Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation!
val...@votenader.org
By Ralph Nader
If you work for a corporation, ask your own employer to support
Taxpayer Appreciation Day. (We?ve included contact information at the
end of the article.)
Take Action Now! April 15 is just around the corner. Please let us know
what action you?ve taken and what type of response you receive at
tax...@votenader.org
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that April 15th of each
year be designated Taxpayer Appreciation Day, a day when corporations
receiving taxpayer subsidies, bailouts, and other forms of corporate
welfare can express their thanks to the citizens who provide them.
Though it may not be evident, quite a few industries -- and the profits
they generate -- can be traced back to taxpayer-financed programs whose
fruits have been given away to (mostly) larger businesses.
Taxpayer dollars have often funded discoveries made by NASA, the
Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health and other
federal agencies. In many instances the rights to those discoveries were
later given away to companies that brag about them as though they were
the fruits of their own investments. Taxpayer dollars have played a
major role in the growth of the aviation and aerospace, biotechnology,
pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries -- to name only a few.
Though corporate America insists it must file yearly income taxes just
like everyone else, it is responsible for a sharply decreasing portion
of federal tax dollars -- despite record profits. Despite record
profits, corporate tax contributions to the federal budget have been
steadily declining for fifty years and now stand at a mere 7.4% of the
federal government income because of the loopholes they driven into our
tax laws. The average citizen pays more than four to five times that in
federal income tax revenues (with the single exception of payroll
taxes).
Clearly corporations that believe they are self-reliant are often, in
fact, dependent on taxpayer funds to maintain their financial viability.
The least they could do is thank us. Which is why we need something like
Taxpayer Appreciation Day. Consider the following:
General Electric bought RCA (which owned NBC) in the mid-1980s with
funds it was able to save by using an outrageous tax loophole passed by
Congress in 1981. That loophole allowed GE to pay no federal taxes on
three years of profits, totaling more than $6 billion dollars. It also
gave them a $125 million refund! That gave GE the money to buy RCA. GE
should arrange a media extravaganzas on NBC to say "Thank you,
taxpayers.? Pharmaceutical companies constantly ballyhoo their
discoveries in advertisements. What they don't tell us is that many of
the important nonredundant therapeutic drugs -- including most
anticancer drugs -- were developed, in whole or in part, with taxpayer
money and then given to them by the NIH and the Defense Department.
Bristol-Meyers Squibb, for example, controls the rights to Taxol, an
anticancer drug developed all the way through human clinical trials at
the National Institutes of Health with $31 million of taxpayer moneys.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertisements each year.
Perhaps they should consider a big "Thank You, Taxpayers" ad campaign
every April 15, if only to remind them where their drug research and
development subsidies come from.
Mining companies often receive vast sweetheart deals from taxpayers.
Under the 1872 Mining Act hard rock mining companies are allowed to
purchase mining rights to public land for only $5 an acre, no matter how
valuable the minerals on (or in) that land might be. A Canadian company
recently mined $9 billion in gold on federal land in Nevada after using
the Mining Act to purchase the mining rights to it for about $30,000.
Mining companies owe the taxpayers their gratitude.
Television broadcasters were given free license to use public airwaves
(worth around $70 billion) by a supine Congress in 1997. They too should
thank us. What about all those professional sports corporations that
play and profit in taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas? The owners and
players should thank the fans/taxpayers who -- in spite of their largess
-- still must pay through the nose for tickets. For years McDonalds
received taxpayer subsidies to promote its products overseas as part of
a foreign market access program. Now McDonalds is a ubiquitous brand
name worldwide, but has it ever thanked the taxpayers who underwrote its
efforts? Then there are the HMOs, hospitals, and defense contractors
that have had their legal fees reimbursed by the taxpayers when our
government prosecutes them for fraud or cost overruns. Those companies
have great public relations firms that can help them show us their
gratitude. Corporate America has taken too much from us for too long.
It's time it shows us a little bit of appreciation.
Corporate Contacts:
General Electric (NBC):
David Frail
Financial Communications
1--203-373-3387
david...@corporate.ge.com
Bristol-Meyers Squibb:
Peter R. Dolan, CEO
345 Park Avenue
New York, New York, USA 10154-0037
1-212-546-4000
peter...@bms.com
Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Paramount Pictures, Viacom Outdoor, Infinity, UPN, Spike TV, TV Land, CMT: Country Music Television, Comedy Central, Showtime, Blockbuster, and Simon & Schuster):
Sumner M. Redstone , Chairman and CEO
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
1-212-258-6000
(refused to provide email addresses)
Walt Disney Co. (ABC):
David Eisner, CEO
500 S. Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521 ABC, Inc.
1-818-460-7477
net...@abc.com
McDonalds USA:
Jim Cantalupo, Chairman and CEO
McDonald?s Plaza
Oak Brook, IL 60523
1-800-244-6227
Email on-line form.
Halliburton (Kellogg Brown & Root):
David J. Lesar, Chairman, President & CEO
5 Houston Center
1401 McKinney, Suite 2400
Houston, TX 77010
1-713-759-2600
community...@halliburton.com
In addition to these, pursue your favorite and let us know what they say!
