Democracy Invaded: Corporations = Borg!

I agree with Mr. Gebhart that blizzards have their merits. I also see merit in his link to an article that declares (in counsel's words) "We are politically powerless because of an alien life form"—i.e., the lifeless, soulless, hive-mind collectives known as corporations, which America granted personhood in the 19th century:

We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don't bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.

In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion [Charlie Stross, "Invaders from Mars," Charlie's Diary, 2010.12.10].

Tea Party, if you really are the resistance, it's corporations who have co-opted the Constitution and established totalitarianism. Fight the real power!

"Farmers Feed Us": New Big Ag Propaganda

US meaning
Monsanto and Big Ag...

Oh look! More corporate propaganda masquerading as friendly family farmers! A friend directs me toward SD Farmers Feed Us, another in the ongoing series of "tell our story!" marketing campaigns waged by the ag-industrial complex. They have a Twitter account, a Facebook page... and (scroll down to the fine print) lots of money from the Center for Food Integrity, a front group created in 2007 by Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and other food industry heavyweights to "increase consumer trust and confidence in the contemporary U.S. food system."

And the notion that "Farmers Feed Us" isn't wholly accurate: the majority of that corn you see reaching for the sky in the August humidity goes to gas tanks, not your tummy.

But don't let disingenuous corporate mental manipulation stop you from registering to win a year's worth of free groceries... all rich with corn syrup.

Evil Corporate Contributions Disqualify Herseth Sandlin, Noem... Who's Left?

So Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin took a $1000 donation from a BP employee last December. Fair enough. I'm pleased to see South Dakota's conservative bloggisariat is coming around to my position that Big Oil and big corporate money are evil.

I agree with HuffPost and PP: I don't like seeing my Congresswoman funding her campaign with money from dirty, greedy, Gulf-killing BP. Her being in the company of Alaska's Republican oil lapdog Lisa Murkowski on this "issue" is embarrassing. And I tell you what: if the people of South Dakota vote Stephanie Herseth Sandlin out of office purely on the basis of her taking money from Big Oil, I will consider that a giant leap forward in the political thinking of our state. I would expect my District 8 neighbors to take the same stance toward State Senator Russell Olson and kick him out of office for sucking up to TransCanada by killing the pipeline tax and preserving their tax exemptions.

Also worth noting: over the last 20 years, 71% of BP-related campaign contributions have gone to Republicans. I wonder why this issue didn't make PP's radar until Herseth Sandlin's name popped up?

I'd be more than happy to be able to go through every candidate's donor list and exercise a line-item veto on contributions from sources I or my fellow South Dakotans might consider scuzzy... speaking of which, where's Republican candidate Kristi Noem getting her money? A quick run-through of the Federal Election Commission numbers show...

1. $500 from Harms Oil of Brookings
   
2. $500 from Howes Oil of Sioux Falls
3. $1250 from subsidy-sucking Poet Ethanol
   
4. $500 from economy-crashing Citibank (SHS has $12,750 from Citigroup)
   
5. $450 from usurer extraordinaire Premier Bank
   
6. $1000 from an out-of-state Metabank banker
7. $4650 from Sanford Health's CEO and docs (surely to promote evil stem-cell research)
   
8. $2400 from wealthy venture capitalist Steve Kirby
9. $1000 from Apple (Dietr! What are you thinking?!)
10. $2400 from Sioux City's Agri Beef Co.
11. $6900 from lawyers

Interestingly, I can't find any itemized contributions for Independent candidate B. Thomas Marking. Looks like he's our man!

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Bonus Raspberries: As for the guy who isn't running because no one would chase him, don't forget that Senator John Thune has received $3500 from BP. Thune's biggest donors include the bankers and real estate agents, among whom one might find a fair amount of responsibility for our current economic plight. Lawyers also like Thune, as do Poet, Xcel Energy, DM&E, Wal-Mart, and Moyle Petroleum.

