Re: well.....been a thinkin about it -- WASHINGTON BOARD

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Date Posted: 22:09:18 06/26/02 Wed
Author: Grumpy�
Author Host/IP: 155-41.poccpe.cableone.net / 24.116.155.41
Subject: Re: well.....been a thinkin about it
In reply to: MJ 's message, "well.....been a thinkin about it" on 17:44:57 06/26/02 Wed

http://www.nomorefakenews.com/

"MONDAY, JUNE 24. Congressman Bernie Sanders makes a few points about welfare. That's corporate welfare, handed out by the US government, the "guardian" and dispenser of taxpayer money.

ADD: Sanders rates this welfare sum at $125 billion a year. Not what you would call chicken feed. Not what you would call a symbol of the free market.

ADD: Sanders focuses on a fed agency called the Export-Import Bank. The Bank is capable of doling out $15.5 billion a year in loans.

ADD: Some of the welfare recipients? Enron, Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, and United Technologies. They're not exactly wandering the streets looking for their next hot meal.

ADD: Sanders also points out that these and other welfare recipients are involved in cutting LOTS of jobs for their American employees. And they're giving their CEOs big-time gravy. IBM "gave its former CEO Lou Gerstner more than $260 million in stock options while it [IBM] was lining up for Ex-Im [Bank] handouts."

ADD: General Electric obtained $2.5 billion from the Bank in loans and loan guarantees. But GE, from 1975-95, slashed its employees rolls from 667,000 to 398,000.

ADD: GE was very out-front about its plans to cut its work force. Its CEO, Jack Welch, said, "Ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge." Meaning, GET THOSE HIGH-PAYING JOBS OUT OF THE US AND INTO A PLACE WHERE THEY LET YOU PAY PEOPLE A NICKEL A DAY.

ADD: Such policy, you might say, is GE's own business, but its own business also turns out to be taking money directly from the government. Free market? Hardly, Bubba.

ADD: General Motors has taken over $500 million in loans and loan guarantees from the Bank. Its US work force has been cut from 559,000 to 314,000.

ADD: Motorola has taken the same amount from the Bank. $500 million. Now only 56% of its work force is in the US.

ADD: Time magazine states that the five big winners in the corporate welfare sweepstakes over the last ten years have cut their employee rolls by 38 percent. That's a third of a million jobs destroyed.

ADD: The biggest corporate welfare mouth at the teat of the Ex-Im Bank, BOEING, has cut 100,000 jobs in the last ten years.

ADD: Then there's the China card. The Bank has given a Chinese steel mill $18 million to upgrade its factory, so it could dump cheap steel back into the US and undercut home-grown industry.

ADD: Boeing takes gobs of Bank money while it shifts jobs to China. The tail sections for the 737 are now being built in a factory in Xian, where all the employees labor for the Chinese military. It's a military-owned factory. In Kansas, the old Boeing employees who built that tail section are out of work.

ADD: The Bank guaranteed a loan of $3 million to GE so that welfare recipient could build a factory in Mexico, where cheap labor will assemble appliances that are then shipped back to the US for sale. 1500 people in Bloomington, Indiana, are out of a job because of that move.

ADD: Let's see. The government runs a Bank that puts US workers in the toilet. The CEOs get richer. And this government, which says it stands for freedom, wants our unqualified support."

C-Span broadcast a hearing in Congress on corporate offshore tax avoidance yesterday, spurred by the Stanley decision to pull up stakes and move their corporate headquarters to the Bahamas. The effect on shareholders here could be bad, and it's certainly bad for taxpayers.

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Re: well.....been a thinkin about it -- Normal, 02:52:49 06/27/02 Thu