In
early April, 2020, Albertsons Companies, which at the time owned Safeway, ACME
Markets, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Pavilions and Albertsons grocery stores, joined with
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) to get American
governments to designate the workers as first responders. The joint statement
reads in part, “The temporary designation of first responder or emergency
personnel status would help ensure these incredible grocery workers access to
priority testing, have access to personal protection equipment, like masks and
gloves, as well as other workplace protections necessary to keep themselves and
the customers they serve safe and healthy.”[1] Although keeping grocery workers healthy was
important, the focus on testing and equipment can be viewed as problematic in
that the company’s management was falling short on more crucial safety
measures to protect the employees (and customers) from becoming infected.
A company in the U.S. wants a tax loophole to apply.
Starbucks, for example, wanted to be able to use the manufacturing deduction by
stretching manufacturing to include
the roasting of coffee beans. So in 2004 the company hired Michael Evans, a
lobbyist at K&L Gates who had just a year before worked as a top lawyer on
the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which writes tax law. Evans was able to urge
his former colleagues in the Senate to expand the definition of manufacturing
to include roasting in a clause added to a 243-page tax bill called the
American Jobs Creation Act.As you might
imagine, Starbucks was not the only company to get a tax break written into
that law. By 2013, the manufacturing deduction had saved Starbucks $88
million that the company would otherwise have had to pay in corporate income tax. In
2012, corporate tax breaks and loopholes added $150 billion in lost revenue for
the federal government, increasing the budget deficit by that amount.[1] Three lessons can be gleamed from the hidden corporate loopholes. The full essay is at "Behind Corporate Loopholes."
1 Ben Hallman and Chris Kirkham, “As
Obama Confronts Corporate Tax Reform, Past Lessons Suggest Lobbyists Will Fight
For Loopholes,” The Huffington Post,
February 15, 2013.
When a company or an entire
industry skips over the good of the whole—the public good—in lobbying for legislation
that only reflects the needs or desires of individuals (qua consumers only), the society itself (and even the Earth) is
slighted and thus more at risk. For the
good of the whole is more than just the cumulative needs and desires of
individuals in part because the latter do not take into account the wider
effects of their choices. When an individual company or industry takes this
point into account and rebuffs favorable legislative proposals because they
would do too much damage to society and/or the planet, social responsibility is
at hand. Companies or industries that do not are thus irresponsible from the
standpoint of the whole, which, through government, is justified in keeping an
eye on them (especially in making transparent their efforts to influence
legislation and regulation. The American auto and oil industries can be
distinguished in this regard.
Seeing to “capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world,” U.S. President Obama delivered a foreign policy speech on May 19, 2011 in which, according to the New York Times, he sought “to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” by “setting out a new starting point for negotiations.” In particular, he suggested that the Israelis go back to the 1967 borders, adjusted somewhat to account for settlements on the West Bank. Meeting with Obama on the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We can’t go back” to the 1967 borders, according to MSNBC.com. This put the U.S. at odds with one of its foremost allies. Considering the amount of financial and military aid involved, Netanyahu could have been accused of biting the hand that was feeding Israel. Yet due to lobbying no doubt, the Obama administration did not fully play its hand in pressuring the ally.
What exactly does a large political contribution do for a
contributor? The standard line is that access is “bought.” Being far removed
from the Washington “belt-way,” the American people have swallowed the line,
admittedly naively. As of 2015, we can look at the proverbial “man behind the
curtain” for a much more realistic grasp of the extent to which the American
political system is corrupt. The full essay is at "Political Bribery"
The human brain is likely hard-wired to assume that tomorrow
will be like today. This coping mechanism effectively narrows the window of our
cognitive and perspectival range. The status quo not only endures; it is
dominant, whereas reform must push hard to see the light of day. In politics,
establishment interests, made wealthy in the status quo, bet their
contributions on the political insiders—the establishment politicians who
embrace the status quo. As a result, an electorate is manipulated and mislead by
branding ads to the extent that it cannot be said that the real will of the
people is done. The ensuing public policy is also not of that will; rather,
legislation protects the vested interests in return for their contributions. A
republic in the grip of this self-sustaining cycle can be said to suffer from a
kind of hardening of the arteries. As times change, such a ship of state
becomes increasingly unmoored from its people. Eventually, the ship sinks,
after the pressure of incongruity has reached an unsustainable level. I contend
that the 2014 U.S. Senate election in Kentucky between the Senate’s minority
leader, Mitch McConnell, and his Democratic challenger, Alison Grimes,
illustrates this political illness in action.
