Cutting Corporate Welfare, by Ralph Nader

When I was 14 years old, I heard Ralph Nader say that box cereal was less nutritious than the box it came in, and you'd get more nutrition out of tearing up the box and pouring sugar and milk over it, and eating that for breakfast. That's the kind of genius that Ralph Nader produces constantly, and why his ideas changed the world for Americans more than perhaps any political thinker of the late 20th century. He remains more relevant than virtually every other political thinker currently on the scene.

Re: CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, by Ralph Nader

Postby admin » Tue Oct 29, 2013 11:00 pm

EXPORT AND OVERSEAS MARKETING ASSISTANCE

Various government agencies maintain an array of export assistance programs. These programs raise the question of why overseas marketing and lending and other export assistance should be a government rather than private sector function.

As regular beneficiaries of double standards, big business executives and lobbyists, it seems, are without a sense of irony. How do the corporate proponents of international trade agreements designed to promote misnamed "free trade" explain their simultaneous support for marketing subsidies? If it is only on the grounds that "other countries do the same thing," perhaps they should turn their multinational lobbying prowess to eliminating other countries' export assistance programs.

The most disturbing feature of many of the export assistance programs may be that the assisted companies export troublesome products or technologies -- weapons, or environmentally hazardous equipment, for example. Such programs, especially the various private corporate arms exports initiatives supported by the Defense Department, should be ended.

WEAPONS EXPORTS ASSISTANCE

The United States spends billions in a panoply of programs and agencies to support corporate commercial arms exports, according to the World Policy Institute's William Hartung. The Pentagon maintains a large bureaucracy devoted to promoting sales of military hardware by U.S. corporations to foreign governments. The Defense Department spends millions at military air shows to hawk the arms makers' wares, and it spends billions of dollars on loans, grants, credits, and cash payments to enable foreign governments to buy U.S. weapons. [74] Surely there are more efficient ways for the government to invest money if it is only concerned with creating jobs. [75]

Of course, weapons are not innocuous products, and there are severe costs to an arms exports policy driven by commercial impulses. Former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has noted that the defense industry's weapons-pushing destabilizes countries and regions, as with respect to the removal of the ban on the sale of high-tech weapons to Latin America. The repeal of the ban was the direct result of industry lobbying. According to Arias, it "will certainly impede our efforts to break the vicious cycle of poverty and militarism." [76]

Commercial weapons exports may also undermine U.S. national security and humanitarian interests. As former Senator Mark Hatfield stated in 1995, "We can still enumerate dozens of cases where the transfer of U.S. military hardware has resulted in the misuse of those weapons, including human rights abuses and in the conduct of acts of aggression. Even more horrible is the fact that U.S. financed or provided arms have been used against our own soldiers in Haiti, Somalia, Panama, and Iraq." [77]

Why should the Pentagon subsidize commercial arms exports that may end up in the hands of dictators, may end upset regional stability, or which may be used against U.S. soldiers?

OTHER EXPORT ASSISTANCE AND OVERSEAS MARKETING PROMOTION PROGRAMS

Other government export programs have been the target of more sustained public and Congressional outrage, which has led to some partial but still inadequate reforms.

The Department of Agriculture's Market Access Program, once known as McNuggets for the World for its support of McDonald's advertising (when it was formerly the Market Promotion Program), is a $90-million-a-year program which is now limited to support of marketing efforts by farmer cooperatives and trade associations. The benign-sounding category of cooperatives, suggestive of small farmer arrangements, includes such operations as Sunkist and Ocean Spray, which are well able to afford their own advertising campaigns. [78]

Again, the Market Access Program and similar programs raise difficult questions: Why is export assistance a proper government function? Why does the market fail to provide incentives for advertising, lending, or other functions? And if businesses determine that a particular activity is not market-worthy, what public interest is served by the government filling the vacuum? If export assistance from other nations is the primary rationale for U.S. activities, how serious are efforts to negotiate an international agreement to curtail such programs? Finally, does the government receive an adequate return on its investment?
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Re: CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, by Ralph Nader

Postby admin » Tue Oct 29, 2013 11:00 pm

DEFENSE AND HIGHWAY PORK

It is important that "pork" -- federal monies for unnecessary projects or inflated contracts -- is understood as a subset of, not a synonym for, corporate welfare. While pork is a significant drain on the federal treasury, it is not, by and large, a helpful analytic term. Labeling a project "pork" stigmatizes it as unnecessary; the response of the project's defenders is to say that in fact the project is necessary. "Pork" does not offer objective criteria by which the dispute can be resolved.

Nonetheless, while analysts may differ over whether one or another project is pork, almost no one disputes that pork exists and is widespread. Pork is in part a reflection of our regional and state representative system of governance, with legislators trying to return federal dollars to their districts or states. But it is also derivative of a corrupt political system in which special interests exert an unhealthy influence.

PENTAGON PORK

The Pentagon budget is a bloated source of contractor pork. Without entering into a discussion of U.S. national security imperatives, it is clear from many official reports by both the Congress and the Executive Branch that much of what the Pentagon procures is unnecessary; that Pentagon waste and fraud is persistent; and that these problems reflect the political power of the military contractors.