Larry Pressler, Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, Larry Diedrich, and Rick Weiland also appear on the two-decade roll of BP donations to South Dakota candidates. BP employees have also given $250 to our neighbors Michele Bachmann and Al Franken. Go figure.

BP Does More Damage than Failed Bomber: Strip Corporate Rights

Corporations are persons, right? Persons who threaten to damage our country deserve to lose their constitutional rights, right?

The Displaced Plainsman takes the square root of those two and asks this arguably reasonable question:

BP has caused millions of dollars of damage to the United States. The damage may be the result of negligence or criminal activity. If true, why can’t BP the individual be declared an enemy combatant for terrorizing the United States? The harm done by the spill is far greater than the harm that would have been done by the Times Square Bomb attempt. In fact, people actually died because of BP’s actions [LK, "A Question in Which I Act Like a Cranky Conspiracy Theorist, Sort Of," The Displaced Plainsman, 2010.05.11].

People want to take away Faisal Shahzad's rights as a person for bumbling in his use of firecrackers. Why don't we get as cranky about the real damage—human, ecological, and economic—done by corporations?

Corporate Farming Bad for Small Town South Dakota

It's one thing to hear me complain about Big Ag and big corporations sucking the life out of rural communities. It's a whole nother thing to hear the anti-corporate line from a local economic development corporation.

Briana Hoffman, director of Deuel Area Development, Inc., follows up an ag subcommittee discussion of renting land locally with a discussion of the harms of corporate farming:

Studies show that communities experiencing “corporate” farming have similar negative effects such as lower income levels, higher poverty, higher unemployment rates, higher income inequality creating a class of “haves” and “have nots.” This richer and poorer division has created social problems and breakdowns in communities, increased stress, deterioration in relationships between producers and their neighbors, decreased civic participation. Some local governments became influenced in favor of large-scale agribusiness interests, leaving local farmers and communities feeling powerless. Other effects include lower education, environmental threats, higher teenage births, decreased health, decreased retail trade and community services, decline in real estate values. Many of these effects were not seen in one or two years, but took a decade to reveal [Briana Hoffman, "Ag... the Importance of Renting Locally," Digging into Deuel, 2010.03.01].

local governments... influenced in favor of large-scale agribusiness interests... why do I get the feeling we'll never hear that kind of language from Madison's economic development corporation?

Director Hoffman has a couple other worthwhile posts discussing agriculture and economic development: one on how churches can help new farmers, and one on helping farmers do the math necessary to stay afloat. It's all part of DADi's new effort to promote local ag development.

Briana, when Dwaine Chapel gets tired of commuting from Brookings to fix Madison every day, can we hire you?

Russell Olson Prefers Corporations Not Answer to Stockholders

Pat Powers is having fun manufacturing outrage over Scott Heidepriem's vote against SJR 3, which purports to protect the right to a secret ballot. (SJR 3 is really just more pro-corporate union-busting hogwash, but hey, that's the South Dakota Republican Party for you.)

Meanwhile, some of PP's favorite Republicans, including our own Senator Russell Olson (R-8/Madison), are voting against giving shareholders a vote of any sort, secret or otherwise, in how the companies they invest in spend their money. Heidepriem sponsored SB 165, a measure that would have required corporations to obtain a majority vote from their stockholders to authorize any contribution to a political cause or candidate.

Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly democratic.

Five Republicans killed it in committee Wednesday. Senator Gene Abdallah bucked his anti-democratic colleagues and voted with Heidepriem and Gary Hanson to keep the bill alive, but it wasn't enough.

Once again, our Senator Olson shows that corporations aren't just people, they're more important people than the common folks who elect him..

Legislature: Roads, Farmers Markets, Pipeline Tax, and Corporate Democracy

Some legislative notes to sprinkle on your Wheaties:

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The State Senate Transportation Committee has unanimously killed SB1, the road tax increases. What was that Senator Mike Vehle from Mitchell said in October?

