Corporate Abuse Quotes
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The nature of telephone technology made it easy for companies to obtain monopolies for different areas of the country. When there is a monopoly, there is a huge tendency for the controlling company to charge very high prices and have poor customer service as the usual competition required for quality performance under capitalism is nonexistant. So in 1890, there was the same resentment of the telephone companies, that existed over a century later when there was still a monopoly. Regulation helped somewhat, but the capabilities of the monopolist began to include lobbying and campaign contributions so that typically, in the 21st century, the local telephone companies had much control over the State Commissions that were supposed to regulate them. Long distance service, whose monopoly was broken up by the Federal Courts became a wonderful service for customers and the prices were a tiny fraction of what they had been under their old monopoly.
The President and his new appointee were half joking but many of the large corporations were attacking the new department and its head frequently. The extreme conservatives used the technique of personally discrediting the head of the agency to discredit the agency and its activities. The President himself was so popular that they did not dare attack him.
While Powell intended the statement as an insult, Nader and most of the consumer movement considered it a profound compliment. The result was that the statement was quoted frequently.
Referring to large corporations receiving substantial tax advantages and other subsidies:
Inversion is an elaborate tax loophole whereby a large American corporation buys a tiny corporation in a country that has very low or no corporate income taxes. Once they own it, they Transfer the stock of the American Corporation to the small foreign corporation. Now the American corporation becomes a subsidiary of the foreign corporation whose headquarters is no longer in America. Then they move most of the profits to the “parent” corporation as most companies do. The difference is that the foreign corporation pays little or no taxes, and the American “Subsidiary” pays much less taxes than they used to pay. The have “inverted”—some say perverted--the ownership relationship. They do the same business that they did before in America, use America’s government services just as before, has America educate their workers as before, but they do not pay their fair share of taxes as before.
