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Did you read Ted Genoways’ article on the horrific conditions at Minnesota’s SPAM factory? Our food blogger Tom Philpott did, and he’s got some must-read thoughts on the subject as well.

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(Source: Flickr / calmaction)

Does Herman Cain Have an Enron Problem?

The GOP presidential candidate and tea party favorite wants voters to take a close look at his business background. We did, and it’s not pretty:

According to five lawsuits filed in federal court in 2004, Aquila’s board of directors—which Cain joined in 1992—allegedly steered employees into heavily investing their retirement savings in company stock. At the same time, the company shifted its business model from straightforward energy generation to risky energy trading, an unregulated market made infamous by now-defunct Enron. The suits, later folded into a single, massive class action, alleged that Cain and top company officials violated a 37-year-old federal law requiring that employers manage employees retirement programs responsibly.

Full story at the Mother ship.

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harkinson:

10 CEOs who got rich by squeezing their workers.

Are you an average American? Percentage-wise, you pay more income tax than ExxonMobil does.

Your average American CEO makes more than 200 times your average Navy SEAL.

Make of that what you will.

LISTICLE: America’s 10 Most Overpaid CEOs

Check out the captain of industry who got a 449 percent raise for keeping his company in the red, and more tales of executive excess. If you’re a journo, you may be especially interested in No. 10…

Maybe Tax Day’s not so bad—if you run a giant corporation. Check out more amazing tax-day charts here, from MoJo’s Dave Gilson.

$900K in "safety bonuses" for the owners of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig? Sure, why the hell not? →

MJ’s Kate Sheppard explains how it happened.

I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I’ve got my corporate Jesus…

MJ’s Josh Harkinson details the religious right’s anti-union crusade, in Wisconsin and beyond. Turns out this Jewish carpenter probably wasn’t a member of his local guild.

Thanks for asking! It’s a great question.

As seasoned followers of political dark money — in fact, it’ll be a greater focus of our news crew going into the 2012 campaign season — we’ve often seen that it’s common practice for upper- and mid-level executives to donate to a corporation’s preferred candidates individually. Sometimes it’s an innocent act of free will. But more often, it’s a legal move to get around the caps on direct corporate donations to campaigns. And sometimes, pressure is brought to bear on those employees to make campaign contributions…or they’re reimbursed for them by the company, acts which are illegal.

These are some of the “soft-money” contributions you hear about all the time! And because the practice is common enough to be observed, we’ll generally look at employee donations along with corporate contributions, for the sake of thoroughness.

The China Syndrome:
The country’s currency manipulation costs 900,000 US jobs. So why are Republicans stalling efforts to end the practice?

“Chinese currency manipulation is the single biggest reason why so many Americans are still jobless,” says Peter Morici…But attempts to address the problem have hit a Great Wall here at home. Senior House Republicans…oppose [a bill ending] it, says an inside source familiar with the negotiations, because “US multinationals with operations in China really don’t like it.”

Read Josh Harkinson’s full story here.