One classic example of unnecessary procurement is the C-130 transport plane, which is built by Lockheed Martin in Georgia, near former Speaker Newt Gingrich's district and in the home state of former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn. The Air Force has requested just a small fraction of the more than 250 C-130 transport planes for which Congress has appropriated funds since 1978. The planes cost about $75 million apiece. [79]

Systematic corporate contractor fraud and waste have long been, and remain, too widespread at the Pentagon. [80] Among recent revelations, the Department of Defense Inspector General reported on spare parts provided to the Pentagon by Allied Signal at a 57 percent markup over commercial prices. [81]

It is important to understand the political underpinnings for ongoing Pentagon welfare and the failure to crack down on waste, because it illustrates the importance of competition and economic decentralization in curbing corporate welfare, and because it presents a case where outrageous corporate welfare benefits helped consolidate the political influence of narrow business interests.

During the early years of the Clinton presidency, the Pentagon encouraged the defense sector to consolidate, and it backed up its encouragement by subsidizing mergers through payments to cover the costs of consolidation -- including extravagant "golden parachute" bonuses to executives of acquired companies. No industry knows how to respond to corporate welfare subsidies like the defense industry, in part because they conceive and lobby for them, as did Norman Augustine, the now retired CEO of Martin Marietta. The result of the Pentagon's encouragement is that military suppliers have undergone an ear-splitting consolidation that has left but three major prime contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. Today's Lockheed Martin is the product of the merger of Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Loral, parts of General Dynamics and about two dozen other companies. Boeing leaped to the top tier of the contractor pack with its acquisition of McDonnell Douglas. Raytheon gobbled up Hughes.

With manufacturing facilities spread across the United States, these three companies now have enormous political influence -- they can show that new military contracts will mean jobs in the districts of hundreds of Members of Congress, and in nearly every state. For districts where they do not have facilities, they can employ suppliers to help give them a political presence. This structural power, which is supplemented by major investments in campaign contributions and lobbyists, [82] helps enable the contractors to preserve the cycle of wasteful spending and abuse at the Pentagon. The tight consolidation of the industry also leaves the Pentagon much less able to deploy one of its most powerful sanctions against contractor wrongdoers -- procurement disbarment -- because of the paucity of alternative prime suppliers.

HIGHWAY PORK

The federal highway bills are another major source of pork. While important progress has been made in directing highway monies to road and bridge repair, as well as for modes of public transport, last year's highway bill, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) will allocate billions of dollars to new road construction, much of it unnecessary and harmful. [83] Instead of supporting modern mass transportation, Congress continues to surrender to the demands of road construction interests and the highway lobby. The harmful consequences include sprawl, air pollution and contributions to global warming.
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Re: CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, by Ralph Nader

Postby admin » Tue Oct 29, 2013 11:01 pm

OTHER FORMS OF CORPORATE WELFARE

LOANS AND LOAN GUARANTEES


As anyone who has been bombarded with credit card solicitations knows, there is no credit shortage in the United States. So why does the U.S. government enter into the business of making loans and issuing loan guarantees to large corporations? Corporations generally want loans from the government either because the loans are made at below-market rates, or because the loans include some sort of implicit subsidy (including de facto government insurance). This is a form of credit allocation that some legislators decry when applied to ordinary Americans.

Consider a loan recently approved by the World Bank, in which the United States is the largest country shareholder with an approximate 16 percent share. The $180 million loan package will help finance an oil pipeline that would transgress Chad and Cameroon, in Central Africa. The corporate beneficiaries of the loans include Exxon and Chevron. The companies' consortium says that it plans to use the World Bank financing as the foundation for additional private financing. In other words, private lenders will be more willing to support the project knowing that the power of the World Bank stands behind demands for repayment. But if some of the world's largest oil companies do not feel comfortable financing an oil development scheme on their own, or if they are unable to attract private financing without government or multilateral lending agency support, perhaps that is a sign that the project should not go forward. (Critics point out that the project poses threats to rainforests, endangered gorilla-inhabited conservation areas and drinking water; and is likely to exacerbate ethnic conflicts with consequences potentially similar to those in Nigeria's Niger Delta or worse -- political violence, some connected to prospective oil revenues, is already rife in Chad. [84])

Loans and loan guarantees are another corporate welfare category deserving a high degree of skepticism. For healthy companies, these kinds of government supports should be unnecessary. For cases where a political decision has been made that special circumstances merit some company or industry receiving loans or loan guarantees, Congress should adopt legislation that establishes a presumption of full repayment, at market rates. (For comment on bailout loans, see the remarks above.)

The government maintains a variety of agricultural subsidies, ranging from irrigation subsidies to crop insurance and price supports for certain commodities. Many of these benefits accrue to corporate agribusiness, and often support environmentally harmful farm practices (such as overuse of water). The original purpose of farm supports was to support family farmers and enhance stability in agricultural markets, and it is doubtful whether the programs still fill this function. At the same time, many farm supports were eliminated by the 1996 Farm Bill, with the general effect of promoting agribusiness consolidation and increased power for grain traders. Food prices have not declined. All of this suggests the need for a serious and open-minded reassessment of farm programs, so that the public interest in protecting family farms and sustainable agriculture is advanced, while subsidies for large agribusiness are curtailed.
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Re: CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, by Ralph Nader

Postby admin » Tue Oct 29, 2013 11:03 pm

CONCLUSION

Successfully ending corporate welfare as we know it will turn on a sustained campaign to educate, organize, and mobilize citizens. Merely documenting abuse is not sufficient to spark the national movement needed to trump corporate power. People need specific proposals to rally around, and a strategy which suggests our involvement.