Everyone in this committee.. has a feeling that we need to do something... We'd all like to do probably a lot more than we feel in a recession we can do. But we need to take a hard look and be ready to explain to our colleagues the need that our highways have.... [A]ny society that lets its infrastructure fail or start to fail is also going down a wrong road and putting our society in jeopardy [Senator Mike Vehle, 2009.10.14].

Senator Vehle yesterday abandoned the bill, deciding he didn't want to fight to convince his colleagues to pay for the roads that get them to Pierre and back. Oh well. Maybe we all can just stop driving and do all our business online.

****
If we can still get to the farmers markets over our new gravel roads, we might find more local sellers. Democrat Pam Merchant from Brookings is proposing House Bill 1222 to exempt farmers market vendors from licensing requirements. The bill does add some labeling requirements—basically a sticker to say this food's homegrown; if you have allergies, you take your chances. But essentially, HB 1222 is Democrats promoting deregulation for small local businesspeople. I bet the Republican-controlled Legislature kills this one. Please, Russ, prove me wrong!

****
Republicans and Democrats are working together to try again to get a pipeline tax. Senate Bill 161 imposes a two-cent-per-barrel tax on oil pumping through big pipelines (i.e., TransCanada's) in South Dakota. Two cents per barrel: at today's crude oil prices, that's a 0.027% tax—less than three cents on every hundred dollars TransCanada will make. And like previous measures, SB 161 caps the tax at $30 million and dedicates it to a fund to clean up oil spills and other messes TransCanada will make.

****
Senator Heidepriem says if corporations really are persons qualified to participate in democratic processes, then they should behave democratically. His Senate Bill 165 tells corporations, "Go ahead! Contribute to politicians and campaigns. But you have to get the approval of a majority of your stockholders first." Ah, democracy!

Free Speech for Corporations: What Proper Constraints?

A just society would be one in which liberty for one person is constrained only by the demands created by equal liberty for another.

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973, p. 41

A corporation is not a person. The law and a majority of the current Supreme Court say it is, but they are wrong. As Justice John Paul Stevens said from the bench in dissent yesterday, "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires."

But let's set that argument aside (as does the Roberts-Scalia wing of the Court). While I read the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allowing corporations to donate to political campaigns, consider this scenario:

Suppose I, a person, amass a vast sum of money (through hard work and wise investing). I run for state senate against Russ Olson. Two weeks before the election, I offer the Madison Daily Leader, KJAM, and every other media outlet that reaches our district four times their going rate to buy every available ad space. Good capitalists all, they accept. I even buy up Pat Powers's whole sidebar (and send his seven kids to college). For two weeks before the election, my disproportionate wealth drowns out the message of my opponent.

Wealth is power. When is my power to "speak" so great that it threatens the liberty of others? What proper constraints may society place upon my use of my wealth to "speak" in the public sphere?

---------------------------------
While we think about that, here's some more reading on yesterday's remarkable Supreme Court ruling:

1. Dahlia Lithwick, "The Pinocchio Project," Slate, 2010.01.21.
2. What's next: voting rights for corporations? Lyle Denniston, "Analysis: The Personhood of Corporations," SCOTUSBlog, 2010.01.21.
3. See also Erin Miller's great SCOTUSBlog round-up of first-day reaction to Citizens United v. FEC.—beaucoup links!

Update 2010.01.28: Dr. Newquist understands the question of disproportionate power at which I'm driving.

Feds, Lobbyists, Corporations Invade Classrooms; Conservatives Oddly Silent

Given some conservatives' vociferous efforts to keep President Obama from fomenting Marxist revolution in the classroom, I'm surprised I still have a job.

