Cutting the Welfare Queens Lose from the Taxpayer's Wallet

wkmac

Well-Known Member
Rising federal spending and huge deficits are pushing the nation toward a financial and economic crisis. Policymakers should find and eliminate wasteful, damaging, and unneeded programs in the federal budget. One good way to save money would be to cut subsidies to businesses. Corporate welfare in the federal budget costs taxpayers almost $100 billion a year.
Policymakers claim that business subsidies are needed to fix alleged market failures or to help American companies better compete in the global economy. However, corporate welfare often subsidizes failing and mismanaged businesses and induces firms to spend more time on lobbying rather than on making better products. Instead of correcting market failures, federal subsidies misallocate resources and introduce government failures into the marketplace.
While corporate welfare may be popular with policymakers who want to aid home-state businesses, it undermines the broader economy and transfers wealth from average taxpaying households to favored firms. Corporate welfare also creates strong ties between politicians and business leaders, and these ties are often the source of corruption scandals in Washington. Americans are sick and tired of "crony capitalism," and the way to solve the problem is to eliminate business subsidy programs.
Corporate welfare doesn't aid economic growth and it is an affront to America's constitutional principles of limited government and equality under the law. Policymakers should therefore scour the budget for business subsidies to eliminate. Budget experts and policymakers may differ on exactly which programs represent unjustified corporate welfare, but this study provides a menu of about $100 billion in programs to terminate.

Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget
 

bbsam

Moderator
Staff member
But...they're the job creators! I think I like the fact that Obama doesn't much care for politicians and their business bedfellows. He might be as close to an outsider to reach the presidency.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
But...they're the job creators! I think I like the fact that Obama doesn't much care for politicians and their business bedfellows. He might be as close to an outsider to reach the presidency.

Good point. I have to admit I was most impressed how Obama stood up to Goldman Sachs. Let's not forget his iconic stand against the Big Healthcare and Big Pharma interests who wanted to hijack the healthcare bill and make it into a Corp. welfare bonanza for certain interest groups. Also his principled stand against the military industrial complex is nothing but heroic. He truly is the President of Hope, Change and most of all Transparency.

This President and the gift he is from the democratic party to the cause of truth, justice and the American way will truly go down in history.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
Good point. I have to admit I was most impressed how Obama stood up to Goldman Sachs. Let's not forget his iconic stand against the Big Healthcare and Big Pharma interests who wanted to hijack the healthcare bill and make it into a Corp. welfare bonanza for certain interest groups. Also his principled stand against the military industrial complex is nothing but heroic. He truly is the President of Hope, Change and most of all Transparency.

This President and the gift he is from the democratic party to the cause of truth, justice and the American way will truly go down in history.

He does SUCK doesn't he?