With corporate welfare so pervasive at all levels of government, the campaign against it must be strategically savvy, multi-pronged and able to both create momentum and to take advantage of external events. After all, the looting of Uncle Sam is an ever-growing big business.

These are matters calling for creative thinking and approaches not only from legislators, but from law schools, political scientists, and economists. Unfortunately, a survey of law reviews and recent Ph.D. dissertations reveals a remarkable paucity of academic attention to the issue of corporate welfare; and until a June 1999 hearing of the House Budget Committee, there had never been a Congressional hearing devoted to a comprehensive assessment of the issue.

Here is an outline of proposals for discussion and reform. This list focuses on structural approaches, rather than itemizing programs that should be eliminated. The first set of proposals applies generally to corporate welfare, with the second being oriented around the categorization of corporate benefits outlined in this pamphlet in the spirit of trying to spark a flexible, multi-pronged campaign against corporate welfare. Some of the proposals overlap -- different approaches may appeal to different people, and different proposals may fit different political moments. In the same spirit, these initiatives are intended to he provocative and are certainly open to criticism and refinement. Their purpose is to jumpstart creative thinking, debate, and mobilization for cutting corporate welfare.

ACROSS-THE-BOARD APPROACHES

A Bill to Eliminate All Corporate Welfare. A simple bill written to abolish corporate welfare could provide a valuable tool for citizen education and organizing. Such legislation would not propose a permanent ban on corporate welfare, which in any case would always be vulnerable to subsequent legislative action, but would require proponents of particular programs to mobilize support for the affirmative re-commencement of their favored subsidies under both procedural safeguards and reciprocal obligations. Then the advocates of the 1872 Mining Act could make their case for why such an abomination should be reinstated after elimination.

The central operative language for such a bill might read:

As of January 1, 2001, every federal agency shall terminate all below-market-rate sales, leasing, or rental arrangements with for-profit corporate beneficiaries, including of real and intangible property, shall cease making any below-market-rate loans or issuing any below- market-rate loan guarantees to corporations; shall terminate all export assistance or marketing promotion for corporations; shall cease providing any below-market-rate insurance; shall terminate all fossil fuel or nuclear power research and development efforts, shall eliminate all liability caps, and shall terminate any direct grant, below-market- value technology transfer, or subsidy of any kind to for-profit corporations.

As of January 1, 2001, the Internal Revenue Code is amended to eliminate all corporate tax expenditures listed in the President's annual budget.

As of January 1, 2001, the Internal Revenue Code is amended so that the value of local, county, and state tax subsidies to corporations shall be treated as income.

Where contractual arrangements or promises made in law preclude any action required by Sections (1), (2), or (3) without payment by the federal government to existing beneficiaries of programs to be eliminated, federal agencies shall take such actions as soon as possible without incurring such payment obligations.


Because of the complexity of the corporate welfare problem, such legislation would obviously need to incorporate considerable language amending existing laws. And even this approach would leave some corporate welfare problems unaddressed -- such as the need to eliminate pork-laden or other programs in which the government should not be engaged, or for non-monetary commitments from corporations receiving government supports) -- but it would be a very useful start.

Citizen Standing to Sue to Challenge Corporate Welfare Abuses. Citizens could be empowered to mount judicial challenges to runaway agencies that reach beyond their statutory powers. Taxpayers could be given standing to file such suits, by awarding a $1,000 "bounty" (plus reasonable attorneys' fees and court costs' for those who successfully challenge improper agency action. Consideration should he given to creating an incentive for such suits by awarding successful plaintiffs a percentage of the money saved through such suits, perhaps according to a sliding scale of declining percentage returns for higher savings and with a cap set at certain amount. Just as qui tam suits under the False Claims Act have helped curtail oil company underpayment of royalties owed the federal government, so such a measure would create a structural counterbalance to corporate influence over federal agencies.

Funding for Town Meetings. Small local, state or federal appropriations could fund dozens of town meetings across the country on corporate welfare and help educate the public.

Sunsetting Corporate Welfare. This would involve legislatures requiring that every program in which the government confers below-market-value benefits on corporations, including tax expenditures, automatically phases out in four years after initial adoption, and every five years thereafter. Under such a rule, the programs could of course be renewed, but only with affirmative Congressional or state or local legislative action. Sunsetting would overcome the problem of inertia by which both bad ideas and good ideas turned bad become entrenched corporate welfare programs protected from serious legislative review and challenge. The entrenchment problem is a particular problem for non-budgetary items, which are spared even the reviews accorded to appropriations.

Annual Agency Reports on Corporate Welfare. Every federal agency could be required to list every program under its purview which confers below-cost or below-market-rate goods, services or other benefits on corporations. They could also publish a list of every corporate beneficiary of those subsidies above a certain de minimis threshold, and the dollar amount of the subsidy conferred. This measure would spur much more news reporting on corporate welfare, and would generate public awareness by assigning proper names to the beneficiaries. Relevant state and local agencies could be required to make similar reports.

