Article: Resistance Meets Chase Bank and CVS Pharmacy’s Move to Downtown Sebastopol

[Shepherd]

By Shepherd Bliss
WaccoBB.net

The largest bank in the United States, Chase, and the giant global CVS pharmacy have been trying for over a year to get permission to move into downtown Sebastopol. Fierce resistance from the community has met the Chase/CVS effort to develop a drive-through mall in the busiest intersections in town, as well as some support from the business community.

The City Council, Planning Commission, and Design Review Board (DRB) have all rejected their plans. One citizens group, Committee for Small Town Sebastopol, has sued the project on environmental grounds. Occupy Sebastopol has scheduled a peaceful May 24 rally at its remaining large tent on the plaza and then a march to where Chase/CVS wants to relocate.

JPMorgan/Chase’s recent loss of over $3 billion in derivates trading further threatens the powerful bank’s chances. The next DRB meeting on this development is May 30. The City Council meets May 29. Activists plan to speak at both.

Would you let a convicted sexual predator of young children build a house next door to an elementary school, even if its design met all the code requirements? Or would you consider the potential harm to the community and reject the proposal on ethical and moral grounds?

What if a bank had been convicted numerous times of predatory banking practices? Would you let that bank move downtown? Or would you insist that they stay on the outskirts of town? These are questions that Sebastopol faces.

Chase and CVS have each paid billions of dollars in fines for their many illegal activities. Such violations are considered customary business expenses to such white-collar criminal elements of the ruling banking/pharmaceutical/attorney/bought-politicians complex.

By developing a vacant automobile dealer’s site at the busiest corner in town, they would increase traffic and draw more money from local citizens out of the county and into the hands of the global 1%. Occupy Sebastopol and various community groups claim that it is time to reverse globalization and trumpet re-localization.

The U.S. Justice Department recently launched a criminal investigation into JPMorgan/Chase’s trading loss of over $3 billion by continuing their casino capitalism gambling with derivatives, which is what initiated the current extreme economic downturn.

JPMorgan/Chase has about $2.5 trillion in total assets. That’s roughly 20% of the U.S. economy, according to MIT professor Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. It “is too big to fail,” Johnson said in an interview with Bill Moyers called “Are JPMorgan’s Losses a Canary in a Coal Mine?” published by Commondreams.org May 17.

Even the corporate media has raised questions about Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. The daily Press Democrat here, until recently owned by the New York Times, describes him as part of “Wall Street royalty.” The arrogant Dimon is experiencing “some poetic justice,” its editorial noted.

“How the mighty have fallen,” captions a May 21 Newsweek photo of Dimon, linking him to Jon Corzine of MF Global and Kweku Adoboli of UBS. Which other members of the 1% may soon to fall?

Even after the announcement of the bank’s staggering losses, shareholders confirmed Dimon’s $24 million dollar annual pay package.

“Huge banks have been using their enormous wealth for years to buy off politicians and regulators,” said Moyers. “Chase just had to pay almost three quarters of a billion dollars in settlements and surrendered fees to settle one case alone, that of bribery and corruption in Alabama. It’s also paid billions to settle other cases of perjury, forgery, fraud and sale of unregistered securities.”

Is that the kind of predatory operation one would want to anchor their lovely downtown where people gather? In addition to being private property, downtowns are part of the commons, constructed by taxpayers with plazas and other places to gather and pass through without having their pockets picked by corporations.

CEO Dimon, by the way, happens to be on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is supposed to regulate banks. A conflict of interest?

“Some reports say that he (Dimon) meets with President Obama with some regularity. The political access and connections of Mr. Dimon are second to none,” Johnson reveals. This is why some in Occupy Wall Street consider Obama to be “the number one manager of the 1%.”

On ABC’s “The View” after the announcement of the stunning loss, Obama praised his friend as “one of the smartest bankers we got” and JPMorgan/Chase as “one of the best-managed banks there is.” Best managed for whom, other than its managers?

Dimon is close friends of Sandy Weill, Citigroup’s retired CEO, which already has a bank in downtown Sebastopol, as do Wells Fargo and Bank of America. How many banks circulating money outside of the county does a small town need downtown?

In 2010 Weill bought a vineyard here in Sonoma County for $31 million dollars, thus joining this county’s 1%, which the wine industry anchors. He then gave $12 million dollars to Sonoma State University’s elite, expensive, fashionable Green Music Center, where the 1% can enjoy opera and symphonies, joined by a few others who can still afford it. With that he bought an honorary doctorate.

Dimon is described as being “like his mentor Weill, who ran Citigroup into derivative trading hell” by Robert Scheer, writing May 17 at Truthdig.com. “Dimon was in cahoots with his mentor, Sandy Weill, in engineering a series of mergers and acquisitions that would have violated the Glass-Seagall law,” Scheer continues, which made “the too-big-to-fail” banks legal.

SSU faculty, students, alumni, community members and activists from Occupy Petaluma, Occupy Santa Rosa, and Occupy Sebastopol engaged in a successful “Shame on SSU” direct action at the school’s May 12 graduation, where they rewarded Weill and his wife with honorable doctorates. The activists described them as “dishonorable” and turned their backs to shun them in a dignified action.

Their concerns include that other banksters and criminal corporate executives will retire, buy into the most lucrative wine industry in the U.S., and bring their predatory/polluting practices here. Sonoma County used to have a diverse agriculture industry; it is now a grape mono-culture. This threatens the county’s entire economy, due to wine’s boom-and-bust quality and the potentiality of a pest to destroy mono-crops.

