In the United States, children go hungry. The American
people are suffering. Yet this is not a poor country. The top 0.1 percent of
Americans are sitting on as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. Long
have the powerful few profited from the poor majority. Exploitation is a highly
profitable business. Corporate profits are at an 85-year high, while workers'
pay is at a 65-year low.
US legislators and corporate executives are tied together. A
handful of individuals and their corporations openly spend millions in
political campaign contributions (and millions more anonymously in dark money),
as well as $2.6 billion every year to lobby Congress (more than the Senate and
House budget combined). Corporate executives profit from this investment in
corporate welfare (subsidies, grants, incentives, tax breaks and tax
loopholes), the preservation of the destructive status quo, and beneficial (or
the lack of detrimental) legislation that their lobbyists actually help to
write. Corporations have an inordinate amount of control over what legislation
gets passed, and since, as one survey shows, big business is only concerned
with protecting "the company against changes in government policy,"
and improving their "ability to compete by seeking favorable changes in
government policy," the laws that CEOs want are often terrible for the
rest of the country. Corporations are concerned with their bottom line, not
people, and so are the bills for which they lobby for.
The Harvard University Center for Ethics reports,
"Institutional corruption is, sadly, alive and well in Congress." This
is starkly evident in the new 2016 spending bill that gives $400 billion in tax
favors to big business.
Walmart is the largest employer in the United States, with
2.2 million individuals on its payroll, yet the company only pays a (brand-new)
minimum wage of $10 per hour. If you work 40 hours every week of the year (12
months of nonstop full-time work) that wage adds up to a paltry $20,800, a
salary below the poverty line for a family of three. You cannot earn a living
off this. In 2014 alone, Walmart gave $2,366,629 in political campaign
contributions, and spent $7 million on lobbying. Twenty-seven members of
Congress hold investments in the company, and 84 out of 103 (81 percent) of
Walmart lobbyists have previously held government jobs. The company is also
freely evading $19 billion in taxes, and receiving $23 million a year (or $1
billion throughout its 42-year history) in government tax breaks, free land,
infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants - a figure
Good Jobs First notes might "very well be the tip of the iceberg." Walmart
pays its workers abysmally, abuses its employees and hurts small “mom and pop”
and the family farmer businesses - but it has close ties with Congress, and
that makes all the difference.
Since 1989, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA), the two largest for-profit prison companies in the United
States, have given nearly $10 million in political donations and spent almost
$25 million on lobbying. In 2013-14, 78 percent of GEO Group lobbyists and 63
percent of CCA lobbyists previously held government jobs. These private prison
companies are for-profit in the cruelest sense of the phrase: They lobby for
harsher sentencing on nonviolent crimes through three-strikes laws, mandatory
sentencing and truth-in-sentencing laws (the abolishment or reduction of
parole), and push for new anti-immigrant laws to put more immigrants behind
bars. The effects of this lobbying, donating and revolving are clear. GEO Group
and CCA receive millions in government subsidies each year. Congress now has a
quota for how many human beings must be locked in a tiny room per day: at least
34,000 immigrants, a number that continues to grow each year, eventhough the
number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has leveled off. If the
beds are not filled, the government still must pay the corporation, to the further
detriment of the taxpayer. In Arizona, 30 of the 36 state legislators who
co-sponsored an (unsuccessful) immigration law to put even more people in
detention received campaign donations from private prison corporations like GEO
Group and CCA. When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio was
speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, GEO Group got a $110 million
government contract to build another private prison; GEO has donated almost
$40,000 to Rubio's campaigns throughout his political career, the highest
amount in career money the company has ever donated to any US senator. Such
"parasitic relationships" have allowed the private prison industry to
pull in $2 billion in yearly profits.
In 2014, pharmaceutical giant Amgen Inc. gave $1.83 million
in political campaign contributions, and, in 2013, spent $9.12 million on
lobbying. Twelve members of Congress hold company shares, and 78 out of 93
Amgen lobbyists have previously held government jobs.
In 2013, Amgen received a $500 million financial gift from
Congress when a handful of legislative aides slipped a provision into the final
fiscal bill, allowing Amgen to evade Medicare cost-cutting controls for two
more years. The change was supported by Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana), Orrin
Hatch (R-Utah) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), all of whom have political and
financial ties to Amgen, receiving $68,000, $59,000 and $73,000, from 2007 to
2013, respectively. Another pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, spent $10,140,000 on
lobbying in 2013, and gave $2,217,066 in political campaign contributions in
2014, while 40 members of Congress hold shares in the company, and 48 out of 84
Pfizer lobbyists in 2013-14 previously held government jobs. This company has
been allowed to evade $69 billion in taxes. Americans are paying more for their
prescription drugs than any other wealthy country on earth (helping to keep us
sicker and dying younger than people of other wealthy nations) to the further
profit of large pharmaceutical corporations. Unlike any other rich countries
Congress does not regulate predatory pricing practices.
In 2014, through PACs and individuals, JPMorgan Chase gave
$1.4 million in campaign donations to lawmakers, TPG Capital gave $1.3 million,
Wells Fargo gave $2.6 million ($6 million on lobbying), Citigroup spent $2.5
million ($5 million on lobbying), Bank of America gave almost $3 million ($2.7
million on lobbying), Goldman Sachs gave $4.7 million ($3.4 million on
lobbying) etc.
Wells Fargo is the fourth-most popular stock in Congress, and
JPMorgan Chase is the ninth. General Electric, the company that paid zero taxes
in 2010 and helped crash the economy in 2007, is the most popular stockholding
in Congress, with $967,038 being the minimum Democratic investment and $1,392,475,
the minimum Republican investment in 2014, the last year data is available. GE
spent nearly $4 million in political campaign contributions during the 2014
election cycle, and over $15 million in political lobbying. The company has
$110 billion stashed offshore, and is taxed at an effective rate of 4 percent -
31 points lower than what it actually owes the IRS. Wall Street CEOs are
collecting millions while threatening to crash our economy yet again (JPMorgan
Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are all on the Financial
Stability Board's 2015 "too-big-to-fail" list). Meanwhile, Americans
are still suffering from the last crash - and Congress, while receiving
campaign donations from and investing in Wall Street, is doing nothing to curb
their growth. Congress has yet to pass true Wall Street reform.
If the person benefiting from the status quo is trying to
convince you that things should stay the same, take a close look at who is filling
his or her pockets.
No comments:
Post a Comment