--
the Communist Party USA. Marilyn
Clement is a co-organizer of the WILPF's Sister-to-Sister Cuba project. The
WILPF also issued a condemnation of Clinton's Cuba policy in 1998. Bernstein
was also quoted as saying she believes Cuba is the paradigm of democracy.
IFCO does not limit its activity to pro-Castro factions, though. Its
management maintains relationships with extremist Islamist groups as well.
Walker travels frequently to Iraq, usually alongside Ramsey Clark. IFCO is a
member of ANSWER Steering Committee.) Bernstein is a member of the American
Muslim Council's campaign against the use of secret evidence. Clement met
with Palestinians during a WILPF "solidarity" conference in May 2002. IFCO
is also a fiscal sponsor of the National Coalition to Protect Political
Freedom (NCPPF). The co-founder of NCPPF was the recently indicted terrorist
financier Sami Al-Arian.
However, NION's links with Muslim terrorists are not just indirect, through
IFCO. NION invited both Sami Al-Arian and Lynne Stewart to address their
October 6, 2002 rally in Central Park. Stewart was indicted for passing
messages on behalf of her terrorist client Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman.
One of the members of NION's Advisory Board, Abdeen Jabara, is a member of
the legal advisory board for the American Muslim Council. He is a past
president of the Arab-American Ant-Discrimination Committee, a board member
of William Kunstler's Center for Constitutional
famous runner
Ralph Nader is a multi millionare who hides his wealth from the public
while proclaiming he is just a common man. Truth is he is a republican
pawn put out there to keep the dems from gaining power again.
val...@votenader.org wrote in message news:<708c0757...@host-69-48-73-244.roc.choiceone.net>...
> Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation!
> By Ralph "the hippocrit" Nader
>
> <snip more lies>
famous runner
quietly amassing a fortune worth well over several million dollars,
and hides it from the public while proclaiming to be "a common man".
The guy is a lieing piece of garbage. If not for him GWB wouldn't even
be in the white house. Ralph Nader is a pawn of the republican party,
kept around for the sole purpose of syphoning votes from the democrats
to keep Bush and the repubs in the white house. Nader is a filthy
republican whore.
valeries...@dontvotenader.org wrote in message news:<708c0757...@host-69-48-73-244.roc.choiceone.net>...
> Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation!
> By Ralph "the hippocrit" Nader
>
> If you work for a corporation, ask your own employer to support
> Taxpayer <snip lies>
dinkmeister
On 15 Apr 2004 19:52:36 -0700, famous runner wrote:
:Fuck you. If not for you arseholes GWB wouldn't be in the white house.
max
to sway it to the little w if he is such an idiot. There are enough voters
who believed in him to make it that tight a race. Buying the Supreme court
wasn't really a problem as they are on the payroll anyway.
I didn't vote for and never would vote for Bush but, unfortunately there
were enough people to get him in.
The interesting thing is, after showing his stuff, can he fool the people
again?
max
famous runner
> So let me ask you a question. How come the race was close enough for Nader
> to sway it to the little w if he is such an idiot. There are enough voters
> who believed in him to make it that tight a race. Buying the Supreme court
> wasn't really a problem as they are on the payroll anyway.
I don't see a question in there. He is a deceitful con artist, so
maybe he's not an idiot. However enough people HAVE seen through him
now, because they even dropped his party affiliation. He's just a
hired pawn for the republican party.
> I didn't vote for and never would vote for Bush but, unfortunately there
> were enough people to get him in.
No there weren't, he was appointed, not voted in.
> The interesting thing is, after showing his stuff, can he fool the people
> again?
> max
Absolutely not.
PiobBear
have Bush in the White House in the first place.
Anyone who votes for Nader is, for all practical purposes, voting for Bush's
reelection, and is personally responsible for the results of their actions.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0407-12.htm
<val...@votenader.org> wrote in message
news:708c0757...@host-69-48-73-244.roc.choiceone.net...
famous runner
> gwb is a fucking retard and so is everyone that voted him in..
Will you marry me?
.
.
Bruce Morgen
Ralph Nader is an egomanical
cult leader whose participation
in presidential politics gives
George W. Bush his only chance
of winning a second disastrous
term of anal-raping our country
and world on behalf of the
whacky ideologues and corporate
profiteers who hold his
marionette strings. Shame on
Mr. Nader for indulging in the
poltical equivalent of vanity
publishing to the detriment of
all concerned, and shame on you
for pimping his candidacy on
this utterly weird assemblage
of unrelated newsgroups!
val...@votenader.org wrote:
................................................................
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nade...@hotmail.com
Buck
"dinkmeister" <di...@yadda.com> wrote in message
news:qvaxlnqqnpbz.h...@news.mi.comcast.giganews.com...
Buck
"famous runner" <eattm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:de25d61b.04041...@posting.google.com...
Buck
"." <nader...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7de33549.04041...@posting.google.com...
.
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