Free market ideologues fabricate some of the most preposterous yarns trying to justify their assertion of corporate greed over public need.
Consider their far-fetched of laissez-fairyland tale that by allowing corporate giants to dodge the billions of tax dollars they owe to our country, the top executives of those corporations will plow that money into new jobs, products and services for the common good. The ideologues assure us innocents that this is the “magic of the marketplace.”
But remember: Magicians don’t perform magic; they perform illusions. In this case, since the law does not require that such tax windfalls be invested for the public good, they aren’t. Instead, the corporate barons simply pocket the money.
A diligent watchdog group, Institute for Policy Studies, recently documented this by analyzing financial data of 35 enormously profitable giants, including Tesla, T-Mobile and Duke Energy. Over a four-year period, these 35 lavished pay of $9.5 billion on their honchos. Even for giants, that’s an extravagant payout. Where’d the money come from? Tax dodging. Combined, these outfits paid zero in federal taxes and even extracted nearly $2 billion in refunds.
To rationalize this handout, free market ideologues claim that corporations are just like ordinary taxpayers, merely taking a few legal deductions to lower their tax bill. But, wait — tax laws aren’t handed down on stone tablets, applying equally to everyone. When’s the last time Congress asked you to help write one law? Instead, America’s tax code is an arcane work of gobbledygook literally written in back rooms by corporate lobbyists — which is why powerful corporations get special breaks to evade taxes and you don’t.
To see through such corporate scams and help end this corruption, connect with the Institute for Policy Studies: ips-dc.org.
If your home or business is suddenly being engulfed in flames, you count on a quick response from the fire department. But who rushes to aid firefighters when so many of the burning buildings they enter are contaminated with chrysotile asbestos — a cancer-causing product so deadly that it’s banned in over 50 countries? So far, no one.
This nasty toxic (widely used in construction materials, car parts and even water systems), infiltrates lungs and kills some 40,000 Americans a year, especially firefighters. For the last 30 years, victims, health advocates and others have been pushing to stop using the deadly stuff — but chemical profiteers and the politicians they pay kept defeating these efforts.
In 2016, though, Congress finally empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to ban it.
Great! But that same year, Donald Trump happened. With his usual deep analysis, concern for workers and respect for science, he mindlessly proclaimed asbestos “100 percent safe,” even declaring that the movement to ban it was “led by the mob.” Thus, his EPA did nothing ... and deaths continued.
Then came Joe Biden, and — Hallelujah! — EPA has now announced that it is “finally slamming the door” on manufacturing, importing and using chrysotile asbestos. When? Twelve years from now. What? Yes, that’s a very sloooow-motion slamming. Biden wanted the ban to take effect in two years, but industry lobbyists screeched. So, our government chose not to “rush” to aid firefighters and others who’ll be killed by this policy of putting corporate profits over their lives.
Remember this whenever political hucksters demand that you vote to eliminate “regulatory burdens.” Burdens for whom — asbestos peddlers or firefighters? And beware: Here comes Trump again, promising to eliminate public regulations if he’s elected. Really? Who will benefit from that?
When a fox attacks a hen house, is it uncivil for the hens to raise a ruckus?
Two Supreme Court justices say it is. Elevating collegiality above social justice, right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett and progressive jurist Sonia Sotomayor have jointly been hailing America’s top court as a model of genteel political discourse, claiming that the six Republicans and three Democrats disagree agreeably. “We do not interrupt one another, and we never raise our voices,” Barrett primly lectured to a recent conference of civics teachers. Sotomayor chimed in that court decorum frowns on any internal comments that “could be viewed (by other justices) as hurtful.”
How sweet that the Supremes are so judiciously cordial inside their marble sanctuary. But how bitter that the court’s lockstep Republican ideologues are so crudely slapping down women’s rights, running roughshod over our environmental protections, stomping on voting rights, enthroning plutocracy, imposing theocracy ... and so awful much more. Yet, when any of the three progressive justices do publicly assail these blatantly partisan, anti-democratic edicts, Barrett decorously decries their “stridency,” demurely chiding that “the court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”
Yoo-hoo, Madame Supreme, can you even hear yourself? Your very elevation to the High Court was a strident affront to our democracy and to the very idea of justice, rammed through in a flagrantly partisan power play by a lame-duck president and a corrupt Republican senator. Please, spare us your phony lectures on judicial propriety!
America would still be an English colony if the rebels of 1776 had not “stridently” risen up and impolitely confronted the kind of elitist governmental authoritarianism that Barrett & Co. wants to re-impose on us. Come on, progressives — get rude! Democracy demands that we be confrontational ... not courtly.
If you’re concerned about fossil fuels and climate change, consider an energy source that, according to its backers, will make everyday living “comfortable and healthier.”
What is this miraculous substance? Oil.
Huh? Yes, that filthy scourge of our planet and health is being ballyhooed as our globe’s energy and environmental salvation! By whom? Of course: The American Petroleum Institute, the powerhouse lobbying front for ExxonMobil and other petro-profiteers. API recently bragged that it will pour tens of millions of dollars into a PR blitz during this year’s presidential election to demonize clean energy sources and demand that government promote more fossil fuel production.
API’s campaign slogan is “Lights On Energy” — but the luminosity of its media message is mighty dim. Start with the fact that Big Oil has zero public credibility, having routinely gouged us on prices for years and knowingly lied to us for decades about not causing climate change.
Second, the demand by oil barons that government “quit intruding into the free market” by encouraging alternative energy is a whiney embarrassment. Hello — for more than a century, oil corporations have gorged on billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts, and the fossil fuel industry received $757 billion of incentives in 2023! (Didn’t their mommas ever teach them not to talk with their mouths full?)
Also pathetic is their partisan wail that President Joe Biden is restricting their production and profits. Hello again: US oil production reached a record high last year, Big Oil’s profits are soaring, and they’re now jacking up our gas prices again. Meanwhile, 2023 was the hottest year our globe ever recorded.
Let’s reflect the heat back on these greedheads. For facts and action items, go to fossilfree4health.org.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2024
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