Commentary: Stop the Corporate Bailouts

Ohio residents are tired of corporate welfare. They’re tired of politicians bailing out major corporations with their tax dollars. Unfortunately, however, the 2023 Piglet Book released by the Buckeye Institute this week prove that this sad reality is happening more often than ever.

Over $3 million on marketing for the state’s wine grape growers.  Nearly $4 million on grants for sporting events. Over $160 million on “earmarks” — spending provisions that secretly award companies that don’t have to go through the government’s competitive and thorough vetting process large rewards. Ohio is doing all of this on the taxpayers’ dime. Frankly, that’s unacceptable.

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Whitmer Touts Job Numbers While Analyst Criticizes Corporate Welfare

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and one economic analyst agree that Michigan needs more workers but disagree on the proper strategies necessary to acquire them.

John Mozena, president of the Center for Economic Accountability, a nonprofit organization for transparent economic development policy, questioned Whitmer’s “doubling down” on big business subsidies while many businesses need workers. There are about 10 million Michiganders but, as of January 2021, only 4.7 million are in the workforce.

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Florida Lawmaker Proposes Film Industry Incentives

Florida State Rep. Dana Trabulsy (R-FL-84) has filed legislation with the intention of reviving Florida’s television, media, and film industry. Trabulsy filed HB 217 which would create the Film, Television, and Digital Media Targeted Rebate program within the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO).  

Companies that produce shows in Florida would be eligible for the rebate, which would cover the lesser value of either 23 percent of the total cost of the production, or $2 million.

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Despite Increased Revenue Projections, Michigan Gov. Whitmer Tells State Agencies to Brace for Shutdown

Last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D-MI) State Budget Director Dave Massaron instructed state department heads to begin preparing for a possible government shutdown, though Michigan taxpayers may have other concerns to expect from current budget negotiations.

Technically, Michigan state lawmakers are supposed to have passed a full budget for the governor’s signature by July 1, although officials have until Sept. 30 to finalize an agreement that would avoid a partial government shutdown.

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Warren Petersen, Shawnna Bolick Top Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona’s 2021 Scorecard

Warren Petersen and Shawnna Bolick

The Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona released its 2021 scorecard rating Arizona legislators this session, with just two legislators receiving perfect scores — and one of them actually scored 102 due to bonus points. Sen. Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) received an extra two points for his efforts on SCR 1001, a Senate Concurrent Resolution to terminate Governor Doug Ducey’s declaration of emergency on COVID-19. The resolution was highly critical of Ducey, observing that “Governor Ducey has subjected individual citizens to criminal sanctions for noncompliance with the stay-at-home orders.” It did not make it through the legislature.

Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix), who is running for Arizona Secretary of State, was the only representative to receive a perfect 100. Rep. Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) received the Rookie of the Year award as the highest scoring freshman legislator, with 94. Petersen, Bolick and Parker were among seven legislators to receive perfect scores earlier this month from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club for their voting. 

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Senate Poised to Approve Billions for Well-Heeled Computer Chipmakers

Computer mother board

The Democrat-led Senate is poised to approve as early as Tuesday a China security bill that will earmark billions in taxpayer subsidies to the well-heeled computer chip-making industry, which saw record profits last year and doled out millions in lobbying fees and political donations.

The $54 billion in subsidies for chipmakers inside the 1,445-page U.S. Innovation and Competition Act has some seeing an unnecessary corporate welfare program that could benefit such iconic brands as Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and increase the government’s reach over free market business.

“This bill will increase government’s influence over the private sector while weakening America by increasing our debt,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), one of the legislation’s fiercest critics. “Democrats love spending other people’s money and growing government. I have no idea why any Republican would want to help them do that.”

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The Beacon Center’s Mark Cunningham: People Need to Look at City Leadership Over These Past 10 Years

Towards the end of the third hour of Monday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, The Beacon Center’s Marks Cunningham weighed in on Mayor Cooper’s proposed 32% property tax increase stating that it was the wrong time to be doing this to the citizens of Nashville in lieu of the government-mandated shutdown and recent tornado destruction. He suggested that government cuts and freezes need to be put on the table if they are going to hinder small businesses while corporate businesses receive tax breaks and incentives.