I'm also surprised that I haven't heard those same conservatives raise the red flag about some other intrusions on the sanctity of the classroom:

• South Dakota gubernatorial candidate sends out a press release trumpeting Constitution Day (that's tomorrow) as a celebration of "free enterprise and individual initiative"—words that appear nowhere in the Constitution, which created a stronger central government to solve the problems that the individual states under the flimsy Articles of Confederation could not. Munsterman fails to decry Constitution Day as a faux non-holiday enacted by the federal government in 2005 and mandating specific educational programs at all schools. This isn't just an optional speech from the President; this is required curriculum, demanded by Washington! Where's the outrage?
• I've heard some conservatives argue that ethanol is bad fiscal policy, bad food price policy, bad wildlife policy. I'm waiting to hear conservatives scream about the ethanol lobby's efforts to indoctrinate our kids in the classroom. The Renewable Fuels Association, Renewable Fuels Foundation, and National FFA are putting an ethanol-focused curriculum into our schools. They're even offering money to bring kids to Orlando, Florida, for further brainwashing. Oh, our poor kids!
• And last I checked, our schools are still rife with corporatist propaganda, as Coke, Pepsi, et al. take advantage of our stingy funding of schools to insert their advertisements into gyms, hallways, classrooms, and school signs to subject captive audiences of impressionable youths to their marketing. I await the explanation of how President Obama's call to homework does more damage in the classroom than corporate America's call to consume.

If I hear even half the ruckus over any of these intrusions into our kids' education that I heard over President Obama's speech last week, I'll be happily flabbergasted.

American Clean Energy and Security Act: Sop to Big Ag?

I sort of like the American Clean Energy and Security Act... sort of. However, Dennis Kucinich, Ken Blanchard, and Joel Rosenthal (among others) may change my mind.

My man Dennis, as I have noted previously, voted against ACESA, saying it doesn't do enough to really address climate change. Dr. Blanchard and his studious commenters offer an assortment of numbers that question our ability to absorb the costs of going green. (An argument still worth waging: can we afford not to go green?)

What really gets me this week is this article forwarded to me by Mr. Rosenthal. It comes from the conservative Washington Examiner, which I read at my own peril. But when conservative voices criticize corporate pork, my ears perk up:

What began as a liberal crusade to slow manmade global warming is increasingly becoming a porkfest for well-connected corporations.

In order to get a vote today on greenhouse gas restrictions, House Democrats have bought off farm-state lawmakers with gifts to the farm lobby and the ethanol and agri-chemical industries--gifts that further undermine the legislation's purported environmental benefits.

Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, two of the environmentalists' corporate enemies, now stand to profit handsomely from the Waxman-Markey bill's cap-and-trade scheme aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of slowing the shift in climate [Timothy P. Carney, "Pelosi Buys Off Agri-Business to Advance Climate Bill," Washington Examiner, 2009.06.26].

Where's a modern hippie to put his allegiances? ACESA is supposed to fight climate change and wasteful energy practices. But to get it passed, we have to offer goodies to the ag-industrial complex, like...

1. not counting deforestation to grow more food overseas in the indirect cost of ethanol;
2. giving USDA instead of EPA the power to determine what activities farmers can count as saleable offsets under cap-and-trade (the problem, says Carney: Big Ag has a lot more influence over USDA);
3. boosting chemical herbicide use, since controlling weeds by tilling releases more carbon dioxide.

Now that last one is tricky: no-till farming does lots of good, such as preventing soil erosion, reducing run-off that pollutes nearby streams and lakes, and making earthworks happy (really! Scientific American says so!). But do we take that trade at the cost of more reliance on Roundup and other chemicals in our food?

Is ACESA a sell-out to Big Ag? If so, it apparently wasn't a big enough sell-out for our own farm-state Congresswoman, who voted against the bill last week. I'm still for taking big action to make America use energy more sensibly (the word Security isn't in the bill's title just for looks). Still, I'm eager to hear whether the debate in the Senate can clarify whether this bill does what it promises or whether it is just another sop to the corporate interests.

