Commentary: Stop the Corporate Bailouts

Ohio residents are tired of corporate welfare. They’re tired of politicians bailing out major corporations with their tax dollars. Unfortunately, however, the 2023 Piglet Book released by the Buckeye Institute this week prove that this sad reality is happening more often than ever.

Over $3 million on marketing for the state’s wine grape growers.  Nearly $4 million on grants for sporting events. Over $160 million on “earmarks” — spending provisions that secretly award companies that don’t have to go through the government’s competitive and thorough vetting process large rewards. Ohio is doing all of this on the taxpayers’ dime. Frankly, that’s unacceptable.

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Senate Poised to Approve Billions for Well-Heeled Computer Chipmakers

Computer mother board

The Democrat-led Senate is poised to approve as early as Tuesday a China security bill that will earmark billions in taxpayer subsidies to the well-heeled computer chip-making industry, which saw record profits last year and doled out millions in lobbying fees and political donations.

The $54 billion in subsidies for chipmakers inside the 1,445-page U.S. Innovation and Competition Act has some seeing an unnecessary corporate welfare program that could benefit such iconic brands as Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and increase the government’s reach over free market business.

“This bill will increase government’s influence over the private sector while weakening America by increasing our debt,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), one of the legislation’s fiercest critics. “Democrats love spending other people’s money and growing government. I have no idea why any Republican would want to help them do that.”

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Amazon: The World’s Most Dangerous Crony Capitalist

Amazon

by Rick Manning   The bedrock of American commerce – and of the broader capitalist experiment – has always been competition.  If you can build a better mousetrap, invent a longer-lasting light bulb or more efficiently churn out widgets (or in this case, clichés), odds are your endeavor will encounter success. It doesn’t…

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Tennessee Taxpayers Gave $1 Billion in Corporate Welfare Last Year

Bernstein

You, the taxpayers of Tennessee, helped give away nearly $1 billion in tax credits to corporations who set up shop here last year. State law, as it turns out, forbids you from finding out exactly what kind of return you’re getting on your investment. In other words, even though the…

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Tennessee Loses Money Spending $17,500 Per Job to Lure 1,000 AllianceBernstein Employees to Nashville from New York City

Tennessee Capital building

A $17.5 million tax incentive from the state of Tennessee to lure 1,000 jobs to Nashville–$17,500 per job—came at the expense of taxpayers to lure well-paid corporate executives when they already were drawn to the state’s other features like a favorable tax structure, experts say. The Tennessee Department of Economic…

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Tennessee Pastors Network President Dale Walker Decries ‘Big Liquor’s’ Property Tax Break

On the heels of Governor Haslam’s signing a law to formally exempt a certain type of property tax of the world-famous distillery Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey Company, among others, Tennessee Pastors Network President fired back, denouncing the move as another victory for ‘Big Liquor.’ “Tennessee Republicans, the party of Big Liquor, continue to insult…

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