http://www.jimhightower.com/air/read.asp?id=11607
WHAT'S BEHIND THE "JOBS CREATION" ACT?
2/17/2005
Just when you think you've bottomed out on the level of cynicism it's
possible to have toward Washington's constant kowtowing to the monied
interests -- along comes the "American Jobs Creation Act."
These days, whenever the White House and congress put a
positive-sounding title on a piece of legislation, you can bet that
the law itself does the exact opposite of what the title so gloriously
proclaims.
The American Jobs Creation Act, pushed by George W and enacted last
fall, does not create a single job.
Instead, it's a massive multibillion-dollar tax giveaway to global
corporations.
Through this law's "homeland investment" loophole, corporations
operating abroad are allowed to have some $400 billion in foreign
profits taxed at the bargain-basement rate of only 5.25 percent,
rather than the normal rate of 35 percent.
To pass this gargantuan boondoggle for some of the richest
corporations in the world, Bush and his congressional cohorts had to
cloak it as an economic development program, promising that it would
prompt a surge of new investments all across our land and create
hundreds-of-thousands of new jobs for U.S. workers.
They lied.
Instead of building new factories or producing new products, thus
creating new jobs, such corporations as Hewlett Packard, Proctor &
Gamble, Pfizer, GE, and ExxonMobil are using the billions they get
from this tax windfall to buy out their competitors, shore up their
bottom lines, or simply finance their existing operations.
For example, Hewlett-Packard, which lobbied heavily for the tax break,
now says that far from hiring more workers, it plans to reduce its
American workforce.
Likewise, Oracle Corporation says it will use its windfall to help pay
for its recent takeover of its rival, PeopleSoft -- a takeover that
will cut 5,000 jobs.
Beware of corporate thieves lurking behind noble-sounding legislative
titles -- the grander the title, the greater the theft.
Source:
"Hitting the Tax-Break Jackpot," New York Times, Februrary 1, 2005.
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Mornin' coffee with Jim Hightower.
Harry
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