These reports should be published on the Internet, as should all other corporate welfare- related disclosures.

SEC Requirement for Corporate Welfare Disclosure. The Securities Exchange Act could be amended to require publicly traded corporations to list the subsidies (both by type and amount) they receive from governmental bodies, and to publish this information on the Internet. Alternatively, the SEC could mandate such disclosure through rulemaking. This disclosure requirement is easily justifiable as in the public interest, since corporate beneficiaries are in many ways better positioned to report on the benefits they receive from government than the government conferrers. It would serve a valuable public purpose by assembling in a single location the dollar amounts of public subsidies accorded to the nation's largest corporations; and thereby enabling the citizenry to assess properly the extent and desirability of the subsidies. The disclosure requirement is also appropriate as a disclosure of material interest to shareholders. Government subsidies are of central importance to many of the nation's largest corporations, and to assess fully the value and future prospects of corporate earnings, shareholders have a right to information on government subsidies.

Limits on Executive Compensation in Government-Supported Corporations. Where the government is conferring substantial, voluntarily received benefits on corporations, it could reasonably limit the scope of beneficiaries to those who do not engage in particular sorts of socially undesirable behaviors. One such behavior is excessive executive compensation, which heightens income and wealth inequalities, and tears at the nation's social fabric. Government subsidies, including tax expenditures, could be denied to corporations whose executives receive more than a predetermined level of compensation, say those whose ratio of executive-to-lowest-paid-employee compensation is more than a certain amount, perhaps 30-to-1.

Prohibition of Government Subsidies to Criminal Corporations. The federal, state, and local governments take away fundamental rights, including the right to vote, from convicted felons who are persons. Corporations convicted of crimes rarely experience deprivations of anything near that scale. A small and appropriate step might be to deny any form of corporate welfare, including tax expenditures, to any corporation convicted of a certain number of felonies and/or misdemeanors. If the government is to confer subsidies on corporations, surely they should not go to enterprises convicted of criminal wrongdoing.

Reciprocal Obligations. The government should seek non-monetary reciprocal obligations from corporate welfare beneficiaries. These must necessarily vary by category of corporate welfare program and beneficiary. But two types of obligations are of special importance.

First is the requirement that certain subsidies be conditioned on beneficiaries enabling consumers to band together in non-partisan, non-profit, democratically governed organizations. This can be accomplished by allowing government-chartered consumer organizations that are accountable to their membership to include an insert, at no cost to the company, in the corporate welfare beneficiary's billing envelope, or publishing information on the company's web site. The insert would invite consumers to join the organization, which would work to contain prices, improve product quality and service, advocate for reforms, etc. This mechanism would be particularly appropriate for banks, thrifts and other lending institutions, insurance companies, HMOs, cable TV systems, and utilities.

Second, allocation of rights to government lands or other natural resources could be conditioned on beneficiaries agreeing to abide by environmental regulations, or even to uphold environmental standards that exceed those required by existing regulation.

LOCAL, COUNTY, AND STATE CORPORATE WELFARE

Where state and local authorities feel compelled to provide corporate welfare packages, they should consider inclusion of "clawback" provisions -- mandating return of tax benefits if specific corporate promises are not kept -- in agreements with corporate welfare beneficiaries.

Regional and National Compacts. Congressional legislation should authorize anti-corporate welfare compacts between states, enabling them to enter into binding arrangements to refuse to enter a race to the bottom against each other in terms of using special tax breaks and related benefits or stadiums to influence business, including sports- team, location decisions.

Surtax on Local and State Corporate Welfare. Congress should consider requiring the IRS to treat local and state corporate welfare expenditures as income upon which federal taxes should be paid.

GIVEAWAYS, INCLUDING R&D GIVEAWAYS

Prohibition on Government Giveaways. Government properties, whether real or intangible, should presumptively be sold, leased or rented to corporations for market rates. Although there may be exceptions (such as where consumer pricing considerations are considered of more importance than taxpayer reimbursement), there is generally no reason for taxpayer assets to be given away to corporations at less than market value.

Promote Competition in Allocating Government Resources. The market value of a government asset will vary based on the terms of the property transfer. Depending on the circumstance, taxpayer revenues may be lower if resources are allocated on a non- exclusive basis. But there is an overriding broad public and consumer interest in promoting economic competition, and there should be a presumption that, where possible, when taxpayer assets are to be transferred to corporations they be conveyed on a non-exclusive basis.

Competitive Bidding. Especially where the government plans to transfer taxpayer assets to corporations on an exclusive basis, asset transfer prices should be established by auction.

Reasonable Pricing Provisions. Where there will be a consumer end-user from the transfer of government assets (as in the case of products brought to market utilizing government-controlled intellectual property rights), the terms of the transfer should require the corporate beneficiary to agree to reasonable pricing provisions -- a requirement abandoned by the National Institutes of Health in 1993. This is of primary importance for exclusive transfers, where transferees may gain monopoly power. Because federal agencies, especially NIH, have historically done a poor job in enforcing reasonable pricing provisions, serious consideration needs to be given to how such provisions should be administered and enforced. Required disclosure of private investment in product development, and correlating prices with amount and proportion of private investment, may offer one fruitful approach. It may also be possible to include reasonable pricing guarantees in the bidding process, with preference given to bidders making enforceable promises of lower prices.

End Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Power R&D. There is no justification for federal support for these environmentally hazardous, nonrenewable energy sources. As study after study has demonstrated, energy efficiency and renewable energies represent future priorities.

INSURANCE, LOANS, AND BAILOUTS

No Discount Insurance. Consideration should be given to a legislative presumption against below-market insurance for corporations, requiring a special waiver for exceptions.

No Liability Caps. There should be a legislated blanket prohibition on liability caps, which unjustifiably protect corporations from paying for any harms they perpetrate. Liability caps, such as those in Price Anderson, should not accompany governmental insurance schemes.

No Discount Loans. Consideration should be given to a legislative presumption against below-market loans or loan guarantees for corporations, requiring a special waiver for exceptions, or perhaps a special waiver for corporations over a certain size.

Payback For Bailouts. Bailout beneficiaries should generally be required to pay back loans and outright bailouts in full, with interest, with priority given to repayments to the government over other claimants.

Preventing Foreseeable Financial Bailouts. H.R. 10 has lifted the regulatory walls between banks on the one hand and insurance and securities firms on the other, paving the way for the creation of too-big-to-fail financial holding companies, with federal deposit insurance likely to be de facto extended, at no charge, to other financial affiliates. H.R. 10 should be amended to include a provision establishing, in advance of imprudent risk-taking leading to future bailout demands, that no federal assistance will be made available to financial holding companies or to their non-bank affiliates. This provision will induce more prudent risk-taking.

CORPORATE TAX EXPENDITURES

Eliminate All Corporate Tax Expenditures. Because corporate tax expenditures are already compiled in the President's budget submission and by the Joint Committee on Taxation, this step would be less logistically complicated than ending all corporate welfare. Wiping the slate clean of corporate tax expenditures -- perhaps the most deeply entrenched type of corporate welfare -- would require the tax expenditure beneficiaries and their Congressional allies to justify anew these tax supports.

Require Reporting of Corporate Tax Expenditure Beneficiaries. The Internal Revenue Service should be required to publish a list of all corporate tax expenditure recipients over a certain de minimis level.

INDUSTRY PROMOTIONS AND EXPORT ASSISTANCE

End Government Market Promotion. Congress should prohibit government-run advertising and marketing schemes for private corporations.

End Export Assistance. Congress should eliminate export assistance programs, or making them available only on a strict means-tested basis.

Transcending liberal-conservative divisions, there is a nascent national movement of consumer, taxpayer, environmentalist, labor, and small business groups that is waiting to be consolidated to stop corporate welfare. If these forces are united, they will form a powerful political force that can help rescue our political democracy from the narrow interests that now dominate it. Corporate welfare cuts to the core of political self-governance, because it is perpetuated in large measure through campaign contributions and the subversion of democracy; and because the continuation of corporate welfare itself misallocates public and private resources, generates unfair competition to companies not on welfare, and exacerbates the disparities and concentration of wealth, influence and power that run counter to a functioning political system in which the people should rule.
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Re: CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, by Ralph Nader

Postby admin » Wed Oct 30, 2013 1:46 am

NOTES

1. William Greider, Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy, New York: Touchstone, 1992, p. 61.

2. Greider, p. 60

3. Paul Houston, "Influence of PAC Money on S&L Bailout Debated," Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1989, p. l

4. Edward Chadd, "Manifest Subsidy: How Congress Pays Industry -- With Federal Tax Dollars -- to Deplete and Destroy the Nation's Resources," Common Cause Magazine, Summer 1995, citing data from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

5. See the Center for Responsive Politics, "Who Paid for this Election?" http://www.opensecrets.org/pubs/bigpict ... us05b.html

6. John Zebrowski and Jeona Ziman, "Tough Sell," Mother Jones, November/December 1998.

7. Lizette Alvarez, "Senate Repeals Tax Break for the Tobacco Industry," The New York Times, September 11, 1997, p. A26.

8. David Postman, "Stadium Opponents unfazed by State Court -- Special Election Upheld; Appeal Planned," Seattle Times, December 25, 1998, p. B5.

9. David Schaefer, "Allen Showed Them the Money -- the Big Winners in the State's Most Expensive Campaign," Seattle Times, August 12, 1997, p. A1.)

10. Scott Stephens, "Schools in bad Shape, Study Says," The Plain Dealer, December 3, 1999, p. 1B.

11. Dean Starkman, "Condemnation is Used to Hand One Business Property to Another," The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1998.

12. Scott Wilson, "Marriott Takes Deal to Stay in Maryland," The Washington Post, March 12, 1999.

13. Studies have concluded that many corporate location decisions are made on the basis of objective factors such as the labor pool, transportation, raw materials markets, schools, etc., and that the threat to move that elicits public subsidies is an added but not decisive windfall game that companies have perfected.

14. Jay Hancock, "Marriott Used Va. as Ruse to Raise Md. Bid; Public Records Suggest Bethesda Firm's Threat to Leave Was Bluff," Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1999.

15. See Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1998.

16. Gambling on Trent Lott: The Casino Industry's Campaign Contributions Pay Off in Congress, Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen, June 1999.

