What is going on with our federal, state and many local governments including New York State and New York City may be difficult for you to believe. They are handing out your tax money to the multi-billion dollar multinational corporations in return for their promise to create more retail locations to steal more money from the residents and small businesses of your town. Of course, you don't find this language in the documents creating this situation. Typically, we have a large corporation telling the political leaders of a town, village, county and/or state that the corporation is interested in moving its operations to your area, if you make it worthwhile to the corporation. [Note: you should read this to mean that the corporation is announcing its willingness to move jobs from another community in the United States to your community, if you pay enough money to the corporation - an interesting and profitable racket with great potential for repeated, serial use, with your town as the next victim.]
You will note that there probably is not a single new job created in the United States by reason of this transaction. One town loses 1,000 jobs and your area gains the same 1,000 jobs, but the corporation obtains perhaps $10,000,000 or more in benefits, and your town/county/state pay $10,000,000 in ransom to a corporation that has learned that you can deal in jobs and persons lives in the same way that babies can be bought and sold. The practice should be outlawed as extortionate; all corporate costs of moving and transferring the jobs should be denied any tax deduction in New York (and federal, of course), and I as the NYS Attorney General would be in a position to prevent any such deductions (which could and should kill the job-sale deal).
Communities as well as childless couples are under enormous pressure to buy jobs or babies, with little or no regard for the injury done to others. The trafficking in jobs is many thousands of times more destructive to society than the sale of an unwanted baby to a childless couple desperately wanting to become a complete family, and (I believe the residents of a town losing their major employer would quickly agree) far more destructive to the victimized community than all of the illegal drugs sold in that community for the past 100 years. The loss of 1,000 jobs in a town that has a population of 7,500 persons is almost as devasting as a tidal wave sweeping away most of the town. Mortgages cannot be paid; college plans come to an end; 30 years of saving and hope are quickly consumed with the hope that a solution can be found; restaurants and other businesses close because the town residents no longer have any extra money - many of the former breadwinners can't even feed their families. You can add the rest of the details, such as broken marriages, broken engagements, suicides, more accidents, shorter life expectancies, separation of families - you can thank your greedy multinational and other corporations in advance when they come to your town, county or state seeking millions of dollars for moving jobs to your town, because this type of business is so profitable the corporation probably is already making plans in 5 years or so to sell the same jobs to some other potential municipal victim.
I brought a suit in New York State to stop this practice - see my "jobtheft" website for a copy of the complaint at Website for Complaint Seeking to Stop Governmental Financing of New Stadiums for Yankees and Mets. I withdrew the action as against New York State because of legal doctrines that immunize the state (as distinguished from its officials) from taxpayer lawsuits, and gave up on the entire suit when it became clear from the federal court that I would not be able to get any blanket order prohibiting all payments by NYS to private corporations, and that I would have to bring a suit each time I objected to such a payment. I concluded that there is not enough time in life for me (or any other private citizen) to go to court each time NYS gives subsidy money to a private corporation.
The practice of giving subsidies to the rich must be ended, and most particularly when the subsidy is for the taking of jobs from some other part of the United States. What kind of justice is it to require your local small businesses to pay taxes that are turned over to Wal-Mart or another major retailer to lower their already low costs and help put your small local law-abiding businesses out of business. But this is exactly what is going on in the United States today. We are using the money of residents and tax-paying small businesses to entice large corporations into the area to steal your town. What do your local elected officials have to say about this? They probably mumble something about needing the sales tax revenue that will hopefully augment municipal finances for a short while, until the assets of the town are removed and the town dismantled by the slow, hardly recognizable process of monopolization and excess prices by the only businesses left in the area. The mayor or other elected officials who created this result are seldom in office when the injuries become apparent. Your town needs someone skilled in spotting and stopping the problem, which person should be a "Town Attorney General", someone qualified to understand what is happening and can do something to prevent it. Button Text: Email the full text of and a link to this campaign issue to someone Who would benefit from its implementation