Friday, August 16, 2013: A day of anger as proclaimed by
Morsi supporters in Egypt. A day of death and carnage. A day of intransigence on
both sides. Just a day earlier, the U.S. government had cancelled planned joint
military exercises. Besides being largely symbolic rather than real sanction,
the exercises were due to be downsized anyway due to the ongoing,
across-the-board, sequester of the U.S. Government’s budget. Can something so
convenient be counted as even “sending a signal?” Meanwhile, American foreign
aid to Egypt, $1.3 billion—second only to what the U.S. gives Israel—continued,
as if there were no sequester. As a direct result of the financial complicity,
thousands of protesters in Turkey were shouting anti-American slogans. The
protesters were so well informed that they were protesting the decision of the
Obama administration not even to decide whether there had been a coup in Egypt
when the military deposed Morsi. Turkey had emerged as one of the fiercest critics
of what it has called an “unacceptable coup.”[1]
It is not as though the American aid gives the U.S. much
leverage with the Egyptian military; aid from Middle East states, including
Saudi Arabia (whose statement on the Day of Rage voiced support for the
military), dwarfs that of the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government,
fearful of something worse (for the U.S.) in Egypt than its military, was not
fooling the Turks or the rest of the world. The sad truth is that Americans
could be harmed as a direct result of their government’s attempt to hold onto
whatever leverage existed.
The Egyptian military's "No Tolerance" in action on the Day of Rage. AP/Hassan Ammar
It is not as though cutting off foreign aid to Egypt would
be so “radical” that the option was not realistic. On the Day of Rage, Germany,
ein Land—wirklich Staat—auf die Europäische
Union, suspended $25 million in aid to Egypt for climate and environmental
protection projects.[2] Meanwhile,
Germany, Egypt’s largest trading partner, joined with the French Government in
calling for a federal response from the E.U.’s Council of Ministers and
presumably the E.U.’s Foreign Minister. Indeed, one of the reasons for creating
the E.U. had been that the states would have more influence togetherthan separately. The states’ rights
ideology was yet again obstructing Europe from attaining that goal.
I suspect that the difference in the respective reactions of
the E.U. and U.S. with respect to foreign aid have to do with the power of the
Israeli lobby being greater in the U.S. than the E.U. The U.S. Government was
thus vulnerable to the accusation of hypocrisy on its democratic principles out
of a rather obsessive concern for Israel’s safety. Had both unions withheld
both foreign aid and trade with Egypt, the question would be whether the
foreign aid from within the Middle East would be sufficient to sustain the
Egyptian military in power. Ich weiß es leider
nicht. At any rate, it is unfortunate that democracy and human rights can
be so eclipsed by politics in the U.S. and even the E.U., the latter behaving
as though it had one arm tied behind its back.
One major criticism of the E.U. has concerned its “democratic
deficit.” The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, has taken most
of the criticism because the bureaucrats are not elected. Even though the
European Council consists of elected state executives, the state legislatures
are viewed as “closer to the people” and therefore more democratic. At the E.U.
level, the European Parliament is the most directly democratic, as the EP’s
representatives are directly elected by E.U. citizens. Therefore, one means of
reducing the “democratic deficit” has been to increase the Parliament’s
authority relative to those of the Commission and the Council. Lest it be
thought that this solution has no drawbacks, the case of whether E.U. ships
should be permitted to be beached for recycling in South Asia illustrates a
problem. From: "Federalism and the Democratic Deficit: The E.U. as Suboptimal?"
Visitor
logs for January 17, 2012 show that the lobbying industry that Obama had vowed
to constrain was nonetheless a regular presence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.[1] That's the address of the White House. Even
though the president barred recent lobbyists from joining his administration or
even serving on its advisory boards and forbid federal employees from accepting
free admission to receptions and conferences sponsored by lobbying groups,
records suggest that lobbyists with personal connections to the White House
enjoyed the easiest access. The principle of fairness (not to mention
consistency) seems to have been sacrificed for political (and campaign finance)
expediency.
In Illinois, at least as late as 2011, state and local legislators could use their position to benefit paying clients. According to The New York Times, fourteen elected officials in Cook County, where Chicago is located, were registered as lobbyists in the 2009-2011 period and had clients who did received government contracts in Illinois. Rep. Fred Crespo observes, “When I see them [the law makers] at a hearing in the Capitol, I often can’t tell of they’re here for their constituents or for their paying clients.” Legislators in Illinois “can legally vote and otherwise act on matters that directly benefit their lobbying clients.”[1] As this involves a conflict of interest, which is inherently unethical, this case demonstrates for us the contention of ethicists that ethics as a field is distinct from law.
1. Mike McIntire and Michael Luo, “When Santorum Left Senate, Some He
Aided Found Him Work,” The New York Times,
January 6, 2011; John Sullivan and Fredric Tulsky, “When Office Holders Also
Represent Clients, Collisions Are Likely,” The
New York Times, January 6, 2011; and Fredric Tulsky and John Sullivan, “Is
It a Conflict? Yes, But It’s Legal,” The
New York Times, January 6, 2011.