17. Paul More, Jessica Goodheart, Melanie Myers, David Runstein and Rachel Stoller, Who Benefits From Economic Redevelopment in Los Angeles: An Evaluation of Commercial Redevelopment in the 1990s, Los Angeles: The UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, March 1999.

18. Peter Enrich, "Saving the States from Themselves; Commerce Clause Restraints on State Tax Incentives for Business," 110 Harvard Law Review 377 (1996).

19. Robert Pepper, Chief, FCC Office of Plans and Policy, letter to Senator Joseph Lieberman, September 6, 1995. The licenses are technically granted for eight years, but renewal is virtually automatic.

20. Bob Dole, "Giving Away the Airwaves," The New York Times, March 27, 1997.

21. Pepper, September 6, 1995.

22. For a description of how this could be achieved, see Ralph Nader and Claire Riley, "Oh, Say Can You See; A Broadcast Network for the Audience," 5 Journal of Law and Politics 1, (1988).

23. See People for Better TV, http://www.bettertv.org.

24. "Airwave Avarice" (editorial), Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1998.

25. For a history of passage of the 1872 Mining Act, see Carl Mayer and George Riley, Public Domain, Private Dominion: A History of Public Mineral Policy in America, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985.

26. Mayer and Riley, p. 79.

27. Michael Satchell, "The New Gold Rush," U.S. News and World Report, October 29, 1991.

28. Testimony of Stephen D'Esposito before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, April 28, 1998.

29. Green Scissors '99: Cutting Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending, Washington, D.C.: Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 1999.

30. Thomas Power, Not All That Glitters: An Evaluation of the Impact of Reform of the 1872 Mining Law on the Economy of the American West, Washington, D.C.: Mineral Policy Center and the National Wildlife Federation, 1993.

31. D'Esposito, April 28, 1998.

32. "Investigation of Government Patent Practices and Policies: A Report of the Attorney General to the President," 1947, quoted in Background Materials on Government Patent Policy: The Ownership of Inventions Resulting in Federally Funded Research and Development. Volume II: Reports of Committees. Commissions and Major Studies, House Committee on Science and Technology, August 1976, p. 22.

33. For a fuller account of the taxol story, see Ralph Nader and James Love, Testimony Before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, February 24, 1993 (available at http://www.cptech.org/pharm/pryor.html ).

34. See Nader and Love, February 24, 1993, especially Table 3 and Appendix A, for a close analysis of the federal involvement in discovery, pre-clinical research and clinical research of pharmaceuticals labeled as priority drugs by the Food and Drug Administration.

35. Heather Skale, "Gore's Efficient-Car Project Fuels Detractors; Environmentalists Fear It Will Run Dirtier," The Washington Times, June 26, 1999.

36. Complaint in United States v. Automobile Manufacturers Association, et. a1. (1969), reprinted in Congressional Record, September 3,1969 (91st Congress, 1st Session).

37. Tom Incantalupo, "Lean, Clean Driving Machine: Carmakers Switching Gears to Develop Green Cars," Newsday, March 8, 1998.

38. For a model legislation to create such an organization, see Robert Leflar and Martin Rogol, "Consumer Participation in the Regulation of Public Utilities: A Model Act," 13 Harvard Journal of Legislation 235 (1976).

39. See Ralph Nader and Jonathan Brown, Report to U.S. Taxpayers on the Savings and Loan Crisis, Washington, D.C.: BankWatch, February 1979.

40. Glendale Federal Bank v. The United States, 43 Fed. Cla. 390 (1999).

41. Stephen Labaton, "West Coast S&L Wins $909 Million from Government," The New York Times, April 9, 1999.

42. Labaton, April, 9, 1999.

43. See Laurence Kallen, Corporate Welfare: The Mega Bankruptcies of the 80s and 90s, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1991.

44. Estaban Ortiz, et. al. v. Fibreboard Corporation, et. al., 1999 U.S. Lexis 4373 (1999).

45. "Analytical Perspectives," Budget of the U.S. Government FY 2000, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1999.

46. Ibid., Table 5-2.

47. On the general matter of the anti-recycling bias of taxpayer subsidies, see Welfare for Waste: How Federal Taxpayer Subsidies Waste Resources and Discourage Recycling, Washington, D.C.: GrassRoots Recycling Network, Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and Materials Efficiency Project, April 1999.

48. "Analytical Perspectives," Table 5-2.

49. For a compelling argument that tax expenditures frequently do not achieve their intended purpose in an efficient fashion, see Robert McIntyre, Tax Expenditures -- The Hidden Entitlements, Washington, D.C.: Citizens for Tax Justice, May 1996.

50. "Analytical Perspectives," Budget of the U.S. Government FY 2000, Table 5-2.

51 Foreign- and U.S.-Controlled Corporations That Did Not Pay U.S. Income Taxes, 1989-1995, Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, March 1999

52. Robert McIntyre, GAO Report: Big Foreign-Controlled Firms Operating in U.S. Pay Lower Taxes Than American Companies, Washington, D.C.: Citizens for Tax Justice, April 1999.

53. To take one example of the earlier awareness, John LaFalce, D-New York, then chairman of the House Small Business Committee, and an array of expert witnesses at a February 1993 hearing described a peso meltdown to be a high probability almost two years before the crisis transpired.

