Specific Ways Nader wishes to reform corporate welfare

[Birdseye]

I thought I'd post some specific candidate positions, since lately we've been sucked in by largely political issues like Kerry's war record. Here is an excerpt from Nader's site, which I strongly agree with. If you agree, please say so, if not, specifically why and maybe also mention something you agree with.

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It is now past time to End Corporate Welfare as We Know It.

1. Develop a framework to analyze corporate welfare that allows us to ask whether it advances a genuine public interest, whether government has a proper role in subsidizing the corporate interest, whether there are democratic procedures in place for public participation, whether the government should charge market rates for services or assets it is providing corporations, whether the government is requiring appropriate reciprocal commitments from corporate welfare beneficiaries, whether the program or subsidy exceeds the authority of an implementing agency, and whether there are clear criteria for delineating subsidies' successes and failures. Under such a framework in 1996 when the government gave the broadcasting industry the rights to broadcast digital television on the public airwaves â?? a conveyance worth $70 billion â?? in exchange for nothing there would have been a framework to analyze the giveaway and reach a conclusion more beneficial to the public interest. And how would a new framework for analyzing corporate welfare effect expenditures of hundreds of millions on sports stadiums be evaluated. Cities have capitulated to the threat of a sports franchise moving to another city. This includes Baltimore, Cleveland, Denver, San Diego, Nashville, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Miami, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle and Detroit.

2. Eliminate the corporate tax loopholes which drain more than $76 billion from the federal treasury in fiscal year 1999, according to conservative estimates by the OMB. The Internal Revenue Code is riddled with calculated loopholes, exemptions, credits, accelerated depreciation schedules deductions and targeted exceptions that are carefully crafted to benefit one or a handful of companies. Some examples: Many corporate tax breaks actually encourage undesirable activity, including environmentally destructive activity. The oil and gas industry wins major subsidies through the tax code even though the need to encourage a transition to renewable fuels is clear. Why does the Internal Revenue Code continue to encourage more aggressive oil drilling? Tax escapes and credits to the oil and gas industry take more than $500 million from taxpayers annually. Another example, special benefits for Amway Corporations and four other companies in the 1997 tax bill where Section 1123 and will cost taxpayers $19 million over 10 years. The amendment was added shortly after Amway's founder and his wife each gave half million dollar soft money contributions to the RNC.

3. All corporate welfare programs should be periodically sunsetted. Giveaways like the 1872 Mining Act should not be permanently enshrined in the law. The 1872 Mining Act allows mining companies to claim federal lands for $5 an acre or less and take billions of dollars of gold, silver, copper or other hard rock minerals with no royalty payments to the public treasury. How does the Mining Act persist â?? from 1987 to 1994, the mining companies gave $17 million in campaign contributions to key congressional representatives, a small price to pay to extract $26 billion worth of minerals, royalty free, during the same time period.

4. The military industrial complex is a web of corporate welfare. No government agency is cozier with industry than the Department of Defense, and corporate welfare is pervasive at the agency famous for cost overruns, waste, fraud and abuse. For example, the Pentagon's merger subsidy program which pays defense contractors to merge, lessening competition for government bids and increasing the lobbying power of newly combined defense megafirms. Merger subsidies, which began in the 1990s, include extravagant "golden parachute" bonuses to executives of acquired companies. For example when Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta, taxpayers paid for $30 million in bonuses.

5. Where corporate welfare is granted reciprocal obligations should be exacted, e.g. agreements to abide by environmental standards, pay workers a living wage, charge consumers a fair price for products invented with government help (like pharmaceuticals) enable consumers to band together through invitations in billing envelops or to otherwise advance broad public purposes. Take the case of Taxol, a leading anti-cancer drug developed by federal government researchers. The National Cancer Institute discovered, manufactured and tested Taxol in humans. NCI licensed Taxol to Bristol-Myers Squibb which now charges 20 times its manufacturing cost. A single injection can cost more than $2,000 and the treatment requires multiple injections. BMS's only contribution was to provide 17 kilograms of Taxol to NCI and to process paperwork. It pays no royalty on its billion dollar annual sales.

