Fantastically Stupid Projects By Republicans to Please Their Corporate Masters

The narrative that there isn’t enough money isn’t true. In state after state, legislatures are able to find hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on the whims of the rich. 

By Allison Kilkenny, AlterNet
Posted on May 25, 2011

As thousands of Americans protest the budget cuts and austerity measures being unleashed on their communities by their elected officials, states continue to issue tax breaks and deal out funding for an array of fantastically stupid projects.

1. Kentucky’s $43 million Bible theme park

In Kentucky, officials approved $43 million in tax breaks to complete a project for a Bible-themed amusement park. In addition to that subsidy, taxpayers may have to cough up another $11 million to improve a highway interchange near the site.

Gov. Steve Beshear (D) dismissed the concerns of separation of church and state hippies when he stated there’s nothing “remotely unconstitutional” about taxpayer dollars incentivizing the Ark park, unless you’re one of those extremists who take the “separation of church and state” part of the Constitution literally.

“The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion. They elected me governor to create jobs,” [said Beshear]. Daniel Phelps, a geologist and president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, called the governor’s support of the proposal “embarrassing for the state.”

It’s unclear how many jobs exactly The Ark Encounter amusement park will actually create, but it is obvious Kentucky badly needs funding in other areas. The state has gone through eight rounds of budget cuts over the past three years, including massive cuts to education (Kentucky is one of nine states that cut per-child spending by more than 10 percent), and a pay freeze for all teachers and state workers. The state also recently cut funding for Medicaid.

The bankrolling of a religious scheme occurs at a time when 16.9 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to Community Action Kentucky, a community-based agency that implements several government programs, but also partners with private entities to help lift people out of destitution. Additionally, 23 percent of all children in Kentucky under the age of 18 live in poverty.

As for any benefits the park might bring, other states aren’t convinced such endeavors are sound investments. Tennessee declined not to give tax breaks to a similar Bible park following concerns the project wasn’t a good use of taxpayer dollars.

2. Texas’s tax breaks for yacht owners

Then there’s the decision from the Texas House of Representatives to issue a tax break for its state’s Galtian overlords who wish to buy yachts costing $250,000 or more.

It was only last month that non-yacht-owning Texans held a daylong vigil outside the state Capitol in response to proposed massive budget cuts to healthcare and education that were called “historic.” Ultimately, the Legislature cut healthcare by about $10 billion and delayed any decision on Medicaid until the 2013 session so they can focus on the pressing matter of funding billionaires’ floating third homes.

3. Gov. Christie’s Money Pit

New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie, AKA the Fiscal Conservative Messiah, made a name for himself by slashing spending by eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding and going to war with public workers. Yet, Christie didn’t mind ponying up hundreds of millions of dollars in state dollars for the Xanadu Meadowlands money pit that has been in endless construction since 2003.

Originally a private venture, the Xanadu entertainment and shopping complex quickly fell behind schedule, motivating Gov. Christie, who previously expressed hesitancy at using public funds to save a private undertaking, to intervene. In July 2010, the governor announced it was time for the state to step in, and in the end, that decision would cost New Jersey taxpayers big time.

Named “the ugliest damn building in New Jersey and maybe America,” the $1.9 billion Xanadu Meadowlands complex – complete with indoor water park, skating rink, and 600-foot ski slope -- remains unfinished, and Christie recently announced the company that built the Mall of America intends to rescue the deteriorating project.

Part of the crappy deal Christie struck on behalf of New Jersey taxpayers includes the agreement to forfeit future sales tax revenue to developer Triple Five, a Canadian conglomerate that owns the 5.3-million-square-foot West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, and the 4.2-million-square-foot Mall of America in Minnesota.

4. Public funding of union-busting corporations

And then there’s the public funding of private companies that take preternatural pleasure in battling workers. For example, Boeing received a tax refund of $137 million from state and local governments after raking in $4 billion in pretax profits, according to Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First. South Carolina leadership initially lured Boeing across its borders to build the Dreamliner aircraft with the promise of a staggering $900 billion subsidy package and the use of a non-union plant, a move the National Labor Relations Board calls an illegal retaliation.

Much like in the instance of the Ark park debacle, Boeing claims it is a job creator, which should for some reason grant it special permissions to steamroll workers. Alas, such claims rarely hold up to scrutiny. South Carolina’s unemployment rate remains above the national average in a state with some of the country’s least generous jobless benefits. Meanwhile, thousands of residents are currently protesting officials’ plans to cut $700 million from the state’s Medicaid and education programs.

The official narrative that there isn’t enough money to go around simply isn’t true. That’s why in state after state, legislatures are able to find hundreds of millions of dollars for the pet projects of yacht-owners, and for the every whim and desire of their corporate masters.

The truth is that America’s vast resources aren’t being spent in an efficient manner. Officials throw money at big, glamorous-sounding Xanadu fantasies, or to bible-thumping constituents and strong-arming corporate cronies who make unfounded claims of trickle-down prosperity. Politicians do this in order to build monuments for their own legacies in a pathetic effort to obtain immortality, or to buy off the right players in attempts to seize power again in two, or four years, so they can prop up more extravagant headstones.