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Update 11:01 CDT: On the other hand, an eager reader forwards this Salon.com article by Joseph Romm, arguing that, for all its warts and weaknesses, ACESA is still the right start toward clean energy. The original 1963 Clean Air Act, Romm notes, was also far from good enough, but it "established a framework" for future improvements. Romm makes the big-picture argument for ACESA:

The key to framing a win on this bill is to portray it -- accurately -- as the single most important vote a member will ever cast. If we fail to stop catastrophic global warming, future generations will not care what we have done on issues like health care, the deficit and Iraq. If we fail to stop massive sea level rise, widespread desertification, and 10-degrees-Fahrenheit warming over much of the inland U.S. -- all of which we face on our current emissions path -- then every person who voted against this bill will be vilified by history [Joseph Romm, "One Brief Shining Moment for Clean Energy," Salon.com, 2009.06.27].

Kloucek Promises Legislative Discussion of Chicoine-Monsanto Deal

Sibby and the Mitchell Republic bring us this story first; that Sioux Falls paper and DWC come toodling after: State Senator Frank Kloucek (D-19/Scotland) is proposing legislation to put some serious limitations and oversight on the ability of our university presidents to serve as highly paid corporate board members. Senator Kloucek is responding specifically to SDSU president David Chicoine's appointment to the Monsanto corporate board and the mondo bucks he'll get for that gig ($400K in cash and stock options, $80K more than he makes as SDSU president).

Kloucek's concerns sound very much like criticism we've heard from the SDSU Collegian and from this very blog: Big Ag buying influence, threat to public perception of the quality and independence of SDSU research, etc.:

“It’s just totally inappropriate to give that money to an individual rather than to the university for research,” Kloucek said. “It appears pretty clear-cut that they’re trying to buy influence at the university by buying influence with the president.”

...“There will be at least one bill,” Kloucek said. “I just think it’s better … to make it clear the we’re not in that kind of game at South Dakota.”

The appointment of Chicoine to the Monsanto board negatively affects the credibility of the university, Kloucek said, since crop research reports from SDSU could easily be assumed as skewed.

“This research must not be tainted in any way, shape or form and this certainly taints that research,” Kloucek said. “It … jeopardizes the integrity because it makes it look like we’re in the hip pocket of Monsanto” [Austin Kaus, "Senator to Regents: Fix SDSU Conflict," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2009.06.19].

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to reason that if a guy has two bosses, and Boss M pays more than Boss S, then when push comes to shove, Boss M will probably have more pull. (Remember the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.) Of course, Dr. Chicoine, who has a Ph.D. in economics, doesn't see it that way:

"My value to them comes as an economist," [Chicoine] said. "It comes from independence.

"If you don't perform to the criteria that is required for your appointment as an independent member, your appointment is not maintained. If you're not fulfilling your independent director's business, you'd be lacking of integrity, and you're of no value either to the company or to your own profession."

..."I'm in compliance with regents policy," he said. "It is standard for the industry. There is a disclosure process and transparency process in place in this state and every other state for presidents serving in this regard. So I'm comfortable with it" [Steve Young, "College–Corporate Links Targeted," that Sioux Falls paper, 2009.06.21].

Kloucek's fellow Democratic Catholic farmer (and my neighbor!) Senator Gerald Lange (D-8/Madison) isn't comfortable with it:

"I see a conflict," Lange said. "So, yes, I think Frank's onto something. I would support any bill he brought on the issue" [Young, 2009.06.21].

Strangely, the main blog voice from the seat of Monsanto's purchased power in South Dakota finds it more important to hurl personal insults at Kloucek (and surely, shortly, at Lange) than to address the actual issue:

Frnak [sic] Kloucek is proposing legislation.

Good for Frank. He can propose. Too bad it’s likely misspelled, and written in crayon... [Pat Powers, "Monsanto Job... Legislation to Be Utterly Ignored, Considering the Source," Dakota War College, 2009.06.20].

(I wonder if the Munsterman campaign Powers manages will be relying on such playground rhetoric. Powers could take a lesson in class from Kloucek, who criticizes the Chicoine–Monsanto deal without any such demeaning and irrelevant personal attacks.)