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Tennessee Star/Triton Poll: Nashville Voters Are Pro-Medical Marijuana, Strongly Disapprove More Tax Dollars Being Paid to Corporations Moving to Nashville

  A new Tennessee Star/Triton poll indicates that while the Tennessee the Legislature was not willing to move forward with legislation legalizing the sale and distribution of medical marijuana in the state, Nashville voters are very supportive of the idea. 550 Likely voters in Davidson County were asked: “Would you be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who supports legalizing the distribution and sale of marijuana in Tennessee if strictly limited to prescribed medical use only?” 60.2% were more likely to vote for a candidate who supported legalization of medical marijuana; 18.4% were less likely; 16.1% said it would not impact their vote and 5.3% were unsure. After law enforcement officers voiced disapproval of a bill legalizing medical marijuana that was sponsored by State Senator Steve Dickerson (R-Nashville) it was pulled from consideration this year.  Dickerson says he will bring it back next year. Another hot issue with Nashville voters is the tax dollars being paid to corporations to move their headquarters and operations to town. Many voters clearly feel that companies are relocating to Nashville and Middle Tennessee without needing the lure of taxpayer dollars. That view is clearly tied to the opinion that affordable housing…

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Virginia Residents Plan Demonstration to Stop Arlington’s Planned $23M Tax Break for Amazon Headquarters

The backlash that prompted Amazon to discard its New York HQ2 headquarters plans like a rotten apple has emboldened critics of the tax deals being offered for the Virginia headquarters site. Amazon’s New York announcement, ironically made on Valentine’s Day, showed there was no love lost between the e-retailer and politicians and activists who bemoaned nearly $3 billion in tax incentives for the firm, The Tennessee Star reported. Amazon promised 25,000 jobs and $2.5 billion investment in offices. Amazon said it still planned to build an operations center in Nashville. The company was promised $15 million from the City of Nashville and up to $102 million from the state for 5,000 jobs. Now some in Virginia are setting their sights on what they say is not a Prime deal. Roshan Abraham, with Our Revolution Arlington, one of several anti-tax-incentive groups in Virginia, said the Arlington County government should vote down the $23 million tax deal being offered to the world’s largest e-retailer, according to a story by Washington Business Journal. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has signed a deal to give Amazon up to $550 million to create 25,000 jobs or $750 million for 37,850 jobs, the Journal said. Virginia critics also…

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Tennessee, Nashville Officials Say All Is Well For Amazon to Open Operations Center With Up to $102 Million in Incentives

Tennessee and Nashville officials say they do not expect Amazon’s brush-off of New York to affect the retail behemoth’s decision to open an operations center in Music City. Amazon last Thursday said it would not build its second headquarters in New York City, called HQ2, because of pushback there, The Tennessee Star reported last week. The retailer faced a battle from some politicians and others over nearly $3 billion in tax incentives, Breitbart said. Amazon was poised to bring 25,000 jobs to New York with a $2.5 billion investment in offices. Amazon said last week in a statement it would not reopen the HQ2 search. The company said it does plan to proceed with another headquarters site in Virginia. The company’s Music City plans have drawn criticism from some, including the Nashville Fraternal Order of Police, who said the city’s $15 million in incentives were “corporate welfare.” With the State of Tennessee offerings, the package is up to $102 million for 5,000 jobs for a $230 million operations center. Jennifer McEachern, communications director for the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development, spoke to The Star via email about Amazon. The Star asked her if the state would re-examine the tax…

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Nashville’s $15 Million for Amazon is Corporate Welfare, FOP Says

Nashville’s police union is criticizing the city’s plans to award up to $15 million in incentives for Amazon’s new facility, calling it “corporate welfare,” the Associated Press reported. The Nashville Fraternal Order of Police is calling for cost-of-living adjustments the city reneged on earlier this year amid budget woes. Amazon has said its total incentive package in Nashville includes up to $102 million in performance-based incentives based on creating 5,000 jobs over the seven-year timeframe, with an average wage over $150,000. Nashville Mayor David Briley gave merit raises to 20 members of his own staff even as rank-and-file city workers got shafted on the promised salary increases, The Tennessee Star previously reported in September. Two of the mayor’s staff received 6 percent increases. The city’s excuse for not giving the salary adjustments was a shaky budget. James Smallwood, president of the Andrew Jackson Lodge No. 5, issued this statement to The Star about Amazon: The Fraternal Order of Police was pleased to learn that Amazon, in their selection of Nashville as a finalist for their new facility, had recognized what Nashvillians have always known. That Nashville is a safe, vibrant and welcoming city with an enormous potential for future growth. However,…

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Amazon’s $100 Million-Plus Tennessee Tax Incentives Deal ‘Unfair and Immoral,’ Beacon Center Says

