#subsidies

The U.S. and Iraq will work together next year to shift Iraqi resources from unproductive subsidies to productive uses that enable Iraqis to earn livelihoods. ↗

— Zalmay Khalilzad

#enable #iraq #iraqi #iraqis #livelihoods

One answer is that the town's elected officials thought that the project served a public purpose and that the various subsidies and favors were worth the price. But they may or may not have thought this. ↗

— Michael Kinsley

#elected #elected officials #favors #may #officials

In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#leftism #political #subsidies #taxes #usa

Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun. ↗

— Grover Norquist

#bum #businessman #cut #every #every time

I can understand where the oil company wants to deduct the cost of drilling a well. That's one of the tax breaks for oil companies - the subsidies - they get to deduct the cost of the well the year you drill. ↗

— Dan Benishek

#companies #company #cost #deduct #drill

Everybody says they want to have private providers and we're saying fine. Let the states negotiate on behalf of a population in your state to drive down your costs. Don't just give subsidies to insurance companies for expensive insurance. ↗

— Maria Cantwell

#companies #costs #down #drive #everybody

The U.S. fiscal union has worked, in no small part, by enabling subsidies to the Mississippis without requiring the approval of the Minnesotas. It creates an important form of insurance. ↗

— Austan Goolsbee

#creates #enabling #fiscal #form #important

Political pandering comes in all shapes and sizes, but every four years the presidential primary bring us in contact with its purest form - praising ethanol subsidies amid the corn fields of Iowa. ↗

— John Sununu

#bring #comes #contact #corn #ethanol

These subsidies from four European governments, which include aircraft launch assistance, capital injections, debt forgiveness, have enabled Airbus to develop and range market airliners well below cost. ↗

— Norm Dicks

#aircraft #assistance #below #capital #cost

As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains. ↗

— John Moody

#big government #company #contest #country #entire