We call corporations that think about themselves in the community good citizens. We call corporations that only think of their little cells, cancers. I'm like the American Nation and I have within me some of those little self absorbent cells. If allowed to continue I will cease to exist. Of course those cells fight like hell for their own growth which will end up killing them as well. I must say that such malignant thought as expressed by the energy companies and all of the other business entities that accept public largess in exchange for jobs and citizenship is beyond me. They sign a social contract that they deny. They have malignant interests unconnected to the rest of us and their viral ugliness as exposed by Oscar Wilde and others( in the materials I worked hard to type into the computer and send to you only to ignored) makes me wonder what I'm doing here when time is precious.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 2:18 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; D & N Subject: Re: [Futurework] corporations the real moochers At 22:56 26/09/2012,Natalia wrote: http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/3297 Natalia Corporations are the Real Moochers September 20th, 2012 by Phil Mattera The firestorm over Mitt Romney's closed-door comments depicting nearly half the U.S. population as parasites is coming mainly from those defending seniors, the poor and the disabled. Not over the pond it isn't (and I doubt in America also). Romney's nasty remarks have been condemned by Tory columnists (even by those who are somewhere near as right-wing as Thatcher) as by Labour and LibDem journalists. (There's also a very curious relative silence over here by the right-wing press about the prospects for a Romney victory. They don't like him.) But what's really wrong with the Ayn Rand worldview Romney was parroting is that it ignores those who are the biggest moochers of all: giant corporations. Phil Mattera shouldn't condemn the majority of corporations for the sins of the relative few which have actually been able to influence the crucial law-framers and makers. The latter must carry the primary responsibility for faulty law. Even fewer corporations actually try to break whatever law exists, whether tax law or any other, because they need a basic framework of law in order to operate, just like ordinary citizens. On the other hand, no tax paying body -- whether state government, corporation or individual -- seeks to pay more tax than they need to by law. Keith If, as Romney suggested, moocherism begins with the failure to pay federal income taxes, then that label can easily be applied to many of the country's major companies. A November 2011 report <http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2011/11/corporate_taxpayers_corporate_tax_dodgers _2008-2010.php> by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that more than one-quarter of large companies paid zero taxes in at least one of the three years examined. Quite a few of those companies arranged their affairs so that they had negative tax rates, meaning that the IRS sends them checks. And many of those that paid taxes did so at what CTJ and ITEP called "ultra low" rates of 10 percent or less. Corporate tax avoidance is just the beginning of the story. The dependence on government that has Romney so upset is at the heart of the business plan for much of Corporate America. What libertarian types tend to overlook is that much of the public spending they disdain comes in the form of purchases from businesses. It's estimated <http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/23/news/economy/federal-spending/index.htm> that more than $500 billion a year in federal outlays occurs via private-sector contracts. Some companies rely so heavily on that spending that they are as government-dependent as any Medicaid or food stamp recipient. Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, for example, derives more than 80 percent <http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/936468/000119312512074929/d221578d10 k.htm> of its revenue from the federal government, especially the Pentagon; for its competitor Raytheon the figure is about 75 percent <http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1047122/000104712212000044/rtn-12312 011x10k.htm> . A large portion of what is called entitlement spending, especially in healthcare, ends up in the pockets of corporations, including drug makers, medical device manufacturers and for-profit hospital chains. The largest of the latter, HCA, gets more than 40 percent <http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/860730/000119312512075882/d264514d10 k.htm#tx264514_8> of its revenue from Medicare and Medicaid. Corporations can get federal grants as well as contracts. The Commerce and Agriculture Departments have a slew of programs that assist businesses in marketing their products or that underwrite some of their costs. And, of course, a large portion of the billions paid each year in farm subsidies goes to agribusiness giants rather than family farmers. Despite the recent Republican demagoguery on Solyndra, targeted federal spending to develop new energy technologies is nothing new. The Recovery Act's billions for solar and wind companies was completely in line with federal programs that have subsidized everything from coal gasification to nuclear power plants. Before the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan, the U.S. government was promoting a loan guarantee program to encourage the construction of a new generation of nukes by major utility companies. Giant corporations also depend on the federal government to help them sell their goods abroad. The Export-Import Bank of the United States spends more than $30 billion <http://www.exim.gov/about/reports/ar/2011/fy2011_at_a_glance.pdf> each year providing various forms of insurance, loan guarantees and direct loans for the likes of Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar. The federal government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation helps U.S. companies do more business offshore by providing political risk insurance and other types of financial assistance. Another form of corporate dependency on government is the ability of natural resources companies to operate on public lands and pay either no royalties or artificially low ones . Mining corporations, for example, take advantage <http://www.earthworksaction.org/issues/detail/general_mining_law_of_1872> of an 1872 law that allows them to extract gold, silver and other hardrock minerals from public lands royalty-free. Assistance from the federal government can be a matter of life and death for some companies, as in clear in the cases of General Motors and Chrysler as well as the banks that were brought back from the brink by the TARP bailout and then thrived on the influx of billions in essentially free money from the Federal Reserve. Hearing all the ways in which the federal government makes life easier and more profitable for big business, a newly arrived Martian might expect giant corporations to be grateful boosters of the public sphere. Instead, as we know all too well, most large companies are disdainful of government and are constantly whining about regulation and taxes they can't avoid paying. To make things worse, many government-dependent companies are less than honest when it comes to their dealings with the public sector. The Project On Government Oversight's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database <http://www.contractormisconduct.org/> identifies hundreds of examples of contract fraud and other offenses. Healthcare providers such as HCA, not satisfied with the vast amount of honest business they get from Medicare and Medicaid, have defrauded <http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm> taxpayers out of billions more. If Romney wants to find the real moochers-and often crooked ones at that-he can find them in the corporate world that is his natural habitat. <http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fdirtdiggersdigest.org%2 Farchives%2F3297&title=Corporations%20are%20the%20Real%20Moochers&descriptio n=The%20firestorm%20over%20Mitt%20Romney%E2%80%99s%20closed-door%20comments% 20depicting%20nearly%20half%20the%20U.S.%20population%20as%20pa> Share This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2012 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Contractor Misconduct <http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/category/contractor-misconduct> , Corporate Crime <http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/category/corporate-crime> , Corporate Subsidies <http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/category/corporate-subsidies> , Government contracting <http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/category/government-contracting> . 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