Free Lunch from Government Handouts to the Rich
Who Will Bail Out the American Taxpayer?
Dec 19, 2008
In the wake of 9/11 the US Senate voted 99-1 to provide funds for the American airline industry. The lone Senator voting no was Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois.Senator Fitzgerald is someone David Cay Johnston should know.
Senator Fitzgerald asked on the Senate floor: “Who will bail out the American taxpayer?” No one answered his question then, and it is a good question now, given the government’s current answer to the current economic woes of the country.
The current approach is to blatantly take nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money and hand it over to people who mismanaged money and businesses badly. It would seem the answer to Senator Fitzgerald’s question from the Washington establishment is: “Who cares?”
Free Lunch: The Book
Over the years, the handing over of government money to the wealthy has been much more subtle and stealthy. David Cay Johnston exposes the subsidies to the rich and super rich from the government in his book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).
Mr. Johnston has had a long and distinguished career as an investigative journalist. He began his newspaper career in 1968 and for the next 40 years worked at a succession of newspapers around the country investigating the wrongly convicted, police abuses, television news manipulations and tax abuses.
He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 while working at the New York Times "for his penetrating and enterprising reporting that exposed loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, which was instrumental in bringing about reforms." Free Lunch is his second book, the first being: Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everyone Else.
Who Eats Well for Free
Free Lunch gives insight into the manipulation of government to build the wealth of some of America’s best known individual and corporate names:
- Warren Buffet
- Cabela’s
- Wal-Mart
- George Steinbrenner
- Enron
- Bass Pro and more
Just as important, he explains how government policy transfers wealth from the many to the few in industries around the country as varied as golf courses and health care.
The Overseas Job Drain
Johnston explains the job drain in America to overseas. That job drain is publicly attributed to lower overseas labor costs. The reality is much more complex, and is the result of government policies that significantly lower American companies’ tax liabilities when they produce overseas and ship here. These hidden breaks are the result of US policy, and the real culprit in the job losses here in America has been the American government.
In Free Lunch, the real underpinnings of the current economic crisis (link) can be found. The Washington policy to support the subsidies to the wealthiest Americans has drained the ability of most Americans to sustain normal expenses like mortgage and car payments. The seeds of a solution can be found in Free Lunch as well.
Not Only Jobs, Technology Too
As alarming as that is, it is more alarming to read about how cavalierly American technology, vital to our national defense, has been transferred to China. The American government now imports specialized magnets for use in much sophisticated weaponry from the Chinese. These magnets were developed in America.
Free Lunch should be mandatory reading for everyone in the Obama Administration and for every voter in the month before every election at every level of government. After reading Free Lunch, every voter should ask each of their representatives Senator Fitzgerald’s question.
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