6. Annual agency reports on corporate welfare should be required listing every program under its purview which confers below-the-cost or below-market-rate goods, services or other benefits on corporations. This should include the dollar value of the subsidy conferred and the corporate beneficiary.

7. The SEC should require corporate welfare disclosure for publicly traded corporations to list the subsidies (both type and amount) they receive from governmental bodies, and to publish this information on the Internet.

8. Limits on executive compensation in government supported corporations. When a corporations receives substantial benefits from the government it could reasonably require corporations to limit the scope of beneficiaries to those who do not engage in excessive executive compensation, which heightens income and wealth inequalities, and tears at the nation's social fabric. The government could set a limit on the ration between the highest paid executive to the lowest paid employee, perhaps 30 to 1.

9. Prohibition of government subsidies to criminal corporations convicted of corporate crime, fraud and abuse. An 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.

10. Funding should be provided to fund dozens of town meetings across the country on corporate welfare and help educate the public.
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[Top Wop]

I gave it a skim, but I agree with most of what he has to say. Good plan.

[Ferno]

sounds like a plan to me.

[Lothar]

I think #1 and #10 are the most important. Develop a way to tell if it's in the public interest, and educate people about it.

I agree with most of the statements as I read them (except for #2 and #8, where I have some disagreement) but I'm not sure if I'd still agree if I took a few days to think / research. This is why #10 is so important -- all of the middle statements require me to have more knowledge than I do, and I doubt I'm less educated on this topic than the general public.

It looks like it's mostly a good plan. I'd have no problem with eliminating at least a reasonable portion of current "corporate welfare". But then, I don't know how this would really play out -- who would it affect? For example, would #8 require a public university to limit its president to make only 30 times as much as its minimum-wage janitors? Would it apply to any corporation with any government support at all, or only those primarily supported by the government?

[Will Robinson]

I find him to be less and less loopy as I start thinking more for myself and towing a party line less and less.

I think Lothar nailed the only concerns I'd have but probably unlike Lothar, I'd jump right in and then fix the details later if it was up to me. It's that important in my view.

Not to mention Nader probably won't get support from Lothar unless he adopts Lothars stance on the abortion issue. /shameless dig at what I consider a shortsighted view on Lothars part

[Birdseye]

He is far from loopy. His website is FILLED with good stuff like this, but nobody here seems to care about actual solutions to issues.

All I get from Bush and Kerry are sweeping generalizations with no specifics.

[Lothar]

Will, I was actually going to post "if you put this in the hands of someone who was pro-life and was going to see the WoT through, he'd have my vote."

If it is that important to you, feel free to base your vote primarily on corporate welfare. It just means you're shortsighted about abortion

We can make the same dig about each other -- "you're shortsighted because you're voting based on issue X" "no, you're shortsighted because you're voting based on issue Y" -- but what it really signifies is a difference in priorities, not shortsightedness. Corporate welfare is more important/urgent to you than abortion is, while abortion is more important/urgent to me than corporate welfare is (corporate welfare is way down on my list), so you'd expect our votes to be different. There's nothing wrong with that -- vote for what you think is important. Vote based on what you think is a priority in voting.

With respect to the issues I raised with respect to corporate welfare reform, I do think a lot of those need answered before voting, not after -- I think the danger this might pose to public universities is a show-stopper. It's that important in my view.

[Will Robinson]

Just a side note, not meant to sidetrack this because I find Nader and all he brings to the spectrum a very interesting topic.

Lothar, I realize the hypocrisy of my dig looking at it from your perspective but I don't percieve Bush as being anymore effective than Kerry as far as changing the law regarding abortion.
Bush himself has said he doesn't think america is ready for a ban on abortion and he coupled that statement with expressing his desire to see people reject abortion regardless of it being available. To me that says he isn't going to go there.

