10 Popular Chocolate Brands that Exploit Child Slaves. Life in a Walmart Sweatshop. Water Wars 1: Scarcity - Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. People Make Anti-Logos To Urge Sponsors To Withdraw From Qatar 2022 World Cup. FIFA's decision to hold the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is drawing more and more criticism as more and more allegations of everything from bribery and financial mismanagement to slavery and deadly work conditions pile up. 900 workers have died during construction for the Qatar world cup, and some estimate that this number will rise to 4,000 before they're finished.
Migrant workers' passports are often confiscated upon entry into Qatar, and they require exist visas to leave. Many reports indicate that these workers cannot leave the country and that their employers can hold back pay almost indefinitely. Brothers blood. Walmart vets. Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire. The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery.
Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms. What is less clear is where all that money comes from. Rx drugs. Walmart insurance. Boeing Got $7,250 In Tax Breaks For Every $1 It Spent Lobbying. When it comes to great investments, it's hard to beat collecting $7,250 for every $1 you spend.
That's the benefit Boeing Corp. will reap from a ramped-up lobbying push in Washington state that ended with a massive $8.7 billion tax subsidy, according to an analysis of lobbying data released Thursday. The tax break came as part of a deal to keep production of a new jet, the 777X, in the Seattle area. Lobbying data is notoriously difficult to parse -- matching individual dollars to specific legislative priorities is often impossible. It's plausible that the company could have achieved the same result with a single phone call, given how terrified state officials were that the company might ship high-paying jobs elsewhere.
The governor's office had estimated that Washington would lose an estimated 20,000 jobs and more than $20 billion in economic activity if Boeing took production of the new jets elsewhere. Walmart. The shocking numbers behind corporate welfare. Pascal Rossignol/Reuters State and local governments have awarded at least $110 billion in taxpayer subsidies to business, with 3 of every 4 dollars going to fewer than 1,000 big corporations, the most thorough analysis to date of corporate welfare revealed today.
Boeing ranks first, with 137 subsidies totaling $13.2 billion, followed by Alcoa at $5.6 billion, Intel at $3.9 billion, General Motors at $3.5 billion and Ford Motor at $2.5 billion, the new report by the nonprofit research organization Good Jobs First shows. Dow Chemical had the most subsidies, 410 totaling $1.4 billion, followed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway holding company, with 310 valued at $1.1 billion. The figures were compiled from disclosures made by state and local government agencies that subsidize companies in all sorts of ways, including cash giveaways, building and land transfers, tax abatements and steep discounts on electric and water bills.
Corporate Welfare – Employees Paying Taxes Directly To Corporations. Taxes have been a part of government for as long as there have been things to tax, and the general idea behind them is pretty well understood.
The government takes a portion of everyone’s income and spends it in such a way as to improve things for everyone in one way or another. That could be defensive spending, such as military technology or troop wages, administrative costs will always factor in, educational funding, etc. And that’s the way it works in America.
Or is it? In truth, corporate lobbyists have ensured that our convoluted tax code heavily favors corporations. Koch Power Raised Gasoline Prices By 40 Cents A Gallon Overnight. The House of Cards, for the unacquainted, is fundamentally a story about how private economic power intersects and conflicts with government power, with each sector manipulating personal ambition to achieve their respective goals.
The power conflicts are personified by a billionaire electric power baron who is a friend and financial backer of the president of the United States, and Francis Underwood, an unscrupulously ambitious Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. In one episode (spoiler alert), the baron shuts off electric power to Washington DC by shutting down one of his power plants, and threatens to shut down his power plants serving much of the southeastern United States, claiming the plants need scheduled maintenance, all in order to force the president and congress to adopt policy changes favorable to his business interests in China.
Two refineries supply almost all the gasoline sold to Minnesota consumers. 6 obscene paydays for the rich that prove the deck is stacked against ordinar... Economic outcomes aren’t produced in a vacuum.
Tax Evasion.