Interviews during 2018-2020: on Corporations
Tom Steyer:
Big-money interests are committed to stopping progress
Steyer said, "I think eighty-two thousand people died last year of drug overdoses. If you think about the drug companies, the banks screwing people on their mortgages-it's thousands of people doing what they're paid to do.
Almost every single major intractable problem, at the back of it you see a big-money interest for whom stopping progress, stopping justice, is really important to their bottom line."
Source: The New Yorker magazine on 2020 Democratic primary
Jul 14, 2019
Tom Steyer:
Take the corporate control out of politics
Economy: Limit the influence of corporations in politics and raise the minimum wage.
In his campaign announcement, Steyer said he wanted to "take the corporate control out of politics," adding that if corporations have an "unlimited ability to participate in politics, it will skew everything because they only care about profits."
Source: PBS News Hour 2019 coverage of 2020 Democratic primary
Jul 10, 2019
Tom Steyer:
AdWatch: put people before corporations
Few of the other Democratic presidential candidates have hit the television airwaves, and none have committed the amount of money in one buy that Steyer has with his first TV ad buy [which totals] $1.4 million dollars in spending.
In one ad, Steyer focused on his pledge to limit the influence of corporations in politics, an early theme of his candidacy. He has leaned into his outsider status in the starting moments of his campaign.
"We're a get-out-to-the-people, directly-address-the-people organization,'' Steyer told POLITICO. "I've been an outsider this whole time in Democratic politics."
"Tom is running for president because he sees how the broken political system in
Washington has failed the American people and has a plan to change it," Steyer's campaign manager said in a statement. "Our campaign is focused on exactly that--creating a United States that puts its people before corporations."
Source: Politico.com AdWatch: 2020 Democratic primary
Jul 10, 2019
Marianne Williamson:
Repeal corporate tax cuts
ECONOMY/TRADE: Increase minimum wage by region, repeal corporate tax cuts in 2017 tax law.Williamson has put forward a four-step plan to reduce income inequality. It includes providing cash relief through a universal basic income; creating jobs
through Green New Deal legislation; boosting government funding for early education and caregiving; and introducing a universal savings program. Williamson has proposed paying for the plan by rolling back tax cuts to the wealthy and big businesses.
Source: PBS News Hour 2019 coverage of 2020 Democratic primary
May 13, 2019
Pete Buttigieg:
Anti-trust law must go beyond pricing to deal with high tech
There's issues with the sheer glomeration of different business interests into single corporations. This is the basis of antitrust law. Antitrust law as we know it has begun to hit its limits with regulating tech companies. It was based around the idea
that the reason you got to stop monopolies from happening is that when they happen, they start to jack up prices. It's not designed to handle some of these tech companies where there's actually no price at all.
The product is made free, or at least it's free on its face. We've learned, in part because of the way our data are used by these companies, that nothing is actually free.
We need to empower the FTC to be able to intervene, including blocking or reversing mergers, in cases where there's anticompetitive behavior by tech companies, even if it can't directly be applied to pricing.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 Democratic primary
Apr 22, 2019
Bernie Sanders:
Defend farmers & consumers from corporate middlemen
Sanders, for his part, published an op-ed in the Des Moines Register [and] denounced Bayer's Monsanto buyout, adding that "when we are in the White House, we are going to strengthen antitrust laws that defend farmers
from the corporate middlemen that stand between the food grower and the consumer, and have now become so big and powerful that they can squeeze farmers for everything they're worth."
Source: Mother Jones magazine on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 30, 2019
Elizabeth Warren:
End "integrated" farming favoring corporations over farmers
Warren declared, "It all starts with attacking consolidation in the agriculture sector head on." Meat giants like Tyson and Smithfield are "vertically integrated"--meaning they both slaughter livestock and tightly control the process for raising
them. "My administration will bring vertical integration cases to break up integrated agribusinesses," she wrote. She added that "contract chicken farming has already squeezed farmers to the breaking point. To stop the spread of that practice,
I believe we should prohibit abusive contract farming in the livestock sector." Bernie Sanders added that "when we are in the White House, we are going to strengthen antitrust laws that defend farmers from the corporate middlemen
that stand between the food grower and the consumer, and have now become so big and powerful that they can squeeze farmers for everything they're worth."