54. Jill Dutt and John Berry, "In Rescue, Banks See Least Pain; Action Called 'Calming Force,'" The Washington Post, December 25, 1997.

55. "Asian Crisis: Impacts Worse Than Expected," United Nations Information Service, April 8, 1999.

Similarly, the economic effects have been devastating in Africa, where the Fund has undertaken its traditional structural adjustment programs. Sub-Saharan African countries' debt burdens have risen under structural adjustment: African country debt rose 3.5 percent from 1997 to 1998, despite those countries paying $3.5 billion more in debt payments than they borrowed in 1998. The IMF took out nearly $1 billion more from Africa than it put in last year. The IMF's recessionary policies have led to stagnant economies; an internal IMF review found poor countries undergoing structural adjustment to have averaged zero percent growth from 1986 to 1996. Those outside of the program averaged 1 percent.

56. See Jay Solomon and Kate Linebauch, "Indonesian Bank Merger May be the First of Many: IMF-Directed Move to Lift Capital Requirements Makes Deals Inevitable," The Wall Street Journal, January 20, 1998; Jeff Gerth and Richard Stevenson, "Poor Oversight Said to Imperil World Banking," The New York Times, December 22, 1997.

57. George Schultz, William Simon and Walter Wriston, "Who Needs the IMF?" The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 1998.

58. To see the full report, go to < http://phantom-x.gsia.cmu.edu/IFIAC/USMRPTDV.html

59. In addition to the Price-Anderson Act discussed here, the industry benefits from government assistance in helping address its enormous waste problem, and utilities that own nuclear power plants are now seeking to unload the "stranded costs" of such facilities on unsuspecting ratepayers as part of electricity deregulation. See Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project, "Utility Deregulation: Why Should You Care?" available at http://www.citizen.org/cmep/restructuring/utility.htm .

60. The Price-Anderson Act -- Crossing the Bridge to the Next Century: A Report to Congress, Division of Reactor Program Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, October 1998, (NUREG/CR-661).

As originally passed, Price-Anderson maintained a limit on operator liability, but did not maintain the industry risk sharing scheme. Until 1975, the Act limited liability for any single nuclear incident to $560 million. The unit operator was responsible for $60 million, and the federal government was responsible for the next $500 million. Following amendments and revisions in the program, the federal indemnity role has effectively ended.

61. Ibid., p.127.

62. Ibid., pp. 127-128.

63. Ibid., p. 128.

64. Ibid., p. 128.

65. Ibid., p. 36.

66. Jeffrey Dubin and Geoffrey Rothwell, "Subsidy to Nuclear Power Through Price-Anderson Liability Limit," Contemporary Policy Issues, Vol. VIII, No. 3, July 1990, p. 76. The subsidy calculation was based on the NRC's 1985 assumption that a worst case scenario accident had a .0000008 percent chance of occurring, and that such a worst case accident would cause property damage of no more than $10 billion.

67. Milton Benjamin, "NRC Issues Report, Withhold Worst-Case Estimates," The Washington Post, November 2, 1982.

68. The Price-Anderson Act -- Crossing the Bridge to the Next Century: A Report to Congress, Division of Reactor Program Management, p.128.

69. Congressional Budget Office, Assessing the Public Costs and Benefits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, May 1996, Summary Table 1.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., p. 35.

73. The GSE Report, Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, June 11, 1999.

74. William Hartung, U.S. Weapons at War: United States Arms Deliveries to Regions of Conflict, New York: World Policy Institute, May 1995. Hartung identified the Pentagon's Military Financing Program, the Defense Department's Excess Defense Articles program, the State Department's Economic Support Funds, the Export-Import Bank's "dual use" loan program and waivers of recoupment fees (designed to recoup payments to defense companies for R&D for domestic purposes) as among the arms export subsidy programs.

75. The jobs argument is further undermined by the fact that the U.S. arms exporters are increasingly pledging to foreign buyers that they will build their weapons in the purchasers' markets. These so-called "offsets" now amount to more than three-quarters of the value of U.S. arms sales, according to the Commerce Department, meaning that the economic benefits of the deals are being realized overseas, not in the United States. Hartung, U.S. Weapons at War.

76. Oscar Arias, "Stopping America's Most Lethal Export," The New York Times, June 23, 1999.

77. Senator Mark Hatfield, Statement to the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, May 23, 1995.

78. See Green Scissors '99: Cutting Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending, Washington, D.C.: Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 1999.

79. See William Hartung, Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Manufacturers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies, Washington, D.C.: Interhemispheric Resource Center and Institute for Policy Studies, November 1998, available at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/pa ... index.html .

80. For a comprehensive review of fraud and waste, see A. Ernest Fitzgerald, The Pentagonists: An Insider's View of Waste, Mismanagement and Fraud in Defense Spending, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989; and Andy Pasztor, When the Pentagon Was for Sale: Inside America's Biggest Defense Scandal, New York: Scribner, 1995.

81. Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense, Commercial Spare Parts Purchased on a Corporate Contract, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, January 1999. For other recent reports on fraud and abuse at the Pentagon, see "Pentagon's Fraud Defenses Weak, Two GAO Reports Say," The Washington Post, September 29, 1998.

82. Defense contractors spent $8.5 million in the 1997-1998 electoral cycle on campaign contributions and nearly $50 million in 1997 on lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. See http://www.opensecrets.org .