But in no way is this system meant to provide for the majority of American citizens. In fact, from what we see by examining these spectacularly stupid projects, the opposite is usually the case.

Big Oil's Free Ride

Monday, May 23, 2011 by OtherWords
Instead of working for the American people, many lawmakers are shilling for Big Oil.
by Kate Colarulli

Over Memorial Day weekend, tens of millions of Americans will take road trips, emptying their wallets at the pump.

The oil industry hardly needs the boost this year. Just in the first quarter of 2011, oil companies posted billions of dollars in profits. They're raking it in while working families are shelling out their earnings to pay at the pump. On top of those massive profits, the oil industry also benefits from tax breaks of $4 billion each year.

Outrageously, Big Oil believes that it somehow deserves this special treatment. ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva recently went as far as to call repealing oil industry tax breaks "un-American."

Adding insult to injury, lawmakers in the Senate have been unable to get the 60 votes they need to end these tax breaks. GOP leaders blocked altogether a recent attempt to bring up the issue for a vote in the House of Representatives. At a time when Americans are struggling to support their families, put food on the table, and fill up their gas tanks, giveaways to Big Oil make no sense.

As Congress continues to pass bills favorable to Big Oil — from accelerating the issue of off-shore drilling permits to shelling out oil industry tax breaks — we continue to see signs that our leaders are more interested in helping campaign contributors than average Americans.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, House members who voted to continue oil subsidies received, on average, five times more money in 2010 from oil and gas interests. Instead of working for the American people, many of these members of Congress are shilling for Big Oil.

Public support for ending oil industry subsidies is overwhelming. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 74 percent of voters support eliminating oil company tax breaks. It's clear that we need leaders who will stand up to Big Oil and support the American people's call to eliminate its tax loopholes.

Tax Breaks Are Not Sufficient to Restore Employment

by Dean Baker and Sarita Gupta - Friday, October 1, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

There is a depressing complicity among much of the political leadership about the recession. Many politicians seem prepared to accept that we will have sky-high rates of unemployment for the indefinite future. Projections from the Congressional Budget Office and other authoritative forecasts show the situation improving little over the next few years.

At the moment, this means 15 million people unemployed, 9 million under-employed and millions of other workers who don't even get counted because they have given up hope of finding a job and stopped looking. It is outrageous that we have this situation today. Allowing high unemployment to continue for years into the future is unacceptable.

We know how to get the unemployment rate down.

Part of the story should include programs like the Local Jobs for America Act that will save and create jobs in areas of high unemployment. This will be a way to give young people a decent start to their working careers in areas like Detroit where the youth unemployment rate is close to 50 percent. These workers can help maintain and clean-up parks, schools, and other public facilities.

We should also build on the successful parts of President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, by increasing their size. The ARRA includes tax credits that will provide incentive to weatherize hundreds of thousands of homes. The target should be weatherizing millions of homes. This puts people to work in the short-run and reduces energy use in the long-run.

We also need to do much more to improve the country's infrastructure. For example, modernizing the electric grid would both make the grid more efficient and also reduce the number of people who lose power every time we have a storm. We also need to modernize our transportation system, most obviously by increasing the use of mass transit and building the type of high-speed trains that have been operating in Europe and Japan for 40 years. The $50 billion the President has recently proposed for infrastructure spending is a good first step, but more can be done.

This is an affordable agenda. In the short-term, the deficits are clearly not a problem. Investors from around the world are lending their money to the United States at extremely low interest rates. In other words, the people with big money on the line are not worried that the U.S. government is going bankrupt.

This is for good reason. In the short-term, spending from the government is making up for the lack of spending from the private sector. The reason that so many people are unemployed is that spending by the private sector plummeted after the collapse of the housing bubble. Construction spending has been cut by more than half. Consumption spending is also a way down, as homeowners who lost trillions of dollars of housing equity realize that they must now save more. Spending to create jobs will simply be filling the hole left by these cutbacks, making the economy stronger, not weaker. Leaving people who want to work without jobs is simply a waste from an economic standpoint.

Over the longer term, we will likely need more revenue. The best place to look for money is the root of the crisis: Wall Street. A modest tax on Wall Street financial speculation can raise an enormous amount of money, by some calculations more than $150 billion a year or more than $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

This tax would have very little impact on the sort of investing that middle class people do to save for college or retirement, but it would impose a substantial cost on fast-paced financial speculation. The money raised would go a long way toward funding a serious jobs agenda.

With the unemployment rate more than double its pre-recession level, jobs should be at the top of the national political agenda. Tens of millions of people are suffering each month that the downturn persists and the pain gets worse over time. What makes the situation more infuriating is that this crisis was entirely preventable if the people running economic policy had done their job. In the same way, we can get the unemployment rate down to more reasonable levels if Congress will just do its job.