Free Republic

"There are some, if you will, classical Republicans, and I don't want to be political here. The classical Republican approach is to say you know what makes America so great is our great corporations. And if we just clear the decks so that corporations can be more successful and give them more money, and make it easier for them to succeed. Well, then we will do even better on the world stage. I don't happen to subscribe to that traditional Republican caricature," Romney said. (h/t Andrew Kaczynski)

Duluth made history last week when it became the first city in the state to pass a resolution in support of a constitutional amendment that would essentially overturn a U.S. Supreme Court decision, namely Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. The court ruled in 2010 that corporations are entitled to the same constitutional rights as individual U.S. citizens. A majority of justices also concluded that political spending was a form of free speech and that corporations should be able to spend an unlimited sum of money to influence voters, without disclosing financial details of their activities. Although Duluth is...

Helena, Mont. (AP) -- The Montana Supreme Court is setting up a possible challenge to aspects of the high profile U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted political speech rights to corporations. The state court decided Friday to restore Montana's century-old ban on direct spending by corporations . . .

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas - Every day students in Texas public schools pledge allegiance to the flags of the United States and Texas. But when a teacher in a Rio Grande Valley high school assigned students to stand and pledge allegiance to the Mexican flag and sing Mexico's national anthem, one student refused. The resulting controversy has one East Texas lawmaker wanting changes in the state's curriculum on how culture and patriotism are taught in schools. 15-year-old Brenda Brinsdon entered her sophomore year at McAllen ISD's Achieve Early College High School just wanting to do well in her classes.

There is nothing more ironic than someone or something becoming the very thing that they hate. For Occupy Wall Street, they loathe corporations because they are "rich." Corporations also provide them with cheap laptops, smartphones, and wifi, but OWS cannot be bothered with nuance. But let's look at an actual definition of a corporation: Corporation, noun; definition: any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body. Why, that sounds exactly like Occupy Wall Street! They preach unity and they certainly are a group of people. But certainly those in OWS would argue that corporations have both money...

The Southern Nevada Health District has raided an organic farm picnic destroying the organic produce, which was classified by them as bio-hazard material. The raid at the highly regarded and reputable Quail Hollow Farm, which sits in the picturesque Moapa Valley of Southern Nevada took place place after a tip off of the event because some of the food was not ‘certified’ in the correct state.

BOSTON, November 7, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A lawsuit that could nullify the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has received the support of major U.S. corporations, who filed a brief opposing the law in federal court this week. A friend-of-the-court brief filed last Thursday in the case of Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services argues that DOMA, which protects marriage as between a man and a woman in federal law, imposes crippling burdens on employers. Seventy employers are represented in the brief, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Google, NIKE, Levi Strauss and Co., CBS, Aetna, Blue Cross...

Thirty companies paid no U.S. income tax 08-10: report Photo 12:52pm EDT By Kevin Drawbaugh (Reuters) - Thirty large and profitable U.S. corporations paid no income taxes in 2008 through 2010, said a study released on Thursday that arrives as Congress faces rising demands for tax reform, but seems unable or unwilling to act. Pepco Holdings Inc, a Washington, D.C.-area power company, had the lowest effective tax rate, at negative 57.6 percent, among the 280 Fortune 500 companies studied. The statutory U.S. corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, but over the 2008-2010...

Many corporations today are merely extensions of government. They devote much of their time and capital not to innovation or maximizing shareholder value or to efficiency, but to serving government mandates. It's a relationship far less symbiotic than parasitic, but in time the hosts seem to get used to it... Instead of finding and rewarding the best available talent - American companies hire the perfectly calibrated, Human Relations (does that name creep you out, too?) Department-approved number of Accredited Victims... ignoring experienced, older white males in favor of inexperienced non-white females. After all: white, traditional heterosexual men are surely guilty...

