Pat Garofalo, Author at Public Seminar

Corporations

The Film Tax Credit Sequel Stinks

Two thumbs down to subsidies for film and TV production

April 15, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

There’s a new sequel coming out, and let me tell you, it is terrible. No, I’m not talking about whatever film is actually up on the silver screen at the moment, but a push in statehouses across the country to revive or create film and TV tax credit programs, one of ...

Corporations

Why Taking on Turbotax Matters

Intuit is a scourge

April 8, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Tax Day 2022 is almost here, so it seems like a good time to talk about one of my least favorite corporations: Intuit, the makers of Turbotax, the now ubiquitous electronic tax payment software. A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission — which enforces federal antitrust and consumer protection ...

Corporations

Ban Secret Deals

Meet the new coalition pushing to ban NDAs in corporate subsidy deals

April 1, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

As regular readers know, I am a pretty big critic of the use of non-disclosure agreements in economic development deals. These agreements — signed by governors, members of state legislatures, mayors, city council members, and other local leaders — prevent public officials from disclosing anything about a corporate subsidy deal ...

Corporations

Subsidized By Taxpayers, Stealing From Workers

Wage thieves should get no public favors

March 28, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

The U.S. Department of Labor earlier this month found that Seaboard Triumph Foods, a pork processor in Sioux City, Iowa, illegally stole wages from workers by not paying them for work done before and after their official shifts, including time for “set up, clean up and knife sharpening.” Seaboard was ...

Subsidized By Taxpayers, Stealing From Workers

Corporations

Walmart Kills Wages

State and federal lawmakers are focusing more on corporate power in labor markets

March 18, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

The U.S. Treasury Department released a report last week looking at the power dominant firms have over labor markets, or, in layperson’s terms, the power employers have over how much you are paid and what your work conditions are like. And the findings were grim: “As this report highlights, a ...

Economy

New York’s Anti-Monopoly State of Mind

How and why the Empire State took center stage in the fight against corporate power

March 9, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

I traveled up to Albany, New York, this week to help out with the unveiling of a bill in the state legislature there that would prevent New York officials from subsidizing Amazon’s warehouse network. According to Good Jobs First, New York taxpayers have gifted Amazon with nearly $400 million in ...

Urban Environments

Disney City, USA

Beware Disney’s new residential communities

February 28, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Disney last week announced a new plan to build entire residential communities, a major move into real estate that’s disconnected from its current theme parks and their surroundings. It’s calling the initiative “Storyliving.” The first of these neighborhoods will be in Rancho Mirage, California, and is supposed to include homes, a ...

Economy

Piercing Amazon’s Veil of Secrecy

A community took on a secret Amazon deal — and won

February 22, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Usually I write about a lot of doom and gloom here, but today, it’s time for a happy story: A community in Frederick County, Maryland, caught wind of a secret agreement that was being negotiated between local leadership and Amazon to build some Amazon Web Services data centers, and made ...

Technology

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

February 7, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

"...there’s something much bigger at work here: The Chip Wars, as I’ve dubbed them, are heating up, and revealing some of the tensions between national needs and extraction from local communities."...

Economy

The Rural Tax Credit Hustle

Beware investment firms pitching themselves as the saviors of rural America

February 2, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

The Kentucky proposal would give credits against insurance premium taxes to corporations who provide funds to investment firms that then turn around and invest money in smaller businesses in rural Kentucky. If it seems like that’s needlessly complicated, well, it is. ...

Economy

2022 State Legislative Preview

Nine things I’m watching at the statehouse level this year

January 24, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Legislative sessions in most states either started recently or will start soon, so it seems like a good time to take stock of what’s happening at the state level and what I’ll be paying attention to in the coming year when it comes to corporate subsidies and the larger effort to ...

Economy

Dollar Store Doom Loop

The dollar store economy is a failed economy

January 14, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

In my recent piece on how to save local retail, I mentioned taking action to rein in the power of the two dominant dollar store corporations: Dollar General and Dollar Tree, the latter of which also owns Family Dollar. But I want to drill down on the subject a bit more, ...