The Onion is Still Hiralious
And I quote:
Today is a typical day for 51-year-old J. Gordon Grantham III, as he drives his luxury-model Cadillac to a favorite restaurant to meet with potential investors. Over a lunch of $45 porterhouse steaks, a deal is brokered, and, using his company credit card, Grantham picks up the tab.
At first glance, this scenario might not seem terribly unusual. But J. Gordon Grantham III is one of the nation’s approximately 2.6 million recipients of corporate welfare.
Grantham, CEO of Global Tetrahedron Consolidated, one of the world’s largest petrochemical-manufacturing concerns, receives more than $850 million a year from the federal government in the form of tax breaks, incentives, grants and no-interest loans.
Defenders of Grantham’s welfare-queen lifestyle say people like him wouldn’t be able to survive without a lifeline of public aid. But many Americans are growing tired of what they view as abuses of the system. To them, Grantham and corporate-welfare recipients like him are living high on the public dole, growing fat on the handouts of others.
“I work for a living,” said Reston, VA, delivery driver Ted Schacht, 41. “I’m a responsible, tax-paying citizen. I can barely afford the insurance payments on my ‘91 Subaru. So why should my money pay for some welfare recipient’s imported Italian loafers?”
“These parent companies can’t afford to support the subsidiaries they already have, but they go right on acquiring more of them anyway,” said Ellen Gertsen of Medford, OR. “And who winds up paying for them? Hard-working taxpayers like me, that’s who. It’s a damn shame, is what it is.”
Defenders of the corporate-welfare system say such attitudes are insensitive and cruel. “These are not just corporate-welfare recipients; these are human beings, struggling to survive,” said Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK), one of Congress’ most outspoken proponents of the current welfare system and co-sponsor of the Aid To Companies With Dependent Subsidiaries Act. “They have households full of domestic servants to support. Many of them can’t even provide decent housing for their polo ponies. Offering them a helping hand is the only decent thing to do.”
Corporate welfare accounts for 95 percent of all government welfare expenditures each year, a figure many find excessive. Yet, according to the recipients themselves, it is not nearly enough.
“Even after downsizing 75 percent of our domestic workforce and relocating half of our manufacturing plants to Central America and the Far East, third-quarter profit margins were still 15 percent off last year’s figures,” says Charles Beeman, 47, associate vice-president of a multinational textile conglomerate. “If I can’t make ends meet by the end of the fiscal year, I could lose my corner office.”
Natasha | Humor, LeftLibertarian.org