So I think you wouldn't lose much ground (supreme court nominations or legislative bills passed) if Nader won so from my perspective you might help reform many areas of government at the relatively low risk of...well...not changing the law as it already reads on abortion.

I guess what I'm saying is, if abortion was illegal but barely hanging on by the thread of Bush's coat tails then your priority for voting on that one issue would seem more pragmatic than dogmatic.

Please move this to start a new topic if you think it will distract from the original thread.

Now back to Naders platform...

PS: Naders take on the WoT also bothers me a great deal, I seem to forget that when ever I get all caught up in his good points.

[Lothar]

it only takes one supreme court justice to tip the balance, Will. Because the Supreme Court has become more powerful than was intended, this IMO is absolutely crucial (one supreme court justice is worth about 4 presidents.) I have no idea what sort of supreme-court justice Nader would nominate, but I know what sort Bush would nominate, and I know if Bush nominated another SC justice, Roe v Wade or at least Doe v Bolton would start to have provisions overturned. I also know if Kerry nominated another SC justice, a whole host of issues would go swinging off the Left end of the spectrum.

Saying I "wouldn't lose much ground" really underestimates the power of a Supreme Court nomination.

Anyway, moving back to Nader's platform:

I think the question of exactly who would end up losing "corporate welfare" (for example, if it would hurt funding of public universities) is a potentially show-stopping issue. As long as it's mostly anonymous, it sounds like a good idea -- but I have a feeling if Nader gave a list of all the corporations and entities that would potentially lose out big-time, most people would share my same concern. Granted, provision #1 says that corporate welfare would remain when it's "in the public interest", but some of the later provisions (such as #8) might make it impossible for the public interest to be fully served -- imagine if public universities couldn't compete for the top people because they couldn't pay them market rate without also overpaying their janitors.

It's not tremendously important to me that the government end corporate welfare right away. I mean -- corporate welfare essentially means that some of the larger corporations are paying a significantly lower tax rate than other corporations, but then, I think the richest corporations are overtaxed anyway. That is, I don't think the federal government should just plain end corporate welfare and collect the $76 billion referenced in #2 -- I think they should cut most corporate welfare, but I think the $76 billion should end up as part of a tax cut anyway. So I don't see the overall problem as "the government is giving away too much money" (I don't think the government should have that money in the first place) -- I see the problem as "the government should be somewhat more equitable, making a tax cut that benefits a large group instead of a specific loophole that benefits only one company."

That removes a lot of the urgency for me.

[kufyit]

Ugh, ew. Bush is a sick man, and he has surrounded himself with sick people. Lothar, please don't vote for Bush because of abortion. He is a shameful, pitiful man. Do you think judicial review will stop a woman from going to Japan or the alley to have an abortion if she really wants one? There is so much more riding on this election.

Don't vote for Nader either. Although I agree the most with him, I cannot give him my vote this year as I did last election. I love the man, but Bush MUST go, if for no other reason (but there are so many more!) than to satisfy the rest of the global community.

[Lothar]

*shrug* I have no interest in satisfying the rest of the global community. Nor do I have any interest in satisfying those who rant that Bush and his cabinet are "sick", "evil", "demented", etc.

In any case: do you have anything to share about Nader's corporate welfare reform?

[Birdseye]

"I have no interest in satisfying the rest of the global community"

And that, sir, is why your country is a victim of repeated terrorism.

Lothar, nobody here really seems that interested in talking about real solutions to *issues* so we might as well give up I'll probably be posting more in this genre soon, it doesn't look like anyone else is going to reply with something fresh. It was already hijacked by abortion anyway ;p

[MehYam]

All I get from Bush and Kerry are sweeping generalizations with no specifics.

The sad fact is that that's all they can afford. Too many promises are too many chances for egg in the face later (for example, repealing the car tax in California, and it's effect on the budget).

Blame the electorate. They're doing what they have to do to get elected. Nader's in a different position.

[Birdseye]

Kai, the difference is that Nader's moves aren't necessarily widely popular but they do save the taxpayers money. Schwartz's moves were widely popular and cost us money. Big difference.