CORPORATE MONEY GRAB
In my hometown of Austin, there’s a drive-through store named Git-It and Go.This would make a dandy slogan for the corporate hucksters who come into our states and cities promising to locate a new facility and create a bunch of jobs, but only if we taxpayers will give them tax breaks, free land and utilities, outright cash grants, and other goodies. In other words, we are to pay them for doing nothing more than opening a business in our area – a tax-paid gift that local, homegrown businesses neither ask for nor receive.
Bizarrely, too many of our governors and mayors are all too eager to play this handout game, usually shovelling the money into the corporate coffers on the front end of the deal, and usually doing so with no requirement that the recipients actually produce a specific number of jobs at a specific wage. And guess what: The corporate hucksters rarely come through with the “big job bonanza” that invariably is heralded when these deals are announced. Some corporations produce no new jobs, and some stay only a few years before leaving town to look for another sucker down the road – they just git the money … and go.
This scam has become so huge, with the total taxpayer payout for location subsidies now reaching $50 billion a year, that corporations have come to consider such payola as their due. For example, Sykes Enterprises, an outfit that operates call centers in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, proudly says: “Every one of our locations is a result of some incentive plan. … If a community is inviting Sykes to build a call center, they are expected to deed the land for two call centers to us and give incentives of at least $2.5 million.”
It’s absurd to dole out our scarce tax dollars to these con artists. It diverts money from our communities’ real needs and favors outsider corporations over hometown enterprise. To help stop this money grab, call the watchdog group Good Jobs First: 202/626-3780.
TSA SECRETLY SNOOPS ON PASSENGERS
The Transportation Security Administration is the all-knowing, all-seeing federal agency in charge of taking our shoes off at airports, and our heroic leaders there have recently rooted out a treasure trove of invaluable data. Unfortunately, it’s not information about some secret cell of terrorists – it’s a trove of your and my personal information.
If you flew in June of 2004, TSA snoops now have a file on you – even though Congress specifically told them not to collect such data. Agency officials promised they wouldn’t, but TSA secretly did it anyway, amassing such passenger records as our names, phone numbers, and credit card info.
Worse, TSA contracted the data tabulation to a private corporation, which used other databases to compile full profiles on us, including home addresses, spouses, and – be very worried – the exact latitude and longitude of our homes! There’s a law against secret government databases, and TSA earlier pledged to Congress that it would not store commercial data on air passengers – but there the info is, stored in TSA computers.
Not to worry, say the Bushites in charge, for this is just a test of a new ID verification system we’re developing. Bad answer. Congress told the agency not to implement such a system until the Government Accountability Office gave its approval. The GAO has evaluated the system, and it gave TSA an “F,” noting that the ID program failed to meet nine out of the 10 criteria that Congress had set.
Well, picky, picky, say the Bushites. Even if we broke our promises, tried to go around the law, and failed to produce a passable system – hey, you can trust us with people’s personal data because our ID system “is built on an airtight privacy platform.”
Do we have “Sap” written on our foreheads? These people thumbed their noses at Congress. Why would they let some bureaucratic privacy code stop them from ransacking our personal information? Far from trusted – they ought to be prosecuted.
This article appears in July 8 • 2005.