A Call to Service: on Corporations

Regulate on side of citizens, not on side of corporations

A critical precondition for reviving the economy and sustaining the revival is the restoration of public confidence in the fairness, integrity, and transparency of our economic system and its accountability to investors, consumers, and workers with a stake in our private enterprises. That means, first and foremost, a federal regulatory system unmistakably on the side of the citizens it represents rather than the corporations it regulates. We also need a president whose approach to corporate abuses is more like Teddy Roosevelt's and less like William McKinley's. Above all, we need a president who looks out for the well-being of all Americans, fostering broad-based prosperity instead of promoting the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

Our economic system relies on the safeguards to ensure transparency, arms-length transactions, and the effectiveness of watchdogs. It's all too easy for criminals to infiltrate the informal networks that link the business world to the political world.

Source: A Call to Service, by John Kerry, p. 78-80

Offshore tax havens cause higher middle class taxes

Offshore tax havens and tax shelters let corporations and executives evade an estimated $20 to $40 billion each year-taxes that must be made up by other taxpayers or by government borrowing.

And these offshore tax havens rob us of more than tax dollars, for they are where renegade corporations flee from all responsibility to shareholders, employees, rules of fair play, and their own country. It's no accident that Enron had over 800 subsidiaries in countries with no taxes on income, profits, or capital gains. These included 692 in the Cayman Islands alone.

Taking on these abuses does not mean launching an attack on legitimate overseas operations of American businesses. I believe in opening new markets, and I want American companies to compete and win everywhere they can. But brass-plate addresses with nothing behind the door but a fax machine are not legitimate enterprises.

Source: A Call to Service, by John Kerry, p. 81

*The above quotations are from A Call to Service, by John Kerry, published Oct. 2003.* Click here for definitions & background information on Corporations. Click here for more quotes by John Kerry on Corporations.
*Other candidates on Corporations:*
George W. Bush Dick Cheney John Edwards John Kerry *Third Party Candidates:* Michael Baradnik Peter Camejo David Cobb Ralph Nader Michael Peroutka	*Democratic Primaries:* Carol Moseley Braun Wesley Clark Howard Dean Dick Gephardt Bob Graham Dennis Kucinich Joe Lieberman Al Sharpton
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