Chase’s partner CVS is another globalized mega-corporation with a history of abuses.

“CVS must pay $13.75 million in civil penalties,” reports the April 26 weekly Sonoma West. This settlement recently was reached by 44 California District Attorneys and City Attorneys because CVS “violated California laws for safe storage, handling and disposal of sharps waste, pharmaceutical and pharmacy waste, photo waste containing silver, and hazardous waste generated from spills and customer return of hazardous products.”

This means that people and the environment have been hurt by the customary practices of CVS, which it can be expected to continue if allowed to move downtown into the commons.

That “hefty fine,” according to Sebastopol’s Eric Snyder in a letter to the weekly Sonoma West editor, “exposes an arrogant corporate culture that considers paying fines for laws broken simply a cost of doing business.”

“I researched CVS and after reading hundreds of pages of court documents and articles, decided to no longer shop there. CVS is merciless,” Snyder noted. It has been forced to pay hundreds of millions in fines. Its executives have been charged with bribery, conspiracy and fraud. CVS paid $75 million, the largest penalty ever paid under the Controlled Substances Act, in 2010. Other locals also already boycott CVS.

Big businesses like Chase and CVS are threats to local businesses. Sonoma West published a May 17 commentary by Sebastopol resident Bill Shortridge that detailed the losses to local stores such as Sebastopol Hardware and Art & Soul. Such stores build rather than scatter community. When locals go there they converse with each other and create relationships. This is unlikely in the colder, corporate, industrial places that Chase and CVS build.

Many families have had their homes foreclosed as a result of Chase’s immoral practices and been evicted. Others have lost their jobs because of the common practices of the giant financial operations. The faulty clean-up practices of CVS lead to disease and even deaths. The practices of these two corporations have worsened and destroyed many lives.

“Let’s ban chain stores downtown and promote incentives so local businesses can flourish,” Shortridge concludes. Other Sonoma County cities have such bans.

Sebastopol’s downtown is at risk of profiteering and polluting by the country’s largest bank and one of its largest pharmacies. Fortunately, credit unions have recently located in Sebastopol, since the successful move your money campaign to take money out of big banks and deposit it in local banks.

(Shepherd Bliss lives in Sebastopol, where he has farmed for the last 20 years. He also teaches college and can be reached at [email protected].)

[Alex]

By Shepherd Bliss
WaccoBB.net

The largest bank in the United States, Chase, and the giant global CVS pharmacy have been trying for over a year to get permission to move into downtown Sebastopol.......

.....Many families have had their homes foreclosed as a result of Chase’s immoral practices and been evicted. Others have lost their jobs because of the common practices of the giant financial operations. The faulty clean-up practices of CVS lead to disease and even deaths. The practices of these two corporations have worsened and destroyed many lives.....

....Sebastopol’s downtown is at risk of profiteering and polluting by the country’s largest bank and one of its largest pharmacies.....

(Shepherd Bliss lives in Sebastopol, where he has farmed for the last 20 years. He also teaches college and can be reached at [email protected].)

Thank you Shepherd for such a brilliant and lucid summary of the CVS/Chase situation. It should be carefully read by everyone who's still on the fence. I think you have listed many issues absolutely fatal to this endeavor, all of which are besides the other major fatal reason of unfeasible added traffic.

Another issue I haven't seen mentioned is unnecessary redundancy. Rite-Aid a couple blocks away already reasonably covers all the needs anyone goes to CVS for, but that's minor.

Would anyone still for this please post the reason(s) why all of Shepherds points and my extras don't matter enough, and why allowing this project into the center of our town is a good idea that outweighs the sum of these negatives?

Thank you.

["Mad" Miles]

Would anyone still for this please post the reason(s) why all of Shepherds points and my extras don't matter enough, and why allowing this project into the center of our town is a good idea that outweighs the sum of these negatives?

Thank you.

Money

[Larry Hendricks]

Hello
I am a new kid in Sebastopol. My family and I have only been here for sixteen years. I have raised my children to know about honesty, integrity, telling the truth, keeping agreements, making commitments and helping others in need.

I have also known and interacted with the Pellini family for many years. They have been a wonderful asset and source of help to the community. I truly believe they have a right to sell their property. I am just frustrated about who wants to buy it.

With all of the evidence and track record of lies, dishonesty, destroying lives, cheating and so on all brought to you by the greed and power to do so. Chase and CVS are only here to suck the blood from our community. When Chase paid a token amount of 4 billion for forging documents to speed up forclosures, that was the tip of the ice berg of what they consider business as ususal. Sure I could go on and on about what these predators are here for but I need to ask everyone, what if Wallmart wants to come in next. Wait and see how many business owners will be happy about that.

It is just my opinion but if Chase and CVS come in we are accepting what they have done to people for their bottom line and validate as a community that we just look the other way because that's the way it is. I ask everyone that reads this to stand up for our community and let Chase and CVS know that our moral values and legacy to our children are more important than their bottom line. If we go down this road we can never come back!

Larry Hendricks

[dominus]

CVS & Chase remind me of Mephistopheles in Faust's tale who sought out those who sold their souls to the devil (metaphorically speaking.) For this reason, we must be unwilling to be led by others who are lost and incapable of leadership. Our small town is being tested fiercely by those individuals who want this move only we must remain steadfast and rooted in a vision of stewardship and morality. The simple truth is no one can own the land, or the water, or the air because it can't be owned. Stewardship is the cornerstone for the health and well-being of our planet. As a society we have compromised far too much, this must be an issue that is no longer negotiable. We owe our children and grandchildren better than what they are offering us.