Should a university president, as Kloucek tells Young, "be living, breathing and eating SDSU 24 hours a day, seven days a week"? I'll grant a guy a sabbath... but I'll also note that DSU expects me to put DSU first, and I'm just a lowly graduate assistant. My contract explicitly forbids me from taking other full-time employment. That doesn't restrict me from serving on a corporate board (and I'll certainly consider offers to attend a few meetings for $400K a year... or even $40K a year!), but it does set a threshold at which DSU would consider me not to be putting sufficient emphasis on my research and teaching.

Public discussion of a similar threshold for our state university presidents is a fine idea. Senator Kloucek is to be commended for his willingness to raise this issue in Pierre.

National Animal ID Favors Corporate Feedlots over Independent Ranchers

An eager reader draws my attention to the National Animal Identification System, a proposal to tag all of America's livestock to prevent diseases like mad cow. The proposed USDA program has been meeting with nearly unanimous disapproval from ranchers at USDA listening sessions this month. At the Rapid City meeting last week, Newcastle, Wyoming, rancher Donley Darnell said the program won't do what's intended: "USDA’s assertions that NAIS will provide benefits for animal health are not supported, and actually contradict basic scientific principles. Disease must be addressed on a species-specific basis, with an understanding of the causes of the different diseases and the ways the diseases are transmitted."

Alan Guebert at the Mitchell Daily Republic notes that NAIS won't stop disease, but only track it after the fact... and make it easier to sue the ranchers who raised the bad beef.

State Representative Betty Olson said the cost of the radio frequency ID tags NAIS would use could put smaller producers out of business. Those costs would also include access fees for privately run databases and the cost of replacing independent tagging systems that ranchers have already adopted but which wouldn't comply with the requirements of the new program.

If you think this program sounds like a way for the big factory farms to gain an advantage over the independent operators, you're right. Here's another advantage that the big industry lobbyists want: big feedlots would get to follow different rules. According to Daily Yonder's Richard Oswald, the producers with thousands of cows crammed into CAFOs (exactly the conditions that foster more disease) don't have to identify individual animals; one ID number can cover the entire lot. Small operators and free-rangers have to have a unique tag for each animal. So if I get this, my neighbor who has maybe a hundred head moseying about his pasture could pay more for tagging their cattle than Rick Millner up in Veblen, who crowds 12,000-some head (and sometimes a couple dozen illegal immigrant employees) onto two feedlots.

Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro to the rescue, maybe: DeLauro, who chairs the House Ag, Rural Development, and FDA appropriations subcommittee, has stripped funding for NAIS from the 2010 spending bill, saying she wants USDA to carry out its listening sessions first and put together a clear plan on how to make such a system work. (Note: DeLauro is a Democrat, cutting funding for a government program that interferes with the free market.) The program's not dead, but it's getting some necessary attention.

President Obama's Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack asked for the extra listening sessions to get input from livestock producers, and he's getting more than an earful. Let's hope he really listens and turns the USDA's attention to real solutions that don't favor the corporate agenda.

Gee, none of this would be an issue if we had more small farmers, raised more grass-fed livestock, and bought more food locally, would it?

Conscience or Crony? SDSU's Chicoine Joins Monsanto Board

As I catch up with a week's worth of local papers, I read that SDSU president Dr. David Chicoine has been appointed to the Monsanto board of directors. Dr. Chicoine joins executives from such august firms as McDonald's, Edward Jones, and Lockheed Martin.

Oddly missing from the bridge crew of this particular dreadnought of the vast ag-industrial complex: any directors with apparent background in public food policy, local sustainability, or environmental issues.

The Monsanto news release says that Dr. Chicoine will serve on two committees: Science & Technology, and Public Policy & Corporate Resposibility. I'd like to think that Dr. Chicoine could bring a healthy perspective as an academic and a South Dakotan on the importance of supporting small independent farms, organic farming techniques, and crop diversity. However, I suspect you don't get on the Monsanto board without being a believer the family-farm-killing, bigger-is-better corporate mindset. Dr. Chicoine, feel free to surprise me.