The State of Tennessee’s and Metro Nashville’s $102 million taxpayer gift to Amazon is not a Prime deal, a public watchdog organization says. Amazon turned down Nashville for its coveted two new headquarters sites, called HQ2, but Nashville landed a $230 million operations center near downtown in the future Nashville Yards. For more on Amazon’s Nashville announcement, see this story in The Tennessee Star. Mark Cunningham, vice president of communications and outreach at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, criticized the deal. The center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to providing empirical research and free market solutions for Tennesseans. Cunningham said, “Nashville was passed over for Amazon’s second (and third) headquarters, yet city and state officials still got scammed into giving the company more than $100 million in taxpayer giveaways for a consolation prize, which includes $80 million in cash handouts. Amazon, one of the world’s most valuable companies, and the government played taxpayers with this incentive deal, and it is time for us to speak up against this type of corporate welfare. While we welcome new businesses and the jobs they create to our state, forcing middle-class Tennesseans and small businesses to give their hard-earned dollars to a multi-billion dollar business is both unfair and immoral.” Rick Manning,…

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Report: Corporate Welfare in Tennessee Needs More Transparency

Tennessee officials hand out a good bit of corporate welfare, but they could do better to make sure the public knows how that money gets spent, according to a new state Comptrollers report. The report suggests several ways members of the Tennessee General Assembly can make matters better. As the report notes, Tennessee offers several kinds of corporate welfare. The degree of transparency for each differs to a certain extent. Some business incentives require public hearings. Some require business officials hand over annual reports on the status of an incentive program, Comptrollers said. “For other incentives, state law does not require periodic reports on the status of programs, and data and information are not posted online,” Comptrollers wrote in a press release. “The Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability found one type of business incentive with a required evaluation on a periodic basis: business tax credits,” Comptrollers wrote. But that was an exception. State officials do not require evaluations for most business incentive programs, Comptrollers added. Tennessee officials entice businesses and industries to set up shop or stay or expand in Tennessee. To do that they offer Payment in Lieu of Tax agreements, tax credits, and tax exemptions, and…

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Amazon: The World’s Most Dangerous Crony Capitalist

by Rick Manning   The bedrock of American commerce – and of the broader capitalist experiment – has always been competition.  If you can build a better mousetrap, invent a longer-lasting light bulb or more efficiently churn out widgets (or in this case, clichés), odds are your endeavor will encounter success. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like or what you believe – what matters is what you can produce. Competition fuels all of the forces that drive our free market – inspiration, innovation, efficiency, accessibility, profitability and prosperity.  It is what cures diseases, crosses continents, crushes despots, cradles civilizations and – just to make sure we aren’t forgetting the point here – creates wealth. Capitalism is the great invention that makes all other inventions possible – which is precisely why it must be protected from crony capitalist companies like Amazon. Amazon is not operating on a level playing field.  Not only that, it is rigging many once-level commercial playing fields in favor of larger retailers – secure in the knowledge that it will get a larger slice of profits if it picks winners and losers based on volume. It is also picking up government subsidies at a bargain basement price.  Since…

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IKEA Corporate Welfare Documentary Earns Beacon Center of Tennessee Nomination for National Award

Beacon

Think tank Beacon Center of Tennessee is one of three finalists for a national award in the category of Best Issue Campaign. The Beacon Center was nominated for its award for a mini-documentary titled “Rigged: The Injustice of Corporate Welfare.” The Bob Williams Awards for Outstanding Policy Achievement celebrate state think tanks that develop credible research to help states create free-market solutions with national impact. The Bob Williams Awards are hosted by the State Policy Network. The national nonprofit promotes “a vision of an America where personal freedom, innovation, opportunity, and a more peaceful society help all Americans flourish.” The organization supports the growth of a collaborative network of 64 state think tanks and 90 affiliate partners. These partners strengthen working families and defend rights. They do this by promoting policies to create a level playing field and promote freedom, economic liberty, rule of law, property rights and limited government. SPN works these think tanks “to catalyze thriving, durable freedom movements in every state, anchored with high performing independent think tanks so that every American has a voice.” SPN was founded in 1992 by South Carolina entrepreneur Thomas Roe at the urging of former President Ronald Reagan. The Beacon Center’s mini-documentary told…

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Tennessee Taxpayers Gave $1 Billion in Corporate Welfare Last Year

Bernstein

You, the taxpayers of Tennessee, helped give away nearly $1 billion in tax credits to corporations who set up shop here last year. State law, as it turns out, forbids you from finding out exactly what kind of return you’re getting on your investment. In other words, even though the money came out of your wallet, you may not know how any one corporation spent it. For this, you can thank Tennessee’s confidentiality laws. Mark Cunningham, spokesman for the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee, a free market think tank, said state officials hide behind them. “Beacon wants the books to be completely open when it comes to corporate handouts,” Cunningham said. “If you are getting money from the taxpayers then we should know how many jobs you are creating and what that money is being used for. If you are taking our money then you don’t get to hide behind these walls, in our opinion.” When there’s more transparency with these tax credits then there’s more clarity. When there’s more clarity about what, precisely, corporations do with this money then there’s more likelihood the taxpayers will dislike it, Cunningham said. The state’s powers that be, of course, bestow these tax…

