Tags

Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Corporate Welfare

1. February 8, 2011 11:52 AM

   Bloomberg Markets Finds the Rich Taking From the Poor

   By Ryan Chittum

   Bloomberg Markets has a terrific investigation into how a federal program meant to spur redevelopment in poor areas is funneling taxpayer money to luxury projects and Big Finance. David Dietz's anecdotal lede encapsulates the story, showing that the New Markets program gave Prudential big bucks for its part in the $116 million renovation of downtown Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, a "Beaux...

   Continue reading
2. May 11, 2011 02:49 PM

   L.A. Times Examines Trump’s Gold-Plated Corporate Welfare

   By Ryan Chittum

   How do you handle covering a candidacy that's primarily a publicity stunt by a crazed ego and presshound—one with approximately zero chance of success—without lending undue credit to it? The Los Angeles Times shows one way today with a smart angle: Donald Trump's rich history of milking taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars for his gold-plated skyscrapers. This is...

   Continue reading
3. April 5, 2012 07:55 PM

   NYT Examines Chris Christie’s Corporate Welfare Machine

   By Ryan Chittum

   Charlie Bagli takes a nice look in The New York Times at the corporate-welfare machine that is Chris Christie's administration in New Jersey, and reports that the governor has approved a record $1.6 billion in handouts to companies to date. Prudential Financial made $3.7 billion in net income last year. Christie gave it $251 million to move into a new...

   Continue reading
4. March 25, 2011 02:14 PM

   NYT Is Superb On General Electric’s Tax Avoidance

   Plus, David Kocieniewski continues his Charlie Rangel exposés

   By Ryan Chittum

   (UPDATE: See my follow-up post on GE's poor PR response to the Times's story) The New York Times unloads a fantastic piece of reporting on General Electric and taxes this morning. It's an ugly portrait of GE and the political system it's helped create. David Kocieniewski zeroes in on GE's tax avoidance, which is a proud corporate strategy at Obama...

   Continue reading
5. April 10, 2012 11:37 AM

   The Seattle Times Takes On Hometown Amazon

   A tough series on the dark side of the booming local company

   By Ryan Chittum

   Here in Seattle, Amazon is growing like crazy, adding thousands of jobs and building several skyscrapers just off downtown, something that will add hundreds of construction jobs. But at what cost? That's what The Seattle Times asks in a tough, excellent four-part series that riffs off the company's logo to go "Behind the smile in Seattle." I'm particularly interested in...

   Continue reading
6. December 8, 2011 12:43 PM

   A Big Corporate Welfare Story Gets Short Shrift

   Reuters's Johnston and Times Union spotlight news almost everyone else ignores

   By Ryan Chittum

   Here's a story that's calling out for more attention and isn't getting it. Reuters's David Cay Johnston wrote last week about a ruling in the New York Court of Appeals in favor of the state's corporate welfare largesse. The court used some creative reading to get around the state constitution's explicit prohibition of state loans and gifts to private companies...

   Continue reading
7. May 31, 2012 11:18 AM

   Amazon’s California tax squeeze

   A WSJ follow story waters down an LAT scoop from two weeks ago

   By Ryan Chittum

   Amazon's long run of not paying collecting state and local sales taxes is coming to an end as legislatures finally force the Internet retailer to compete on something of a level playing field with everyone else. But that doesn't mean the company isn't trying to squeeze every last drop out of the struggling communities whose infrastructure enables its profits. The...

   Continue reading
8. January 31, 2011 08:24 PM

   Audit Notes: WSJ on BP, U.S. Props Up Egypt’s Mubarak, NFL Subsidies

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal continues to lead on the BP disaster. It reported this weekend on emails showing that land-based company management created confusion among oil well workers and then pressured them to move ahead despite serious concerns in the Gulf. The lede is excellent: Just days before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, the onshore BP PLC manager in charge of...

   Continue reading
9. June 17, 2011 08:40 PM

   Audit Notes: Cash Giveaway, Bloomberg Views (in the WSJ), Lede of the Week

   By Ryan Chittum

   Jeff Amy of the Mobile Press-Register has some good reporting on corporate welfare in Alabama. He writes that businesses aren't profitable enough to take advantage of all the corporate tax credits available for new capital investment in the state. So the governor is proposing to let companies sell off their unused tax credits and keep the cash. So the bill...

   Continue reading
10. February 25, 2011 06:51 PM

    Audit Notes: Grand Oil Party, The Limits of Anecdote, Mod Investors

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Economist's Matt Steinglass reports on an egregious government giveaway to the oil companies—one that started accidentally and has now been intentionally enshrined by Republicans in Congress. The Minerals Management Service was supposed to give free leases to oil drillers in the Gulf in areas in which paying royalties would make drilling uneconomic. So apparently, in 1998-99, the folks at...

