Tag: corruption

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Oil Subsidies

The oil industry in the United States receives about $2.3 billion in government subsidies every year. Why? Because they can’t make a profit? Obviously not. Because they are good to the environment? Obviously not. Because they contribute to national defense, our cultural heritage, anything, anything at all other than the profits of their investors?

The oil industry gets this money because the rich owners of oil companies have lunch with your congressman frequently and contribute to his re-election campaign so he can run ads telling you how he will go to Washington and clean up all that corruption and perversion, with the help of that corporate jet supplied by BP.

Did you get your share? Not likely. But if you are GE or Goldman-Sachs, you will get your share of government largesse: they are collecting hundreds of millions of dollars to build alternative energy farms.

Now, a normal business takes a risk and invests in a certain technology and, if it’s leaders are wise and diligent, they will make a profit. And then they will tell you that they should pay less tax on their large profits than you pay on your meager earnings, because, they’ll say, they take risks, and they create jobs, and they are the engines of growth.

Except that, as in the case of the NRG Solar Ranch in the California Valley, which has received nearly $1.6 billion in government subsidies. Which is pretty well 100% of the cost of the project. NRG has also obtained a guarantee that the government will buy it’s power at a certain fixed price guaranteed to ensure a very healthy profit for NRG, possibly as high as 50%.

Are you getting your share? Not if you work for a living. But if you invest, you might be. And you can see why we need less government regulation– my goodness! It’s just strangling those businesses!

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How Mitt Romney Got Rich

How Romney Did it:

Romney ran a company called Bain Capital. Under Romney’s ineffable leadership it bought an Illinois company called Dade. After some manipulations, streamlining, slashing benefits, and more aggressive marketing, Dade got bigger. Then Bain Capital wanted to cash out. But nobody would offer the kind of money for Dade that Bain Capital felt it deserved. No problem.

Dade borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars to… buy itself! From Bain! At the direction of Bain! What kind of price did they pay? Ask yourself: how much do you think you should get for you? You betcha!

The story has a tragic end. Dade, now burdened with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt could no longer afford to innovate and soon went bankrupt.

That’s how Romney “creates jobs”: he buys you. Then he borrows your money to buy yourself back from him at a very good price. He ends up with a pile of money and you end with a pile of debt. To top it off, he pays less tax on the capital gains profits he made than you did on the salary you no longer receive because you went bankrupt.

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Republican Duck Soup

This is the same Rick Perry who recently told The San Francisco Chronicle that he was the sort of leader who could go to Washington and “take a wrecking ball, a sledgehammer — whatever it takes to break up the good-old-boy corporate lobbyist mentality that is putting this country’s future in jeopardy. NY Times, November 5, 2011

As the Republican primaries begin more and more to resemble a Marx Brothers Movie (think of “Duck Soup”), the absolutely in your face, we don’t give a damn about even giving the appearance of integrity attitude of most of the candidates is absolutely astonishing. The above quote is from an article on Perry’s obsessive use of corporate private jets to travel around the country attending sporting events, dinners, and meetings, without even hiding the fact that he is being lavishly funded by the very “good old boys” who corrupt our political process.

He’s not even really very coy or sly about it. It’s as if they don’t really believe that, behind all the fury of the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements, there is anything real about public disapproval of the government.

The other astonishing thing– which isn’t so astonishing the closer you look at it– is that no politician has come along to take advantage of the fury American voters now feel towards their leaders. Where is the Jimmy Carter of 2011? You would think that all you would need right now if for some plain-spoken young idealist to come along and refuse the corporate jets, the lavish donations, the idiotic slogans, the American flag pin, and just waltz right through the primaries to become the next President of the United States. But the Republicans think that a “plain-speaking” lobbyist who travels on corporate jets and gropes female employees qualifies.

Not so astonishing, really. The system is so rigged in favor or money and the money is completely controlled by corporate interests– even Obama took a lot of money from rich donors– that it may well be impossible for a Jimmy Carter to succeed today.

Besides, it looked like Obama was that kind of candidate, but he has proven, over and over again, that he is unwilling or unable to stand up to the same corrosive forces when applied to a sitting president. Like any other sitting president, his time in office seems primarily calibrated towards raising money to run for a second term. And I would guess that the intelligence and military communities have succeeded in convincing him that any tinkering with Guantanamo and any reduction in military or homeland security spending will leave him vulnerable to attack by the right for not being tough enough on evil, no matter what he believes about how effective or counter-productive any particular measures might be.

 

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How to Buy the Government

For $5,000, a lobbyist can join lawmakers and staff members of the alliance, the Republican Main Street Partnership, for a lunchtime policy briefing by an outside expert. For $15,000, the lobbyist can attend four lunches, two of them with briefings by an outside expert and two with briefings from members of Congress.