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Tennessee Loses Money Spending $17,500 Per Job to Lure 1,000 AllianceBernstein Employees to Nashville from New York City

Tennessee Capital building

A $17.5 million tax incentive from the state of Tennessee to lure 1,000 jobs to Nashville–$17,500 per job—came at the expense of taxpayers to lure well-paid corporate executives when they already were drawn to the state’s other features like a favorable tax structure, experts say. The Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development announced in May that AllianceBernstein Holding LP would its corporate headquarters and about 1,050 jobs to Nashville from Manhattan. ‘On the backs of taxpayers’ When the announcement was made, Mark Cunningham of The Beacon Center of Tennessee called for the state to not offer incentives: “While the Beacon Center welcomes AllianceBernstein to Nashville with open arms, it should not be on the backs of Nashville and Tennessee taxpayers. The company is leaving high-tax New York City and coming to Nashville because of our extremely favorable tax structure that includes no state income tax and the phase-out of the Hall Income Tax on stocks and bonds. Their decision to already relocate here before any incentives are awarded proves that we can attract businesses with our economic climate, tax structure, and fiscal responsibility, and that we do not need to give them the tax dollars of hard-working Tennesseans on…

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Tennessee Pastors Network President Dale Walker Decries ‘Big Liquor’s’ Property Tax Break

On the heels of Governor Haslam’s signing a law to formally exempt a certain type of property tax of the world-famous distillery Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey Company, among others, Tennessee Pastors Network President fired back, denouncing the move as another victory for ‘Big Liquor.’ “Tennessee Republicans, the party of Big Liquor, continue to insult the voters with tax cuts to Jack Daniel’s Distillery at a time when Tennesseans are paying higher fuel taxes because of the Improve Act,” Walker said in a statement. Walker continued: Big Liquor doesn’t deserve any tax breaks with the havoc that alcohol wreaks on our society. We are already in an addiction crisis. The Republicans who voted for this law must all be drunk and have forgotten their vow of ‘so help me God’ to uphold the Constitution. Politicians use ‘God’ to get elected and then are influenced by powerful liquor lobbyists to pave the way for more profits for Big Liquor that only help destroy our Christian culture and ruin the lives of our citizens. Sales on Sunday and now tax cuts—only the devil knows what’s next for the party of Big Liquor! The tax carve-out was introduced at the beginning of the 2018 session and passed overwhelmingly by…

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Beacon Center Releases Documentary On Corporate Welfare

The Beacon Center of Tennessee is getting the word out about a short documentary it produced to educate the public about corporate welfare. Called “Rigged: The Injustice of Corporate Welfare,” the documentary runs just under 20 minutes. It takes a look at the impact of corporate welfare on small business owners struggling to compete against corporations receiving taxpayer dollars. The Beacon Center is a Nashville-based nonprofit that promotes free market research and solutions. “Beacon Center’s hope is that the documentary will be a useful tool for people who are either undecided or against us,” said Mark Cunningham, the center’s director of marketing and communications, in a press release. “It offers a look at the issue from a perspective they may have never considered. They have heard about all the ‘job creation’ and economic benefits of corporate welfare deals. Our goal is to tell the stories of the real people whom tax incentives and handouts negatively affect—stories that haven’t been told. We believe that, for far too long, free market types have merely tried to dispute the economic claims and have failed to humanize the issue. The human cost is front and center in our video.” The documentary features interviews with two furniture store…

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Pure Foods Goes Bankrupt After Benefiting From $1.2 Million in Tennessee State Economic Development Funds

Less than two weeks before Governor Haslam introduced his IMPROVE Act centered on a gas tax increase for road funding, Pure Foods, Inc., a recipient of $1.2 million in state economic development funds, filed for bankruptcy.   The $1. 2 million from the state’s FastTrack Economic Development (ED) Fund did not go directly to Pure Foods. Instead, it was allocated for use by KEDB for construction of a speculative building that Pure Foods leased for 10 years.   According to the Kingsport Tennessee Times News, in March 2015, the Canadian based gluten-free snack food company, Pure Foods, Inc., was set to establish its U.S. headquarters at the Gateway Commerce Park in Kingsport, Sullivan County.  The deal included an investment of $22 million, an 80,000-plus square foot facility, and the creation of 273 new jobs generating an annual a payroll of $8 million. The Kingsport Economic Development Board (KEDB) and the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce also supported the project by providing financial assistance and various incentives, including the purchase of 33 acres of land in the Gateway Commerce Park for $6.5 million borrowed from First Tennessee Bank. According to the Transparent Tennessee website’s FastTrack Project Database, ED grants provide additional support for…

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