Gov't Helps GM, Chrysler; Ford Helps You!

Auto news #3: while GM and Chrysler cling to government life support, Ford has enough fight left in it to help customers through the recession. Ford just announced that if you buy a new Ford between now and June 1 and then lose your job, the company will cover your car payment, up to $700 a month, for a year.

A commenter noted yesterday that I paint plenty broadly when it comes to portraying corporations as evil. Point well taken. Ford surely has its bottom-line reasons for offering what is essentially private unemployment insurance. They are following a plan similar to one that helped Hyundai avoid the huge sales losses that pretty much every other automaker has experienced so far this year. But I will grant that Ford is recognizing that social responsibility and fiscal responsibility go hand in hand. "You help us, we'll help you," Ford is saying. "We're all in this together."

Update 11:35 CDT: GM's in, too! New CEO Fritz Henderson says GM will cover up to nine $500 payments for laid-off customers.

AIG Contractually Bound to Pay Exec Bonuses? What Do Pensioners Think?

AIG is about to funnel $165 million of our $170 billion in life support into executive bonuses (boni? if only!). The corporate lawyers plead that is contractually bound to pay the bonuses to "the best and brightest talent" that has run the company into 80% government ownership.

These are probably the same lawyers arguing that AIG has no obligation to the pension funds that lost money thanks to AIG's risk-taking, fishy books, and assurances that they wouldn't lose big on the subprime crisis. (Also suing AIG: New Orleans, Ontario Teachers, Canada.) Their lawyer brethren have certainly won the right for corporations like United Airlines to default on pensions for their rank-and-file employees, and pensions are certainly a contractual obligation. Defaulting on or even simply "deferring" some executive benefits until those executives do something other than turning the global economy into a Ponzi scheme shouldn't be a problem.

83% of Big Corporations Dodge Taxes Offshore

AP reports that 83 of America's biggest 100 corporations evade taxes with offshore tax havens. Some of those companies, like Citigroup, have gotten federal bailout money.

Funny: I doubt 83% of the working people I know have similar opportunities to avoid paying their fair share of the price of society.

The GAO report looked at "countries that maintain low or no taxes." I wonder if, in Citigroup's case, they included South Dakota in that group....

Some of My Favorite Businesspeople Are Fairies...

With so much to read, it sometimes takes me a couple days to find blogospheric gems like this from my South Dakota colleague Professor Blanchard (who gets to do SDPB's election night panel tonight! I'm so envious!). In explaining his vote in favor of Amendment H on repealing constitutional limitations on corporations, Dr. Blanchard says this:

My Keloland colleagues Todd Epp and Cory Heidelberger don't like corporations. They think all our stuff should be provided free of charge by fairies [Ken Blanchard, "Alphabet Soup Ballot Picks, South Dakota Politics, 2008.11.02].

Professor Blanchard is absolutely right. It would be a spectacular improvement in our standard of living if fairies provided all of our stuff free of charge. We'd all have more time to read great books (and Dr. Blanchard's blog), rake leaves, explore space, and vote!

Unfortunately, Fairies Local 802 remains on strike against us skeptical humans. So until we can work out a deal with Tinkerbell and Associates, we'll have to settle for goods and services from corporations, whose power we can hope to at least check to permit the continued growth and prosperity of small local businesses.

Two-Thirds of Corporations Pay No Income Tax

No wonder South Dakota's "No Income Tax!" slogan doesn't work: the majority of corporations already avoid paying any income tax. Wednesday's MDL ran the AP story in print on page 11; the NYTimes offers this version online:

Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The study covers 1.3 million corporations of all sizes, most of them small, with a collective $2.5 trillion in sales. It includes foreign corporations that do business in the United States.

