One of the primary topics on this website since it was launched has been the extremely destructive and explosive rise of crony capitalism throughout the USA. It is crony capitalism, as opposed to free markets, that has led to the gross inequality in American society we have today. Cronyism for the super wealthy starts at the very top with the Federal Reserve System, which consists of topdown economic central planners who manipulate the money supply and hence interest rates for the benefit of the financial oligarch class. It then trickles down through lobbyist money into the halls of Washington D.C., and ultimately filters down to local governments and then the average person on the street gaming welfare or disability.
As such, we now live in a culture of corruption and theft that is pervasive throughout society. One thing that bothers me to no end is when fake Republicans focus their criticism on struggling people who need welfare or food stamps to survive. They have this absurd notion that the whole welfare system doesn’t start with the multinational corporations and Central Banks at the top. In reality, it is at the top where the cancer starts, and that’s where we should focus in order to achieve real change.
That’s where a new report from Open the Books on corporate welfare comes in. In a preview of the publication, the organization notes:
If Republicans are going to get truly serious about cutting government spending, they are going to have to snip the umbilical cord from the Treasury to corporate America. You can’t reform welfare programs for the poor until you’ve gotten Daddy Warbucks off the dole. Voters will insist on that — as well they should.
So why hasn’t it happened? Why hasn’t the GOP pledged to end corporate welfare as we know it?
Part of the explanation is that too many have gotten confused about the difference between free-market capitalism and crony capitalism.
And part of the problem is corporate welfare that is so well hidden from public view in the budget that no one has really measured how big this mountain of giveaway cash to the Fortune 500 really is. Finding out is like trying to break into the CIA.
Until now. Open the Books, an Illinois-based watchdog group, has been scrupulously monitoring all federal grants, loans, direct payments and insurance subsidies flowing to individuals and companies.It’s an attempt to force federal agencies to release information on where the $4 trillion budget is really spent — and Open the Books will release a new report on corporate welfare payments to the Fortune 100 companies from 2000 to 2012.
Over that period, the 100 received $1.2 trillion in payments from the federal government.
That number does not include the hundreds of billions of dollars in housing, bank and auto company bailouts in 2008 and 2009, because those payments and where they went are kept mostly invisible in the federal agency books.
As suspected, the biggest welfare queens in the U.S. are the super wealthy themselves, but they’d rather you focus on some single mother on welfare simply trying to survive.
The full report can be downloaded here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Wal-Mart’s dependence on food stamps, revealed
Talk about a “poverty trap”! The phrase was recently used by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc., to suggest that the nation’s panoply of programs to aid low-income households was keeping them from rising into the middle class.
Wal-Mart’s annual report, issued late last week, puts a different spin on things. Buried within the long list of risk factors disclosed to its shareholders–that is, factors “outside our control” that could materially affect financial performance–are these: “changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, (and) changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans.”
Wal-Mart followers say this is the first time the company has made a disclosure like that.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-walmarts-dependence-20140324,0,5452260.story#ixzz2x5U4ekSc
The conservative movement was never about ending entitlements it was just an issue to fool gullible voters into thinking that conservatism is actually different from liberalism. Murray Rothbard saw through the charade that was the Reagan era in his article titled Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/conservative-con-man/
It also wasn’t just the conservative demi-god who was fraud, both the Republican Revolution of the 90s and the G.W. Bush era’s as well. Lawerence Vance of Lew Rockwell.com has pointed this out as well time and time again. Now they’re trying to prop up Rand Paul as the one to bring back liberty. Thankfully the libertarian movement has people like Robert Wenzel and now Justin Raimondo exposing Rand for the statist fraud that he is.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/03/justin-raimondo-cuts-off-support-for.html
Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart receives welfare loan from US taxpayers
How Australia’s richest person, mining heiress Gina Rinehart, secured a $US694 million ($764 million) loan from American taxpayers is surely one of the great ironies of the capitalist system, reports The Australian Financial Review.
The case is the latest example of a flaw in the United States political economy: what some see as crony capitalism.
Rinehart’s mining group, Hancock Prospecting, last week signed off on a $US7.2 billion debt package for her highly anticipated Roy Hill iron ore project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
There are 19 international lenders, including Australia’s big four banks, in the syndicate. Government export credit agencies including the Ex-Im Bank in the US, as well as Japan and Korea, were crucial in helping the massive debt-funding deal over the line.
Commercial banks and bond investors were reluctant to shoulder all the risk.
The US Ex-Im Bank says it “assumes credit and country risks that the private sector is unable or unwilling to accept”.
In return for the US government loan, Hancock Prospecting will purchase American mining and rail equipment from Caterpillar, General Electric and Atlas Copco. The Export-Import Bank says their involvement will “support” 3400 US jobs.
US conservatives have deep misgivings about the “corporate welfare” the Ex-Im Bank is dishing out, including to Rinehart.
http://www.hangthebankers.com/australias-richest-person-gina-rinehart-receives-welfare-loan-from-us-taxpayers/
Hi Michael, Here is a direct link to our Federal Transfer Report- Fortune 100 Companies: http://www.openthebooks.com/the_federal_transfer_report-_fortune_100_companies1/
Thank you for covering our work and we look forward to the discussion.
Adam Andrzejewski
Chairman, American Transparency
openthebooks.com
I don’t disagree with your analysis of Republicans or more specifically I guess neoconservatives, but corporate welfare is nothing more than a bi-product of the Progressive government model adopted well over 100 years ago and defended vigorously by the mainstream elements of both political parties. There is no way a government can create stability for the average guy in the street without creating it also for the capital owner. Mainstream Republicans and Democrats are nothing more than different sides of the Progressive coin. The Republicans see themselves as the defenders of the free market, which is total b/s and Democrats defenders of social justice, which is total b/s. They both not only fight for corporate and individual welfare, they both have no intention of ending either. They can’t!
The real irony, however, whether its corporate welfare or individual welfare, is that you really can’t end one, without ending the other. And we all know that tax increases, cuts in government spending and cuts in government benefits are great policy ideas when we think they don’t impact us, but as soon as they do, then those suggesting these ideas must be run out of office. This is the system, its been around longer than any of us, and its not likely to change any time soon. So go out and get your welfare until the Ponzi progressive economy explodes.
Great Article