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Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about FacebookEmailTwitterGoogle+LinkedInPinterest Nader: Corporate state lacks patriotism Global entities shouldn't hurt ordinary Americans Loading… Post to Facebook ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ {# IFRAME: http://api.recaptcha.net/noscript?k=6Lf7fuESAAAAAJ3_KMIDbkQySsEE0vMkLXU kq4eY #} CancelSend Sent! A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. 24 Join the Nation's Conversation To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs Nader: Corporate state lacks patriotism Ralph Nader 6:52 a.m. EDT June 27, 2014 Global entities shouldn't hurt ordinary Americans BILLS Dollar bills(Photo: Daniel Acker, Bloomberg News) 243 CONNECT 44 TWEET 5 LINKEDIN 24 COMMENTEMAILMORE On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress declared its independence from King George III and England. Independence Day is marked by celebrations and the American people expressing patriotism in a variety of ways. Yet, other than special sales events, what is expected of American corporations when it comes to the core value of patriotism, which is love of country? The U.S.-based large global companies' answer to this question is "very little," except for the heralding of building modern weapons of mass destruction and mass surveillance under government contracts. It is useful to apply several other yardsticks for these U.S.-chartered companies, who rose to great profits with American workers, were bailed out by American taxpayers when they were crashing and, even sometimes, were saved from trouble abroad by the U.S. Marines. After all, for more than 130 years, corporate lawyers have persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court that corporations are "persons." With this status they have many of the same constitutional rights given to real persons, and often use their concentrated power to gain additional privileges and immunities. So, if corporations want to be people, why not judge them as such? In 1996 and in 2013, I wrote to the CEOs of more than 100 large chartered corporations to ask a simple question: "Would the CEO stand up at the annual shareholders meeting and, in the name of the corporation (not the Board of Directors), pledge allegiance to the United States and the Republic for which it stands … with liberty and justice for all?" Of the dozens of responses, only one company — Federated Department Stores — thought it was a good idea. This was not surprising, as corporations are not held to the same social norms and expectations as real people. These behemoths diverge from the expected norms of behavior imposed on real people. Unlike regular people, corporations can pollute air, water, soil and workplaces and often get away with this silent form of violence by simply asserting it is a necessary trade-off for jobs. Chronic polluters, such as the coal industry, continue to rely on this tired, either/or "jobs argument." Real people do not get together and demand freebies with the threat of moving their work to foreign countries. Corporations do this all the time, exporting whole industries through corporate-managed trade agreements and the outsourcing of American jobs to serf labor regimes abroad, grotesquely encouraged by tax laws corporate lobbyists ram through Congress. Regular people are expected to pay taxes. Global corporations have manipulated the system with their power over Congress so that they ship their paper profits to overseas tax havens through accounting gimmicks, or demand credits, loopholes and deferrals domestically that many giant companies like General Electric and Verizon use to avoid paying any federal income taxes on billions of dollars of U.S.-based profits. Indeed, some companies regularly get money from the U.S. Treasury and have a negative income tax. Despite escaping their responsibilities to pay their fair share of taxes to Uncle Sam, these companies still expect governmental public services and infrastructure, law enforcement, a myriad of subsidies, patent monopolies, public education and worker training payments — to name a few of the benefits funded by the taxpaying American people. Real people are expected to sacrifice their lives and their customary work in times of war. Corporations smack their impersonal lips, savoring the huge contracts and profits coming from the Pentagon. They do not sacrifice by stepping up their tax payments to help pay for the war or modestly pricing their armaments. Just the opposite, they exact greater profits at times of national crises. The monetized corporate brain is oblivious to even the most basic forms of loyalty to their home country. For example, the drug industry, which charges Americans the highest prices in the world, receives huge subsidies from the National Institutes of Health in the form of free taxpayer funded research and development, including clinical trials along with large tax credits for their own research. Drug industry profits are among the highest of all industries and drug companies are among the biggest criminal offenders of federal laws. So what have the U.S. drug companies done by way of gratitude? They have outsourced production of 80% of the ingredients in medicines sold in our country mainly to China and India to sidestep safety controls that would be enforced in the United States. Americans have died from contaminated imports. Not having drugs like penicillin manufactured stateside any more could pose a threat to our national security. An especially unsavory example of unpatriotic behavior is when American workers, before being laid off, have been required to train their own replacement outsourced foreign workers. Trust, loyalty, sacrifice, duty, honor, and respect are traits associated with the patriotism of the American people. For most large U.S. corporations, these expected behaviors are dissolved in the frenzied drive for profits and executive pay at the expense of their native country. The Fourth of July should be a day of contemplation about corporate resistance to normal standards of patriotism, in as much as corporations demand the fruits and benefits of their "country of birth" while escaping responsibilities of their citizenship. Some cynical corporate executives are lately abandoning their domicile in America and reincorporating in tax haven countries that do their bidding. As conservative commentator Pat Buchanan wrote — "if they (large U.S. corporations) are not loyal to us, why should we be loyal to them?" Ralph Nader is author of Unsafe at Any Speed and the upcoming book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including ourBoard of Contributors. 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