Several months ago, film critic Nell Minow – aka The Movie Mom-- presented a segment on “Roger Ebert Presents” about corporate villians where she noted that "the most frequent villian in movies is the American corporation." She added that many films, which are often made and distributed by corporations themselves, use corporations as their “villain of choice”. That’s definitely the case in the new thriller, “In Time,” which pits a lowly working class man against a group of rich fat cats. In the film’s alternate universe, time is the new form of currency. People pay for their morning coffee with...

Today, there are protests all over America that are targeting "the one percent" and all of the wealth and power that they have accumulated. Unfortunately, many of the solutions that these protesters are advocating simply will not work and will not lead to less wealth inequality. To understand this, you have to understand how we got to this point. Over the past several decades, our federal government has exploded in size and our large corporations have exploded in size. In fact, we have seen this pattern happen pretty much all over the world. Governments and corporations all over the...

Do Obama's big donors break his no-lobbyist pledge? CBS News President Obama's re-election campaign is pushing back against a New York Times report that suggests Mr. Obama may not be meeting his own standards when it comes to keeping corporate lobbyists out of his campaign.

The revolution will be corporate-sponsored! That’s according to Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street organizer who also happens to be an “business intelligence analyst” at a publicly traded company. On a limited-access email list shared by Occupy protesters, Schultz wrote of a ”Corporate Funded Revolution,” calling it “a revolutionary plan.” Despite protesters’ occupation of a New York City park and their stated goal of ending corporate influence — particularly of Wall Street — in government, e-mails emerged Monday showing Schultz and other anti-corporate organizers were a little more corporate than they like to let on.

For those who hate corporations.

Are the anti-Wall Street protestors demonstrating against themselves? The richest and most prominent Wall Street executives almost overwhelmingly supported and bankrolled Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. And on Wall Street, little distinction is made between liberal Democrats and avowedly socialist activist groups. The big banks financed ACORN. Although ACORN has disbanded in the wake of scandal, the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, formerly headed by White House Chief of Staff William Daley, continues to fund similar groups committed to undermining capitalism and debasing democracy. Goldman Sachs and other big financial institutions lobbied for Dodd-Frank, which institutionalizes the "too big to...

Okay, I lied. WILLIAM RIVERS PITT never made any pledge to divest his Trust Fund of any income derived from corporate sources. However, like a lot of other leftwing Trust Fund Kids, Pitt continues to slam the EVIL corporations from the comfort of his computer chair. The big difference between Pitt and the protesting Trust Fund Kids is that Pitt TALKS a good tale but as to actually attending these protests...Eh! He can't be bothered. Here is the latest momentous event recorded by Pitt on his Facebook Page: Humongous red-tailed hawk is roosting in a tree right outside my...

President Obama has not been particularly successful in fostering the creation of jobs. But he thinks he has found a way to pry open doors in the workplace for many of the unemployed, especially those who have been out of work for a long time. Mr. Obama’s jobs bill would prohibit employers from discriminating against job applicants because they are unemployed. Under the proposal, it would be “an unlawful employment practice” if a business with 15 or more employees refused to hire a person “because of the individual’s status as unemployed.” Unsuccessful job applicants could sue and recover damages for...

In a shocking representation of just how bad things are in Europe, the FT reports that major European industrial concern Siemens, pulled €500 million form a large French bank, which is not BNP and leaves just [SocGen|Credit Agricole] and deposited the money straight to the ECB. The implications of this are quite stunning, as it means that even European companies now refuse to work directly with their own banks, and somehow the ECB has become a direct lender/cash holder of only resort to private non-financial institutions!

Sarah Palin proposed eliminating all corporate taxes in her speech to the Iowa Tea Party today. This is HUGE. The ripple effect of putting this in place would affect a vast swath of corporate America, in addition to eliminating crony-capitalism. Consider for a moment all those that would be affected by such a policy. Corporate tax attorneys, CPA firms and countless tax department employees would lurch to a halt in their jobs. The focus of countless corporate controllers would shift from tax avoidance to net income maximization. Countless corporate lobbyists would be out of a job overnight. Their corporate benefactors...

