Corporations are entitled, too

I should be chiseling away at No Logo. Instead, I am sitting in front of the ol’ boob tube, watching the BYU-Boise State game. I need my college football fix after choosing to camp last weekend. (Sweets suggested camping this weekend, too. I said, “Have fun.” Needless to say, I am going to enjoy some brews and primetime football.)

Reading No Logo would also not allow me to weigh-in on Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” thing, which everyone and their grandma seems to be doing right now.

I am not voting for Mitt Romney (or President Obama) but I thought he was referring to the “47 percent” of voters whose opinions will not be swayed in his favor no matter what. At least at first; I am not so sure about, “my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” He is on his own to defend that, and his campaign has already dug through the VHS archives and found an Obama gem about redistribution. Throw in the Big O’s “they cling to guns or religion” quote from 2008, as Bobblehead pointed out, and it becomes evident that our Presidential race has become a months-long blooper reel, à la Steve Sabol (RIP).

Perhaps Mittens is right that 47 percent of our population are tax evading, entitled whiners. But one thing he and his fellow red Republicrats (proudly self-titled champions of the free market) will never mention is the fact that global corporations (which are people, too, after all) are also tax evading, entitled whiners.

Today while staining my neighbors’ deck, I listened to NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. (For a long time I never listened to Fresh Air because I assumed Gross always interviewed celebrities. No so, much to my enlightenment.) Today’s guest was David Cay Johnston, the author of The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind. The first half of the show was about how telecommunication companies are making us pay through the nose for substandard broadband access. That was madding — but not as madding as the second half, when Johnston explained one of the tax incentives state governments give to major corporations. Companies will take out state taxes from employee pay, as they should. However, instead of giving it to the state the corporations are allowed to keep that money for themselves. That’s right: corporations subsidize themselves with employee tax deductions. That, boys and girls, is corporate welfare.

I wonder who those “people” are voting for.

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