DDD49

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

pmattera@goodjobsfirst.org

www.corp-research.org