A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit.The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers,...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Nearly one of every 10 midsized or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014, according to a new survey from a large benefits consultant. Towers Watson also found in a survey completed last month that an additional 20 percent of the companies are unsure about what they will do. Another big benefits consultant, Mercer, found in a June survey of large and smaller employers that 8 percent are either "likely" or "very likely" to end health benefits once the exchanges start. Employer-sponsored health insurance has long been...

Media cross-ownership ban restoredJuly 08, 2011 By Associated Press WASHINGTON - A federal Appeals Court has restored a long-standing ban that prevents media companies from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same market. The 3d US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission didn’t give the public adequate opportunity to comment on new rules that lifted the ban in the 20 largest media markets. The Appeals Court sent the rules back to the FCC to be rewritten. The so-called cross-ownership ban dates back to 1975 - a time when newspapers...

In doing further research on my constitutional inquiry into whether or not unions & corporations should have the same inalienable rights that I do as an individual, I have found a resolution introduced by a state senator in Washington that calls for a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations – and in turn unions – are not persons according to U.S. law. A statewide grassroots group in Washington wants to know what you think. I think that a constitutional amendment of any kind should be considered carefully. I hold the U.S. Constitution in a place of great esteem… and in my...

Several people have become interested in a quite controversial topic called "AGENDA 21." They have requested being on a ping list for this topic. While I do not have time to do a thorough treatment of this subject, nor am I in any way an expert, I am willing at least for a time,to ping people as I run across articles which might pertain to this concern. It might be good to start with an examination of just what it is or might be. To kick this discussion and exploration off,I did a Google search (just for fun) on "Agenda...

The reach of Citizens United v FEC just got longer, if only temporarily. Relying on the controversial ruling, a federal judge in Virginia threw out part of an indictment against two men accused of secretly reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton with corporate cash. Judge James Cacheris ruled that Citizens United established that corporations have a right to donate to political campaigns, as well as to spend their own money: A judge has ruled that the campaign finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional. …Cacheris says that under last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations...

Although the below image has been circulating the internet as a satirical warning for some time now, Dutch telco KPN recently announced that it's actually going to implement something like this due to declining revenue. The company stated that starting this summer it will be blocking chat-messaging applications such as WhatsApp (competes with SMS), VoIP services (competes with calls) and heavy streaming services. All these services will get their own price tag, just like is currently the case with calling and text messaging. The problem with that logic of course is that calling and SMS are actually different services that...

Many of America’s most powerful companies do not report how much they spend to influence elections and legislation. These companies contribute millions of dollars to powerful trade associations and to other politically active groups that are not required to report the sources of their funding. Those groups, in turn, spend the money on lobbying and other political activity. The Los Angeles Times reviewed how the 75 largest publicly traded companies in the energy, healthcare and financial services sectors disclose their political giving on their corporate websites.

Reporting from Washington— Despite mounting calls for greater transparency, only a few of the country's 75 leading energy, healthcare and financial services corporations fully disclose political spending, according to a review of company records and state and federal campaign finance reports. While complying with legal requirements to report direct donations to candidates, the vast majority of these companies — many of which are seeking legislative favors from the new Congress — do not reveal information even to their shareholders about support for politically active trade associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Groups such as the chamber, some of which...

Jon Stewart is right. While demonizing unions Conservatives all too often over look the total destruction that Corporations have waged on the American economy and the American Middle Class (see 4:49min video) I am not newcomer to the argument that Corporations are ungrateful, unpatriotic out of control entities that have abused America and the American people to maximize their profits. (see previous posts below) Everything that is wrong in America today can be blamed on an out-of-control corporate environment that will do anything and everything for the sake of the bottom line. Profit!—Alaphiah (source) *** America is bleeding. For decades,...

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that corporations have no right of personal privacy to prevent the disclosure of documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 8-0 opinion Tuesday that reversed an appeals court ruling in favor of AT&T. The outcome was notable for its unanimity, especially in view of recent criticism from liberal interest groups that the court tilts too far in favor of business. "The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend...