Source: Mother Jones magazine on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 30, 2019
Bernie Sanders:
1976: I favor the public ownership of utilities & banks
Bernie Sanders advocated for the nationalization of most major industries, including energy companies, factories, and banks, when he was a leading member of a self-described "radical political party" in the 1970s, a CNN KFile review of his record
reveals. "I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries," Sanders said in one interview with the Burlington Free Press in 1976. In his career as a US Senator, Sanders has backed away from such ardent calls for nationalization.
Source: CNN KFile "1970s nationalization" on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 14, 2019
Bernie Sanders:
1970s: State should take over utilities without compensation
After moving to Vermont in 1968, Sanders became an active member of the left-wing Liberty Union Party. Sanders left the Liberty Union Party in 1977. When he launched his campaign for the Senate in 1971, Sanders said state utilities needed to be run by
Vermont on a nonprofit basis. If revenues exceed expenditures they could be used to fund government programs and lower property taxes. In 1976, Sanders went even further: calling for the state to seize ownership of Vermont's private electric companies
without compensation to investors. Sanders' rhetoric was strongest during his 1976 campaign for governor of Vermont. "I will be campaigning in support of the Liberty Union utility proposal which calls for the public ownership of Vermont's private
electric companies without compensation to the banks and wealthy stockholders who own the vast majority of stock in these companies," he said in a July 1976 press release. "I will also be calling for public ownership of the telephone company."
Source: CNN KFile, "Nationalization," on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 14, 2019
Bernie Sanders:
1976: Relocating businesses must pay; for public ownership
"We have got to deal with the fact that corporations do not have the right to disrupt the lives of their workers or their towns simply because they wish to move to earn a higher profit," Sanders said in a press release in August 1976. Sanders' plan would
10 years of taxes for the town."In the long run, the problem of the fleeing corporations must be dealt with on the national level by legislation which will bring about
the public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion into worker-controlled enterprises," he said.
Source: CNN KFile, "Nationalization," on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 14, 2019
John Hickenlooper:
Market must allow entry to new businesses
For several decades now people in the middle class and poor haven't had the security and opportunity that our economic system used to create for them. What is the reason why we're seeing such a large number decline in the number of startups?
Maybe they're looking at that landscape and saying these companies are too big I can't get in. We have to make sure that we have a competitive system whereby little guys feel they've got an honest, a decent chance to succeed.
Source: CBS Face the Nation 2019 interviews: 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 10, 2019
Julian Castro:
Supported tax breaks to lure corporations
Castro's approach to job growth often involved corporate giveaways. A month after insurance company AllState announced it was opening up a bilingual customer information center in San Antonio, receiving $1.1 million from the state government,
Castro backed and voted for an incentives package that gave the company a six-year, 65 percent tax abatement, a $30,000 grant for permitting and development fees, and nominated it to be able to receive a $1.25 million refund in sales and uses taxes.
Source: Jacobin Magazine on 2020 Democratic primary contenders
Feb 15, 2019
Julian Castro:
Top earners & corporations must pay fair share
I think it's going to take asking wealthier individuals to pay their fair share. We've had basically the last forty years essentially of lower and lower commitment on people at the very top. Same thing goes for corporations. We have multinational
corporations that are hardly paying anything in federal taxes. We need to ask them to pay their fair share. I think that we can consider different ways, different proposals, to be able to raise more revenue from, you know, the wealthiest corporations.
Source: CBS Face the Nation 2019 interviews: 2020 Democratic primary
Jan 13, 2019
Page last updated: Dec 01, 2021