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From ABC News: Are 'Dead Peasant' Life Insurance Policies Fair?. The anchors were "stunned" to find that this is going on after watching Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism a Love Story. Maybe Claire Shipman wouldn't be so surprised if they weren't using a documentary film maker as their research department.

Life insurance used to be rather straightforward, known for offering security to loved ones in a tough time.

So when Irma Johnson learned that her husband, Daniel, who died of brain cancer, had been insured for $1.5 million, it should have been at least a small comfort.

But she did not receive the money. His employer did.

It's one of the strangest free-market perversions that Michael Moore highlights in his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story."

In the corporate practice dubbed "Dead Peasants" life insurance, companies wager on employees' lives, expecting to make money when they die.

And it's pervasive, said Mike Myers, an attorney who has uncovered many of these cases and helped angry relatives sue.

"Life insurance is traditionally used to guard against the death of breadwinners. This is an investment scheme," he said.

Dozens of blue chip companies have these policies, according to Myers. But only banks are forced to reveal them, and several have billions of dollars worth of policies.

"The driving force behind it is the tax deductions," he said.

The life insurance policies were designed to allow companies to insure a few crucial executives. Savvy companies then realized they could also get a tax break by insuring many lower-level employees.

The financial scheme doesn't actually cost the employees anything, except, some say, their trust.

Betina Tillman felt shocked and deceived when a reporter from The Wall Street Journal told her that her brother, a music store cashier, was insured by his employer for $339,000 when he died, despite the fact that he no longer worked at the store.

"We were just in disbelief they were able to do it, and actually cash the policy and cash in on the policy," Tillman said.

She sued, and won. Now, the government mandates that companies obtain the consent of employees.

From The Colbert Report:

Jeffrey Toobin explains what will happen to elections if the Supreme Court decides in favor of corporations.

The Colbert Report last night featured one of the most subversive and brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It's a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more news and information on one of the most critical subjects in American politics that anywhere else in our broken media and political landscape, but I'll take this argument wherever I can get it.

Colbert spent two full segments of his show focusing on the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which could - and probably will - lead to deregulating the entire campaign finance process, allowing corporations to give unlimited money to any candidate of their choosing. This severe step backwards with enormous implications has been barely discussed in any traditional media setting, but Colbert went after it vigorously, discussing the consequences and even the flawed legal rationale, a true third rail of American politics, corporate personhood.

Colbert explained that the 1886 case (Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad) that conferred 14th Amendment equal protection rights onto corporations wasn't even in the original ruling. But when the Chief Justice made an off-hand comment that the Court wouldn't hear an argument on whether the 14th Amendment applied to these corporations (saying, "We are all of the opinion that it does"), the court reporter wrote it into the ruling opinion, and the precedent has held ever since. And that reporter of the Supreme Court didn't only have ties to the railroad barons, he used to run one.

These are subjects you just never hear about in the American media, precisely because the American media is owned by giant multinational corporations, who benefit from the corporate personhood rule and would stand to benefit more from deregulating elections so they could use their "speech" to buy candidates and fund their own with unlimited resources. And despite being on a Viacom-owned network, Colbert says, skewering the immorality and psychopathology of the corporation, "Corporations are legally people... they do everything people do, except breathe, die, and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River."

There's some backstory to that remark. Colbert actually worked with Robert Smigel on the "TV Funhouse" bits from Saturday Night Live (he's one-half of the Ambiguously Gay Duo), including the infamous episode from March 1998, Conspiracy Theory Rock. Here are some of the actual lyrics (remember this aired, albeit one time, on NBC, whose parent company is General Electric):

It's a media-opoly
A media-opoly.
The whole media is controlled by a few corporations
thanks to deregulation by the FCC.

You mean Disney, Fox, WestingHouse, and good ol GE?
They own networks from CBS to CNBC.
They can use them to say whatever they please,
and put down the opinions of any one who disagrees.
Or stuff about PCB's.

What are PCB's?
They come from power plants built by WestingHouse and GE.
They can give you lots of cancer that can hurt your body,
but on network TV, you rarely hear anything bad about the nuclear industry [...]

But the bigshots don't care.
They're all sitting pretty.
Thanks to corporate welfare.
What's that now?

