US corporations generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually by bribing politicians

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer http://www.naturalnews.com/049491_US_corporations_political_lobbying_bribery.html

(NaturalNews) Corporate lobbying is big business in the U.S., where the highest bribing multinational corporations are allowed to freely siphon billions of dollars every year from the federal coffers. But few people realize just how much these monolithic corporate entities are effectively stealing from American taxpayers by paying off Congress for financial and political favors.

According to a recent analysis conducted by the Sunlight Foundation, 200 of America's most politically active corporations collectively spend about $1.2 billion annually lobbying the federal government for tax breaks, grants and other financial incentives. And in return, they garner more than $733 billion a year in payouts.

The financial rate of return, if you will, for corporations that actively lobby Congress for what they want is astronomical. As explained by Zero Hedge, these returns range between 5,900% for things like oil subsidies and as high as 22,000% for multinational tax breaks. And in the drug sector, the return is even higher, at 77,500%.

"Putting [this] in context, the $4.4 trillion total [that the top 200 corporations received from the federal government between 2007 and 2012] represents two-thirds of the $6.5 trillion that individual taxpayers paid into the federal treasury," explains Zero Hedge.

That's right, $4.4 trillion -- with a t -- is what the 200 most powerful U.S. corporations raked in over the course of five years from congressional lobbying, a huge return from the relatively paltry $5.8 billion they spent to get this massive return. They can call this "lobbying" all day long, but what it really constitutes is bribery.

"[B]y 'spending: [sic] a paltry $6 billion to bribe the US government, or just a little more than what GM will spend on stock buybacks alone, US corporations are getting the direct benefit of two-thirds of US taxpayers' labor!" adds Zero Hedge.

Corporations pull in 75,900% return on investment for bribing federal government

Put differently, the top multinational corporations pulling the strings in D.C. receive about $760 back from the federal government for every $1 they spend bribing politicians. This, while more than 8 million working Americans have lost their jobs since the start of the last national "recession" in 2008.

So while the already shrinking middle class took another huge blow due from central banking cronyism, the criminals running D.C. freely handed out billions of dollars in bailouts to banking kingpins like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co., two entities that played a major role in causing the financial meltdown in the first place.

America's executive branch made things even worse several years back when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporate spending on federal elections does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." In essence, the courts decided that corporations are free to spend away in order to maintain their influence over the political system.

And it doesn't matter if the politicians in office are "Democrat" or "Republican" -- all of them cater to their corporate masters, as evidenced by financial records and other data pulled by Sunlight throughout the course of various elections and position changes within government.

"During the six years we studied, newly elected Democratic majorities took control in the House and Senate," explains the Sunlight report. "Two years later, the White House shifted from Republican to Democratic control, and two years after that the GOP came back to take the House."

"The collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 led to massive bailout efforts by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board, two massive stimulus bills and the loss of more than eight million jobs. Congress passed laws that overhauled health care insurance and financial industry regulation. Troops surged in Afghanistan and withdrew from Iraq. There were 16 separate 'continuing resolutions' to fund the government, a debt ceiling standoff that caused a downgrade in the nation's credit rating and a 'super committee' to wrestle with the federal budget."

"As middle class Americans lost ground, the Fixed Fortune 200 got what they needed."

Sources:

http://sunlightfoundation.com

http://www.zerohedge.com

http://www.zerohedge.com