And for $25,000, the lobbyist can have three lunch briefings with lawmakers, not to mention V.I.P. seating for eight at a black-tie dinner for the moderates’ coalition.
From the New York Times, April 30, 2006

Once again, John McCain disappoints. He is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership. I have the feeling that rather than being a break from the legislature for politicians– the lunchtime “policy briefing” is the real business of being an elected representative. There is no question but that most politicians are there to get money for legislation. The only question is how elaborate or convoluted an organization you need to disguise what is happening from your constituents.

Your constituents, of course, keep demanding that you support legislation that reduces the influence of lobbyists. If you are a Republican, you create legislation that actually makes it easier for lobbyists to give you money for legislation and then you call it the “Integrity in Government Act” and you campaign on it as if it does the opposite of what it actually does. To make it all even more shameless, then you accuse your opponent of being in favor of lobbyists’ because he or she didn’t vote for your bill. Think of it as a “clean skies act” for money in politics.

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Homeland Security Pie

Ha ha! I hope those suckers looking for big contracts from Tom Ridge’s Homeland Insecurity office know how much money they’re wasting!

A lot of big corporations are looking at that $40 billion pork barrel just sitting on Tom Ridge’s desk waiting to be looted and thinking to themselves, gee, I’d like a piece of that.

So some of these foolish corporations went and hired Tom Ridge’s former legislative affairs director, and several other former staff, hoping that these people can use their personal relationships with Ridge to negotiate lucrative contracts.

Now you may think there is something fishy going on here. Don’t you dare. These employees have waited a whole year before tarting themselves up for the grueling task of lobbying their former colleagues for big, fat, government contracts. Just as the law requires.

Are they in for a shock!

What they didn’t know is that Mr. Ridge will not be influenced by his former staff persons at all. Nosiree! Mr. Ridge will decide who gets that money purely on the basis of the best interests of the American taxpayer! And these companies really do care about providing the best value for the taxpayers that they can. That’s why Walter B. Shirk, a lawyer at Powell, Goldstein, Frazer, and Murphy, another lobbying firm, wrote an article for a newsletter entitled “Opportunity and Risk: Securing Your Piece of the Homeland Security Pie”.

So those corporations are wasting a lot of money! Wow! Wait ’til they find out! I’ll bet all of those former staffers wish they’d never quit their jobs with Mr. Ridge, because once those corporations that hired them as lobbyists find out that they would have done just as well if they had sent a perfect stranger to make their presentations– well, they’ll probably let all those people go. Even if, like Ashley Davis, former special assistant to Mr. Ridge, they do see him quite often socially, and say they are very good friends with Mr. Ridge. I’m sure Mr. Ridge won’t hesitate to tell Ms. Davis’s clients they better offer the government a very, very good deal on whatever it is they’re selling, because that close friendship will play no part at all in the decision-making process.

And they’ll never get another job in government of course, because people like Tom Ridge wouldn’t want some former flunkies from these corporations hanging around his office, no way. Not after they deserted him just to make a lot more money.

Just as I’ll bet Halliburton never hires Dick Cheney back. Not after that piddly $80 billion he tossed their way for the reconstruction of Iraq.

My only question is this. Why do these companies even bother with lobbyists? All they have to do is pull their strings.

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Karacter and Politics

Karacter

What is character? The Republican’s keep trotting out the word “character” because they think it’s something they have and Clinton doesn’t. Someone with “character” doesn’t cheat on his wife. Oops. Bob Dole left his first wife to shack up with Elizabeth at the Watergate hotel. Where’s your first wife, Newt? The one that had cancer?

How about that fling of yours, Henry Hyde? Well, a “character” has principles. Oops. Gingrich has been charged with more than 60 violations of various ethics rules for House members. George Bush refused to intervene to prevent slaughter in Bosnia because he was afraid he would lose the next election.

Well, a “character” doesn’t give in to cheap temptations. Oops. The Republicans, eager for campaign money, keep granting all the wishes of corporate America so the money keeps pouring into those PACS. Oops, oops, oops.

Well, a “character” doesn’t sneak around recording conversations illegally, doesn’t cheat in order to get his way, doesn’t blow things out of proportion or sensationalize, and knows the value of discretion and honor. Kenneth Starr, anyone? Linda Tripp? A “character” doesn’t preach one thing and practice another. Henry Hyde, are you there?

It’s weird how this group of self-serving, conniving, dishonest hypocrites seems to have succeeded in hi-jacking the term “character”. Most people know pretty well what is meant by “character”. Honesty and integrity. Above all else, a willingness to put principles ahead of expediency. Clinton failed in regard to Monica Lewinsky, but he hasn’t done all that badly in almost every other area of government. Henry Hyde and his fellow leaders of the holy jihad, currently conducting show-trials in Congress, have demonstrated over and over again a willingness to sell their votes to whichever corporate lobbyist carries the fattest check.

This isn’t mere hypocrisy. You have to understand that while this show trial continues, Congress has been writing laws that take money away from middle-class and poor voters and hands it over to the rich as quickly as possible. Disney and Citibank are only two of the beneficiaries. Archer Daniels Midland. Microsoft. RCA. Boeing. Line up boys: the pork barrel’s full and nobody’s looking!