They get billions in subsidies
from the government.
It's supposed to create jobs,
but that's not how it's spent.

They pulled this cartoon from the rerun broadcasts and it never aired again.

Colbert didn't just provide this lesson in corporate control of government in his "The Word" segment, but then had Jeffrey Toobin on to explain how the expected Supreme Court ruling would impact elections:

COLBERT: If this goes through, if they decide in favor of the corporations here, what's going to happen to elections?

TOOBIN: Well, they will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or another, it'll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.

COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as the Hail to the Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn't do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if they win, does that mean that I retroactively won the election?

TOOBIN: I don't think it means that.

COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit and just have logos all over me and run for President as the sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?

TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.

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h/t TheWrap.com

At the Toronto Film Festival, filmmaker Michael Moore excoriated newspapers for seeking profits and for "slitting their own throats".

The Political Carnival: You can't reason with a sick mind

Brad DeLong: GOP congress critters couldn't find their asses with a map and two flashlights dept.

D-Day: Justice and accountability by inches

Newshoggers: Paging Dr. Mengele of the CIA

Economist's View: Do corporations have a right to free speech?

Informed Comment: 60 said killed in NATO bombings; US Aid money may support Taliban activities

They don't even pretend, do they?

CNN, on the other hand, refuses an ad critical of the insurance industry because it's "too personal." (Of course, having Lou Dobbs pushing the idea that Obama's not a real citizen, well, that's not personal at all!)

Gee, do you ever get the idea that the deck is stacked in favor of corporations?

This comes out just two days after my birthday. Guess how I'm going to celebrate?

Michael Moore wants his money back. Actually, he wants your money back, if you lost any in the financial meltdown.

And though he knows that probably won't happen, the filmmaker at least wants to stick it to the people who took it.

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore's new on-screen enemy.

"The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it's going to be more like a vampire movie," the filmmaker jokes. "Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it."

When the collapse walloped the country last September, Moore says he knew not only that it would matter to regular people, but also that the inherent decadence was ripe for his style of satire.

"If you go to see my movies, even if you don't agree with everything in the movies, you're going to have a good laugh," Moore says. "I want them to walk out at the end saying 'Wow, that was something!' And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, 'Um, excuse me. Where are the pitchforks and torches?' "

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Fox's Neil Cavuto had a fellow named Rick Berman of the "Employee Freedom Action Committee" on his program yesterday blaming the auto workers' unions for the demise of the auto industry. Berman natters on at length about the legacy costs for American automakers (neglecting to mention that the legacy we're talking about here originates with a workforce that made these corporations the giants they are today) and trots out a thick union contract to complain about how onerous it is for these corporations to deal with unions.

Cavuto, of all people, tries to be "fair and balanced":

Cavuto: All right, but it's also managers who don't turn fast enough, or see the benefits of more fuel-efficient cars, or to be able to move as quickly as their Japanese or Korean counterparts.

Berman: Yeah, but you have to understand again that you've got -- in that big contract I've shown you, you've got the UAW with veto power over which cars are made in which plants for what period of time. Now you tell me of another business that has to deal with a union and the union makes those decisions and can veto whether or not you start producing a fuel-efficient car.

This is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- a load of bollocks. The decisions on developing corporate lines and following technological trends at the Big Three have never been influenced to any great extent by labor-related restrictions but instead have always been about maximizing profits under the vision of corporate management. See Who Killed the Electric Car? for a clear portrait of this.

Berman goes on to make clear he wants to see a "prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy" that would completely wipe out all existing union contracts and start everyone over at Square One. If you worked for GM for the last 20 years, well, tough luck.

What goes unmentioned in this interview -- and the ultimate target of Berman's campaign -- is that he's looking to attack not just autoworkers' unions but the entire labor movement. Bashing the UAW is just a way of laying the groundwork for a much broader attack on unions in general -- and in particular, on the Employee Free Choice Act.

Who is Rick Berman? He's a former legal eagle for the National Chamber of Commerce (the longtime nemesis of the labor movement) who has gone on to forge a lucrative career setting up all kinds of "nonprofit" organizations that rake in thousands of dollars from corporate interests, as NPR reported awhile back:

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