If conservatives in the United States have constructed the most elaborate corporate welfare scheme in the world with an emphasis on taxpayer
handouts to the military and military industrial complex, then is this what Stephen Harper has in mind for Canada when he promises to allocate more of Canada's tax dollars away from social democracy and into the area of military spending ?. And in particular, the resuscitation of Star Wars defense spending in collusion with Uncle Sam ?. Afterall, it was Harper's kindred spirit, Brian Mulroney who introduced Ottawa to Washington style lobbying.

Taxpayer handouts to the military industrial complex and dept. of defense every year alone
are worth three or four times what social
welfare costs. Guess which right wing politicos and friends of the repub party have shares in
the companies making WMD ?. Guess who's military spends six times its nearest rival on WMD and make-work/make-war projects to enrich themselves?. Guess which nation accounts for
half of all military spending globally ?.

And that's not even delving into what Ralph
Nader says is a $400 BILLION DOLLAR a year corporate welfare program paid for by John Q. Public. This money isn't spent on affordable housing, national daycare, education, soc-sec
or social welfare, AAzure. This is pure, unadulterated U.S. taxpayers propping up profitable and unprofitable corporations
with their wealthy shareholders hanging on for the ride for thousands of miles around.

"After World War II, the nation's tax
bill was roughly split between corporations
and individuals. But after years of changes
in the federal tax code and international economy, the corporate share of taxes has declined to a fourth the amount individuals
pay, according to the US Office of Management
and Budget."

S&L bailout:$32Billion/Year For 30 Years

Corporate Welfare Shame page

Corporate Welfare Queens

"From the end of World War II until the end of the 1980s, the Cold War with the Soviet Union provided the rationale for a massive arms race. A steady and enormous flow of money emanated from the Department of Defense and benefited America's largest industrial corporations. In this process a vast network of lobbying groups and media sources was created to heighten public perception of a Communist military threat. The situation reached its extreme in the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration, calling the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire," pushed military spending rapidly upward, from $118 billion in 1979 to
$282 billion in 1987. This provided a bonanza
to the military contractors. In the 1970s American corporations were already enjoying higher profits in weapons production than were generally available elsewhere in the economy. But the defense buildup of the early 1980s increased the profit margins even further, to a rate nearly two and a half times greater than similar nonmilitary production. When the Soviet Union dismantled itself in 1989 and there was no longer a Cold War to justify a huge defense apparatus in the United States, some observers thought the U.S. military-industrial complex would disappear, too. And there were, in fact, some cutbacks in defense spending. The percentage of gross domestic product devoted to the military declined from 6.3 percent at the height of the Reagan buildup to 3.6 percent in the mid-1990s."
The M.I.C. and the Obsession with Privatization

[ 08 June 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

[ 08 June 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]