The American people are becoming increasingly angry about the extraordinary amount of power and influence that corporations have in the United States today. A new Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the size and influence of major corporations in the United States today. Not only that, the most recent Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index found that only 26 percent of Americans trust our financial system at this point. The mainstream media is acting as if this is a new phenomenon, but the truth is that a dislike of giant corporations goes all the way...

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring? Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat. More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically. The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last...

Last week President Obama decided to repair his strained relationship with business -- not by advocating permanent reductions in taxes and less regulation, but by interviewing a Clinton-era former Treasury official for a position as economic advisor. Obama's presidency has been torpedoed by his endemic hostility toward capitalism, and he imagines that the problem is one of perception that can be papered over with the appointment of a Wall Street insider. Just how out of touch is this guy? Week after week, Obama has used his bully pulpit to attack American corporations. Companies big and small are accused of everything...

In August, the state of Kentucky announced Mountain Valley Recycling was opening a 215,000-square-foot facility that would generate 360 jobs within two years. That state’s economic development arm was giving a $1 million performance-based tax incentive over a 5-year period through corporate income tax credits and wage assessments. Two months later, that same company brokered a deal with Michigan for a 280,000-square-foot facility that would generate 396 jobs. But Michigan offered a tax-incentive five times that of Kentucky's, paying $5.1 million over seven years. The question of whether the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s incentives are overly generous has been raised...

  The electorate’s repudiation of Barack Obama and his Congressional allies was not only a rejection of Big Government, but also of business elites who were buffeted from the downturn by political dealing at the expense of ordinary people.Unless Corporate America heeds the election results, it too will risk the wrath of an informed and energized public. Here are CEOs who must pay attention to what happened yesterday:Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler- Not only did Kindler (above) lead the charge of Big Pharma CEOs for ObamaCare, he actually got a multi-million dollar bonus from Pfizer for doing so. This is...

David Rosenberg Explains Why Corporations Are Rolling In Dough, And You're Not Joe Weisenthal Nov. 2, 2010, 9:59 AM David Rosenberg of Gluskin-Sheff explains why corporations are sitting pretty right now, and you're not. WHERE’S THE INCOME? Well, it is concentrated at the corporate level. Here is the story. Companies have no reason to hire or pay their workers more because they are sitting on so much idle capacity. So, cost-cutting and productivity gains manage to propel corporate bottom-line performance, hence acting as a critical antidote to lagging revenue growth. Remember, even at the business level, this has been a...

WASHINGTON - A Minnesota campaign law requiring disclosure of corporate donations is fast becoming a national model in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts in elections. Finding their elections awash in secret donations, other states are looking for a way to replicate Minnesota's law, which requires disclosure of funding sources for groups that spend on political advertising for or against a candidate.

ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than...

Corporate America to East Coast Elitists: Take a hike! That’s one way to interpret the fact that business recruiters now rank Penn State, Virginia Tech and Purdue among the top 25 schools that produce the most qualified college graduates, according to a Wall Street Journal study. Asked by the Journal to rate majors and schools that “best prepare students to land jobs that are satisfying, well-paid and have growth potential, . . . recruiters made clear they preferred big state schools over elite liberal arts schools, such as the Ivies.” The results showed that while recruiters still hire Ivy League...

Huge Debt Levels In “Cash-Rich” Corporate America By Rocky Vega 08/06/10 Alexandria, Virgina — For some time now pundits, and to some extent politicians, have been trumpeting the mountains of cash US corporations have sitting on the sidelines just waiting for ripe opportunity and that, in one fell swoop, could seemingly restore the economy. However, an article this week questions where the cash has actually coming from, and whether it’s as readily deployable as has been suggested. According to MarketWatch: “American companies are not in robust financial shape. Federal Reserve data show that their debts have been rising, not falling....

In what is little surprise to anyone who is not a tort lawyer or megalomaniac Senator, government researchers determined that runaway Toyotas were caused by driver errors. While Toyota was quick to say that the matter is not yet settled, Shout Bits is now prepared to state that when an accelerator is pushed to the floor and the brakes are not applied at all, an accident may ensue. That’s right, when the US Government did an independent study of crashed Toyotas, they found that in every instance the gas was to the floor and brake was unapplied. Naturally, all the...

