The New York Times 2010s: on Corporations

Dan Malloy: Invest state funds in businesses that preserve in-state jobs

Complaining about what he called overly generous state investments in corporations during Malloy's tenure, Foley said, "The idea of the governor and his staff negotiating with a very sophisticated group of businesspeople--I'm a little worried for Connecticut taxpayers."

Foley listed corporations he said had eliminated jobs in Connecticut over the last three and a half years. Malloy countered that the decision to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in businesses had preserved jobs in the state. Somewhat awkwardly, he specifically defended his dealings with Pfizer by noting that the daughter of the company's president "was an intern on one of my campaigns."

Jeff Bell: Low interest rates favor big businesses over small

"It isn't profitable for them to lend to a business with a certain amount of risk with very low interest rates, so a lot of the lending that would normally set up lines of credit for small business are on the sidelines." Because small businesses are the biggest job creators, the lack of available credit hurts the labor market, he said.

Bell's proposed solution is to return the country to a gold standard, in which a large percentage of the US dollars in circulation are required to be backed by the corresponding value of gold in reserve. He believes doing so will cause interest rates to rise but provide greater long-term economic stability.

Ben Sasse: FactCheck: stretched truth on job as management consultant

The resumes of Sasse (R, NE) and Cotton (D, AR) do not exactly fit the profile of populists. That is especially true for the lines dedicated to the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company, firms that advise corporations on strategy, efficiency and ways to increase profitability.

In Sasse's case, he has used ties to McKinsey to burnish his private sector credentials, but in the process, he has stretched the point. He says on his campaign website that he "joined McKinsey & Company, advising leaders in times of crisis." He was actually a "special adviser" to the firm, on an hourly contract--never an employee.

Al Franken: Block merger of biggest & 2nd biggest cable providers

After a failed attempt to block the Comcast-NBC-Universal merger, Franken has emerged as the leading congressional opponent of Comcast's $45 billion bid to take over Time-Warner Cable, a merger that would unite the nation's two biggest cable companies. He was the only lawmaker to explicitly say he wanted the merger blocked.

"We've got the biggest cable provider and biggest Internet provider, in Comcast, buying the 2nd-biggest cable provider and 3rd-largest Internet provider, and I'm very worried that will create a company that's too big," Franken said. "They're going to use their position to leverage higher cable prices and to dictate a lot of things that will make for fewer choices, and their service will be even worse."

Jill Stein: Romney & Obama are both pro-1% big corporation

A. He responds to his electorate. When he's running in Salt Lake, he's anti-abortion. When he's running in Massachusetts, he's pro-abortion. He responds to his electorate, broadly, except that he remains basically pro-business in a very narrow sense of the word--that is a pro-one-percent big, corporate multinational business. You know what, that's not so different from the way Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are running the country under Barack Obama. When our governorship changed from Mitt Romney and it went directly to Deval Patrick, who is another poster child for progressive Democrats, no difference. Nothing detectable. Nothing changed in Massachusetts whatsoever.