    Continue reading
11. November 9, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: low-info billionaires, Trump the taker, Elizabeth Warren

    Money apparently can't buy a firm grip on reality

    By Ryan Chittum

    One of the things this election proved conclusively is that even billionaires can be low-information voters. Here's Bloomberg BusinessWeek on billionaire David Siegel, the guy who's building the a 90,000 square foot house and who all but told his workers to vote for Romney if they wanted to keep their jobs (emphasis mine): I think it’s going to be a...

    Continue reading
12. April 8, 2011 06:47 PM

    Audit Notes: Race to the Bottom, More Corporate Welfare, Money Is Fungible

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times is good to take a look at how neighboring states race to the bottom bidding to give companies tax breaks to relocate to or stay in their states. A.G. Sulzberger (the publisher's son) tells the story through Kansas City, two cities with the same name straddling the Missouri and Kansas border that have seen such a...

    Continue reading
13. May 12, 2011 08:35 PM

    Audit Notes: Slick Politics, Greece’s Red Flag, What Caused Oil’s Tumble?

    By Ryan Chittum

    I noted a Huffington Post story the other day reporting that removing drilling bans wouldn't really affect the price of gas in the U.S. So it's also worth noting, as ProPublica does today, that removing the $4 billion tax subsidies for oil companies wouldn't affect gas prices much, either. “The impact would be extremely small,” said Stephen Brown, a professor...

    Continue reading
14. April 20, 2011 01:46 PM

    Chris Christie’s Corporate Welfare

    A $102 million tax break for a Japanese company to stay in New Jersey

    By Ryan Chittum

    Chris Christie is a hero to the right and something of a media darling for his willingness to slash government spending and be brash about it. So this report in The Wall Street Journal is fascinating for what it says about the governor's priorities, even if the story itself is somewhat skimpy. Supposedly flat-broke New Jersey is handing Japanese giant...

    Continue reading
15. November 29, 2010 04:10 PM

    Corporate Welfare Rocks!

    The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek give Utah the puff treatment

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal reports that government activism is good... when it benefits Big Business. It's a puff piece about how Utah's corporate-welfare policies are boosting its economy. Here's the headline: Incentives Spur Utah's Growth State's Red-Carpet Treatment Toward Businesses Is a Catalyst for Job Gains Here's the top: The recent recession knocked business-friendly Utah off its perch as a...

    Continue reading
16. June 5, 2012 03:08 PM

    David Cay Johnston’s excellent corporate-welfare column

    What a proposed mall project illustrates about subsidizing developers

    By Ryan Chittum

    Reuters's David Cay Johnston has a great column on corporate welfare that mixes reporting and analysis to show why subsidies for development are so problematic. Johnston looks at a proposal by mall heir Scott Congel to get New York taxpayers to subsidize the redevelopment of the Medley Centre mall outside Rochester. That dead mall has already gotten several million dollars...

    Continue reading
17. June 30, 2011 04:27 PM

    Deadspin Is Excellent on a Bogus Tax Break for Wealthy Team Owners

    By Ryan Chittum

    Gawker's sports site Deadspin got hold of some New Jersey Nets financial statements from a few years ago and uses them to report on how tax law gives multimillionaire ballclub owners egregious benefits. Tommy Craggs does a good job showing how the Nets could earn $7 million but report a $28 million loss in 2004, or as he aptly puts...

    Continue reading
18. September 16, 2011 03:24 PM

    Reporting on Solyndra

    Missing basic concepts about the government's loan-guarantee program.

    By Ryan Chittum

    Much of the press coverage of the Solyndra bankruptcy has been poor on some basic concepts at the heart of the story. This is what happens when beat reporters meet stories with business, political, and science angles, and why news organizations need to team up their people across beats.* What happened with Solyndra? Presidents Bush and Obama sought to guarantee...

    Continue reading
19. May 2, 2011 07:50 PM

    Too Big to Fail: New Jersey Mall Edition

    Chris Christie can't let Xanadu go under; $400 million in corporate welfare

    By Ryan Chittum

    What corporate interest won't Chris Christie subsidize with taxpayer dollars? The New Jersey governor, press favorite, and conservative hero is unloading more taxpayer money to private interests. He's doled out a 100 million bucks to a Japanese company, handed real estate tycoon Mort Zuckerman $42 million, and is subsidizing a casino in Atlantic City with $261 million in cheap financing....

    Continue reading
20. May 20, 2011 02:42 PM

    WNYC On Welfare for the Well-to-Do in the Bronx

    By Ryan Chittum

    Talk about an emblem of welfare for rich folks: Parking garages built for the New York Yankees to accompany their new luxury-suite-stacked stadium in the Bronx. The Yanks are by far the richest team in baseball, and if you're driving to a game in the Bronx, rather than taking the subway, which goes right to the stadium, then you're probably...

    Continue reading