Sen. Chuck Schumer is pushing hard to limit corporate campaign spending -- and to maximize his own campaign's take from corporations. But that hypocritical chutzpah is entirely fitting when it comes to the so-called DISCLOSE Act -- which is a naked effort to squelch the speech of Americans who might criticize Democrats in this year's campaign season. Democrats are trying to rewrite campaign-finance law to limit corporate (and grass-roots) spending on politics. And Schumer -- who faces no meaningful opposition this fall -- is looking to raise every buck he can from the folks he wants to crack down on....

If you’re like me, you might enjoy a cup of Starbucks’ coffee on a regular basis. My brother-in-law tells people that if they’d be interested in assassinating me, they simply need to be on the roof of the building across the street from the neighborhood Starbucks at precisely 7:00 am on any given morning. All jokes aside (I think?), I can’t help but to be “bombarded” by literature on Starbucks’ “Social Responsibility” program each time I visit. This kind of thing, more often referred to as corporate “sustainability” in the business environment, is becoming commonplace in today’s competitive consumer markets....

Corporate Bond Devastation Shows The Global Slowdown Is Coming Share Mike "Mish" Shedlock May 26, 2010, 12:05 PM The 30-year long bond is sitting just 3 basis points away from hitting a 3-handle and the yield on 5-year treasuries is 1.94 after hitting 2.60 in April. That is quite a reversal. Yield on the 10-year note is at 3.13% a price last seen a year ago. Meanwhile, Libor Shows Strain, Sales Dwindle, Spreads Soar Corporate bond sales are poised for their worst month in a decade, while relative yields are rising the most since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse, as...

The wave of corporate announcements of the special multimillion dollar charges to their income statements that will be necessary to account for the costs of the newly enacted healthcare legislation has sparked anger among Democrat leaders. Obama Administration Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke called the announcements “unpatriotic.” “Although these kinds of adjustments to company earnings may be required under Securities and Exchange regulations, there’s no need for them to be so public about it,” Locke complained. “If people start to think that the new law is more of a burden than a benefit they may turn against the President. So,...

Henry Waxman is peeved. He expects corporate America to swallow health-care reform without a peep of protest -- and, apparently, without revealing new costs to shareholders or the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last week, AT&T announced it will take an immediate $1 billion write-down thanks to a new tax in the health bill that will cause Caterpillar ($100 million) and Deere & Co. ($150 million), among other large employers, to do the same. The benefits consultancy Towers Watson estimates that the change may reduce corporate profits by as much as $14 billion over time. That's real money. For comparison: It's...

The real cost of health care reform, as recognized by the nation's business community, is just beginning to take shape. Bloomberg Business Week (picked up by Drudge) reports that SEC filings by such companies as AT&T, Caterpillar, AK Steel Holding, and 3M Co., reflect their anticipated costs of compliance with ObamaCare. Keep three things in mind: a.) these write-downs are not reflected in any CBO estimates of the cost of funding health care reform; b.) in order to protect stock prices, these companies have a huge incentive to understate the costs they actually face; and, c.) the true cost of...

Welcome to the world of "hope" and "change." Congressional Democrats are now lashing out at corporations that have the audacity to point out the massive costs that ObamaCare is going to inflict on them and are now summoning them to testify before Congress. Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak today announced that the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold a hearing on April 21, 2010, regarding claims by Caterpillar, Verizon, and Deere that provisions in the new health care reform law could adversely affect their company's ability to provide health insurance to their employees. These assertions...

As of late, especially with the question of the constitutionality of government mandated health care that we should look at how the SCOTUS makes its decisions. Constitutional law scholarship is divided into two camps. First, there are the originalists and textualists that believe the text of the Constitution, as it was originally understood, is controlling in most constitutional cases. Second, there are the followers of Supreme Court precedent, who follow the doctrine over the document and believe in a fairly robust theory of stare decisis in constitutional. Stare decisis is the legal principle by which judges are obliged to obey...