He runs his mouth against Big Corporate America and he is totally in their pocket ... almost as bad as the Republicans.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
As Thomas L. Knapp observes in a recent column (Election 2012: “Oil’s Well That End’s Welfarish,” October 17), Mitt Romney — famous for complaining about the 47% who expect to be taken care of — “whined that the Obama administration has been insufficiently charitable with ‘public’ land (and taxpayer money) toward the oil companies.”
He notes that “for every dollar a timber company paid in leasing fees, the US government spent $1.27 on road-building and other projects to enable the exploitation of those timber leases.” The same applies to oil drilling in places like the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve: “the next time a natural resources extraction company offers to cover the entire cost of its own operations on ‘public’ land, let alone deliver a net profit to the US government on the deal, will be the first time.”
Extractive industries are among the biggest welfare queens in human history. Much — probably most — of the oil and mineral wealth of the planet is still in the hands of transnational corporate beneficiaries of centuries of colonial looting. Oil and mineral companies routinely use their pet states to politically guarantee access to mineral resources. Just look at the overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran — then read the Wikipedia article on BP. The politics of oil is the central factor in the slaughter of millions in the Congo, Zaire, and Angola since WWII. The same goes for the Suharto coup in Indonesia and the democide in East Timor. I think Shell actually has a Vice President for supervising death squad activity.
Most production of cash crops for corporate agribusiness, under the neoliberal “export-oriented development model” the Washington Consensus forces on the Third World, takes place on land from which peasants were either outright evicted, or reduced to at-will tenancy and then evicted, under colonialism or post-colonialism. The fastest way for a left-leaning regime to bring those “Washington Bullets” down on itself is to try putting that land back in the hands of its rightful owners — the peasants who originally cultivated it. Just ask Jacobo Arbenz.
It’s hilarious that self-described defenders of “free enterprise” like Mittens, who come down hardest on boondoggles like Solyndra, are also the biggest advocates of nuclear power and projects like the Keystone XL pipeline.
Nuclear power is the most extreme example of the phenomenon Tom Knapp described. Every step in the production chain, from the government building roads to the uranium mines on federal land to the disposal of nuclear waste at government expense — and the government indemnification against liability for meltdowns in between — is heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
As for Keystone, it’s just another example — although much smaller in scale and bloodshed — of the kind of corporate looting the fossil fuels industry carries out around the world. Never mind the fact that the extraction itself couldn’t take place in Alberta if government approval didn’t constitute a de facto indemnity, essentially preempting any potential tort action in the courts for harm from pollution.
The pipeline is being built on stolen land. From Montana to Oklahoma and Texas, TransCanada is using eminent domain to steal land — often falling afoul of treaty guarantees with Indian nations — and using local police and sheriffs as mercenaries in pitched battles against activists. Even when it crosses federal land, it amounts to a subsidy to the project. “Vacant” land — actually occupied by human beings with the legal liability of having brown skin — was originally preempted by the Spanish crown, passed into the hands of the Mexican Republic, and thence into the hands of the U.S. government via the Guadalupe-Hidalgo cession. The American state held all this land out of use, in blocs of tens and hundreds of millions of acres, so that it could eventually be handed over to favored timber, mining, oil and pipeline companies without the need to buy it up piecemeal from individual homesteaders, small forestry cooperatives and the like.
So now when you hear Mittens talk about “free enterprise,” you know what he means by it.

The Romney Lexicon: “Free Enterprise” = Corporate Welfare


When you hear any side of the 2 party debate use the terms "free enterprise" or ""free market" you need to understand the conflation of what they speak.
 

klein

Für Meno :)
Wkmac, don't you need to hand out corperate welfare or promises of more corperate welfare to archive great political fund raising numbers such as Romney $316 million and growing , nevermind the billions going into superpack funds !

Those nunbers above make me sick, while millions of low income Americans don't know where to get their next loaf of bread, or are lucky enough to be sitting in some private funded soup kitchen at this very moment.
Or the unlucky ones, going thru trash, hoping to find something ediable.
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
Wkmac, don't you need to hand out corperate welfare or promises of more corperate welfare to archive great political fund raising numbers such as Romney $316 million and growing , nevermind the billions going into superpack funds !

Those nunbers above make me sick, while millions of low income Americans don't know where to get their next loaf of bread, or are lucky enough to be sitting in some private funded soup kitchen at this very moment.
Or the unlucky ones, going thru trash, hoping to find something ediable.

Google "Hooverville". If Romney gets elected, we will have a class of uber-rich, and a massive underclass, many of which will end-up in Romneyvilles. That's OK with Mitt, because all of those folks just didn't apply themselves. Can I move to Canada if he gets elected?
 

Lue C Fur

Evil member
Google "Hooverville". If Romney gets elected, we will have a class of uber-rich, and a massive underclass, many of which will end-up in Romneyvilles. That's OK with Mitt, because all of those folks just didn't apply themselves. Can I move to Canada if he gets elected?

Dont wait...go now. You and Klein can sell weiners together.
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
Dont wait...go now. You and Klein can sell weiners together.

You might be competing with us in the new Romney Economy, or maybe you can sell apples like they did during the Depression. Canada will also be hurt if the Mormon Wonder Boy gets elected.
 

menotyou

bella amicizia
You might be competing with us in the new Romney Economy, or maybe you can sell apples like they did during the Depression. Canada will also be hurt if the Mormon Wonder Boy gets elected.
I live in Appleville, USA. Be nice. Those guys make a mint!
 
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