Carly Fiorina's $4 BILLION JOB SCAM

[Segami]

"...Today she wants to spend half a trillion to boost our military. But during wartime, she lobbied hard for a bill that hustled the government out of billions with false promises of new jobs..."

Had Donald Trump been talking about Carly Fiorina’s essence rather than her appearance, he might have had a point. Not that it should matter one way or the other, Fiorina has an altogether pleasant physical presence, markedly more so than does Trump. But a blind person could see that Fiorina was the very face of corporate greed and income inequality during her five-year tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Take, for example, the cynically named Homeland Investment Act of 2004. The bill was passed as part of the equally cynically named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 after intense lobbying with Hewlett-Packard in the forefront. The purported aim of the legislation was to generate economic growth and therefore jobs at home by according corporations a one year “tax holiday” on billions in overseas profits they had stashed offshore. The result was a $265 billion corporate giveaway.


The windfall was supposed to go toward research and development, and other job-creating endeavors. Instead, almost all of it was put into stock buybacks as a way of funneling cash to stockholders, these prominently including CEOs. Never mind that the bill prohibited such buybacks. And all that talk about putting more Americans to work did not stop the corporations from cutting as many as 100,000 American jobs in the name of even great profits. Hewlett-Packard saved more than $4.3 billion and put more than $4 billion into stock buybacks. It laid off 14,500 workers. To make it all even uglier, Hewlett-Packard lobbied for the Homeland Investment Act as a member of something called the Homeland Investment Coalition—this at a time when the “war on terror” was intensifying and the word “Homeland” made everyone think of national security. The Department of Homeland Security had been founded in 2002. We had invaded Iraq in March 2003. And there was Fiorina four months later, party to using “Homeland” to hustle the government out of billions with false promises of new jobs.


That may not be treason, but it is close enough to turn the stomach, coming in the midst of our longest war, when some of our very best young people were returning home in coffins. And it is no less ugly because numerous other corporations were part to the scam, these including fellow tech outfits such as Microsoft and Apple, as well as pharma giants such as Pfizer and Merck. What does make Fiorina worse than the other CEOs who pushed The Homeland Hustle is her appearance at this month’s Republican debate, during which she called for a $500 billion-plus boost in military spending. “We need the strongest military on the face of the planet, and everyone has to know it,” said this erstwhile perpetrator of a wartime con. One current presidential candidate who cannot take Fiorina to task is Hillary Clinton, who voted for the bill when she was in the Senate. Clinton did so when even the Bush administration saw through the scam and opposed the legislation. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers warned that the bill ”would not produce any substantial economic benefits.”



cont'


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/23/carly-fiorina-s-4-billion-job-scam.html

[left on green only]

1. I hope Carly Gonorrhea Wins The Repuke Nomination......

.........so I can clap for her.

[tecelote]

2. “We need the strongest military on the face of the planet, and everyone has to know it,”

They know it already and we're suffering for it.

Support the troops but get rid of all the wasteful projects for new war machines we don't need. Corporate giveaways while veterans suffer should make all Americans ashamed of our war machine.

Carly is exactly what's wrong with America.

[Mnpaul]

3. Hillary agreed with Grover Norquist on this sham

The $104 Billion Refund

The most absurd corporate tax giveaway of 2005.

"It basically gave money to corporations in return for corporate contributions," says Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice. As for the law's name, McIntyre says that Congress was "just kidding." One of the few groups that believes the legislation has led to the creation of jobs is the American Shareholders Association, a spinoff of Americans for Tax Reform, led by conservative activist Grover Norquist. In a report last month, the American Shareholders Association said that stock buybacks, dividends and mergers, and acquisitions were up sharply because of the legislation and that this in turn had led to the creation of 500,000 high-paying jobs in the United States.

Not so far. Some companies taking advantage of the generous tax break haven't even tried to hide their layoffs. In January 2005, on the same day it announced it was cutting 6 percent of its workforce, National Semiconductor said that it was repatriating $500 million under the American Jobs Creation Act. Colgate-Palmolive, which in December 2004 announced plans to cut more than 4,000 jobs, brought back $800 million in overseas profits last year. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that the combination of repatriation and job cuts prompted Amalgamated Bank, which owns Colgate shares, to file a shareholder resolution arguing that the company's brand and reputation would be damaged by such moves. Julie Gozan, director of corporate governance for Amalgamated, said the resolution was withdrawn before Colgate filed its proxy on March 31 because the company agreed to provide more information to investors on the impact of the AJCA later this year. But Gozan said that Amalgamated is considering similar resolutions at several other companies where it owns stock.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2006/04/the_104_billion_refund.html

but she is not a corporatist.