83. In their April 1999 report, Road to Ruin, Taxpayers for Common Sense and Friends of the Earth provide a list a roads projects they have found to be the most wasteful.

84. Korinna Horta, "The Exxon-Shell-ELF-World Bank Plans for Central Africa," Multinational Monitor, May 1997.
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Re: CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, by Ralph Nader

Postby admin » Wed Oct 30, 2013 1:52 am

RESOURCE GUIDE

Friends of the Earth
1025 Vermont Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 783-7400
http://www.foe.org/greenscissors/

Taxpayers for Common Sense
651 Pennsylvania Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 546-8500 or Toll Free 1 (800) TAXPAYER
http://www.taxpayer.net

U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG)
218 D Street, S.E.
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 546-9707
http://pirg.org/index.html

Project on Government Oversight
666 11th Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 347-1122
http://www.pogo.org

Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 387-8030
http://www.cptech.org

Essential Action
P.O. Box 19405
Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 387-8030
http://www.essentialaction.org

Corporate Welfare Information Center
http://www.corporations.org/welfare/

The Benjamin Banneker Center
647 Plymouth Road
Baltimore, Maryland 21229
(410) 744-6293
http://www.progress.org/banneker/cw.html

Citizens for Tax Justice
1311 L Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 626-3780
http://www.ctj.org

Citizens for Leaders with Ethics and Accountability Now! (CLEAN)
1524 Tacoma Avenue South
Tacoma, Washington 98402-1806
(253) 572-1212
http://www.clean.org/welfare/welfare.html

People for Better TV
818 18th Street, NW, Suite 505
Washington, DC 20006
(888) 374-PBTV; (888) 374-7288
http://www.bettertv.org

Media Access Project
1707 L Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036
(202) 232-4300
http://www.mediaaccess.org

ICANN Watch
http://www.icannwatch.org/

Financial Markets Center
PO Box 334
Philomont, VA 20131 USA
(540) 338-7754
http://www.fmcenter.org/

50 Years Is Enough
1247 E Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
(202) IMF-BANK
http://www.50years.org/

Center for Economic and Policy Research
1015 18th St., NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 293-5380
http://www.cepr.net

ACORN (National)
739 8th Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
(202)547-2500
http://www.acorn.org

Center for Community Change
1000 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 342-0567
http://www.communitychange.org/

Corporate Welfare and Foreign Policy
Janice Shields, Foreign Policy in Focus,
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/cw/

Arms Trade Resource Center
World Policy Institute
New School University
65 Fifth Avenue, Suite 413
New York, NY 10003
(212) 229-5808
www.worldpolicy.org

Sierra Club
85 5econd Street, Second Floor
San Francisco CA, 94105-3441
(415) 977-5500
http://www.sierraclub.org/

Union of Concerned Scientists
2 Brattle Square
Cambridge, MA 02238
(617) 547-5552
http://www.ucsusa.org/

Natural Resources Defense Council
40 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
(212) 727-2700
http://www.nrdc.org

Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program
Public Citizen
215 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20003
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/index.html

Nuclear Control Institute
1000 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 804
Washington, DC, 20036, U.S.A.
(202) 822-8444
http://www.nci.org

Nuclear Information and Resource Service
1424 16th Street NW, #404
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 328-0002
http://www.nirs.org/

Physicians for Social Responsibility
1101 14th Street Northwest, Suite 700,
Washington, D. C. 20005
(202) 898-0150
www.psr.org

Public Citizen
1600 20th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/

Mineral Policy Center
1000 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 804
Washington, DC, 20036, U.S.A.
(202) 822-8444
http://www.mineralpolicy.org

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
2001 S Street, NW, Suite 570
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 265-7337
www.peer.org

Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics
P.O. Box 11615
Eugene, OR 97440
(541) 484-2692
http://www.afseee.org/

American Lands Alliance
726 7th Street, SE,
Washington, D.C. 20003
(202) 547-9400
http://www.americanlands.org

Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund
180 Montgomery Street, Suite 1400
San Francisco, CA 94104-4209
(415) 627-6700
http://www.earthjustice.org

National Wildlife Federation
8925 Leesburg Pike
Vienna, VA 22184-0002
(800) 822-9919
http://www.nwf.org

American Rivers
1025 Vermont Ave., N.W. Suite 720
Washington, D.C. 20005
(202) 347-7550
http://www.americanrivers.org

National Audubon Society
700 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
(212) 979-3000
http://www.audubon.org

Citizens Against Government Waste
1301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-5300
http://www.govt-waste.org/
(conservative organization)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

RALPH NADER has co-founded numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, Essential Information, Commercial Alert, the Center for Auto Safety, and the Center for Women's' Policy Studies. Green Party Presidential candidate for the year 2000, Ralph Nader continues to be a relentless force for grassroots activism and democratic change in the United States.

WINONA LADUKE is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation and is the mother of three children. As Program Director of the Honor the Earth Fund, she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support and create funding for frontline Native Environmental groups. She also works as Founding Director for White Earth Land Recovery Project; a reservation-based non-profit focused on land, cultural, and environmental issues. She is the 2000 Green Party candidate for vice-president, an author of two books and numerous articles and a graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities.
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