at the Cintas annual meeting.
Cintas, which is currently the target of a corporate campaign because
of its resistance to a union organizing drive launched by UNITE, claimed
that Tim Smith of Walden Asset Management defamed the company
when he charged (erroneously, according to Cintas) that it was obtaining
uniforms from a Haitian company that operated sweatshops. Walden has
not posted a response on its website, but an article on the Social Funds site <http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/article1339.html> quotes
the general counsel of Domini Social Investments, which introduced a
shareholder resolution at Cintas along with Walden, as warning that the
lawsuit "could have a chilling effect on shareowners' ability to speak freely."
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5. Report describes failure of export credit agencies to fight bribery
The Corner House, a UK-based research outfit dealing with corporate social
responsibility issues, recently issued a report describing the failure of
export credit agencies to take measures to prevent the payment of
bribes by multinational companies that receive financial support from the
agencies. Titled Underwriting Bribery: Export Credit Agencies and
Corruption <http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/briefing/30ecabribe.pdf>,
the report argues that the agencies have been complicit in corruption by
paying insurance claims for companies that have lost foreign contracts
because of bribery charges. The main U.S. export credit agencies are the
Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
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6. CNN website has list of companies engaged in offshoring
Debate is raging over the movement of U.S. white-collar jobs overseas to
places such as India. While much is being written on the policy issues, little
systematic research has been done on the companies that engage in the practice.
A first step has been taken by the CNN website in the section devoted to the
Lou Dobbs program. Go to http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/
and look for the link in the "Exporting America" section. This brings up a list
of several hundred companies that the site says are "either sending American jobs
overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers."
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Philip Mattera
Director of the Corporate Research Project
Good Jobs First