Among foreign corporations, a slightly higher percentage, 68 percent, did not pay taxes during the period covered — compared with 66 percent for United States corporations. Even with these numbers, corporate tax receipts have risen sharply as a percentage of federal revenue in recent years [Lynnley Browning, "Study Tallies Corporations Not Paying Income Tax," New York Times, 2008.08.12].

Two-thirds of corporations, foreign and domestic, are already the pleasure of avoiding corporate income tax. Saying "Move to South Dakota, pay no income tax!" is like saying, "Come to South Dakota, eat at Applebees!" It's just not a significant competitive advantage.

As an anti-plutocrat, I am at least pleased to see that bigger corporations are more likely than smaller ones to pick up some of the tab for the benefits of good government that supports their operations:

In 2005, one in four large United States corporations paid no taxes on revenue of $1.1 trillion, compared with 66 percent in the overall pool. Large corporations are those with at least $250 million in assets or annual sales of at least $50 million [Browning].

The Wall Street Journal rightly points out that some of these corporations, like American Airlines and General Motors, avoided corporate taxes through the "clever tax dodge" of losing money. Point well taken. If you don't make any money, you don't have a fair share to pay... or at least that's how it should work under a rational tax system, unlike South Dakota's property tax system.

WSJ also notes that U.S. corporate tax rates are actually the second highest in the world, behind only Japan, but we still take in less revenue:

The average European nation has tax rates on corporate income 10 percentage points lower than the U.S., but those countries on average raise 50% more as a share of GDP in corporate taxes than does the U.S., according to a 2007 study by the Treasury Department. Ireland with its 12.5% rate captures a higher share of its GDP (3.4%) in corporate taxes than the U.S. does (2.5%) with its 39.3% rate [editorial, "America the Uncompetitive," Wall Street Journal, 2008.08.15, p. A14].

Maybe South Dakota could stand to be a little more like Ireland: impose a simple, fair corporate income tax, boost revenues, and thus be able to provide corporations and actual human citizens better infrastructure and other services to support their daily activities.

Unlike Sibby, Corporations Driven by Profit, Not Philosophy

I'm always tickled to make Sibby's headlines. I hesitate to respond, though, since I know a lot of my readers may ask, "What the heck are they talking about?" or, more likely, "Who cares?"

But Sibby is just so wrong this time, I must indulge. Sibby, my response follows. But for those of you who don't care for our little blog-world back-and-forth, here: watch a bit of the cultural bedrock of my own secular humanism, Star Trek (see this episode synopsis for context):



Now Sibby, do you really believe that the problem Naomi Klein points to (and that John W. Whitehead and I amplify is "certain business leaders who adhere to the secular humanist worldview"? No, the problem is that those business leaders don't give a tenth of the damn that you do about philosophy. Those CEOs are not the liberal patsies you envision strolling fuzzyheadedly about Harvard Yard advocating Marxism and denying Christian professors tenure. Those CEOs were too busy treating college as vo-tech for MBAs to even notice the secular humanism the liberal arts crowd espouses.

Klein says American corporations are developing and promoting technology that helps China oppress its people and that will help other governments, including our own, take away citizen liberties. You can't pin that problem on secular humanism or any other worldview windmill you care to tilt at. Corporations have no worldview. They don't value human life the way either Christians like you or secular humanists like me do. They don't believe in God's salvation or man's inherent goodness. Corporations, these artifical entities that our courts blasphemously endow with personhood, are driven by profit, period. Not patriotism, not religion, not truth, nothing but profit.

I would suggest that conscientious secular humanists are as interested as conscientious Christians in fighting human rights abuses in China (and everywhere else), and that both my people and yours are more interested in standing against totalitarianism than the corporations and free-market fundamentalists who say we can't afford to upset the world economy. Don't be fooled: those CEOs defending free trade with China aren't motivated by principle; they're motivated by the very selfish, materialist desire to keep their access to a market of 1.3 billion well-controlled Chinese workers and consumers.

Corporations profit from totalitarianism. That's not secular humanism. That's exactly what I called it yesterday: amoral materialism.