Now here’s an idea that should really get the attention of the nation’s cavalcade of corporate crooks: If your company breaks federal, state, or local wage and hour laws—or anti-discrimination laws—or finances the politicians who wink-wink-nod-nod at repression of citizens and workers by an overbearing government, then you should hit ‘em in the wallet, hard.
If the firm has federal contracts or grants, take them away. If it plans to bid on federal contracts or grants, put out the word to forget about it. If it greases politicians’ palms to achieve the same goal, same result. If your company broke those laws or bribed those lawmakers within the last five years, ditto.
That’s what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson intends, with an executive order he announced just before Labor Day and with a commission he’s setting up to gather evidence and write rules for such penalties. Its report and recommendations are due in late January.
Johnson got the idea from a non-profit group, Not With Our Money. His executive order aims at all those forms of corporate corruption, and most importantly, at the corrupters as well as the corrupted.
We’re not talking small sums here. The total of federal, state, and local grants that Chicago alone distributes is $3 billion in this fiscal year. And the city has so many contracts with private firms that the list would be the size of a telephone directory.
Think that’s large? USAspending.gov lists $754.97 billion in federal contract spending for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, covering almost 44,000 contracts. California is first, with $114 billion in contracts. Then come Tennessee ($83 billion), New Mexico ($80.4 billion), Washington state ($65 billion), Virginia ($58 billion), Texas ($45.4 billion), and South Carolina ($32 billion).
See a pattern? We do: Most of the money comes from the military. It doesn’t take any great imagination to realize military contractors such as Boeing in Washington state, Virginia, and South Carolina, and Lockheed-Martin, SpaceX, and Tesla in Texas and California reap big dollars.
By military contractor, Lockheed-Martin is first ($44.5 billion), followed by Boeing ($25 billon), RTX, which used to be Raytheon ($21.4 billion), General Dynamics ($21.3 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($9.8 billion). All are aircraft, seapower or information systems builders or all of those.
Then come Huntington Ingalls shipyards ($7 billion), AmerisourceBergen Drugs and Humana Healthcare (tied at $5.6 billion), the TriWest Health Care Alliance ($4.9 billion) and BAE Systems, another aerospace firm ($4.2 billion). And all that’s not counting the $22.9 billion multi-year contract Raytheon won on Aug. 17 to replenish the military’s usually bloated supply of Tomahawk missiles, depleted by President Donald Trump’s Iran War.
Now add in state and city grants and contracts, and we’re talking trillions of dollars, not just billions.
All of a sudden that executive order by Mayor Johnson, if extended nationwide, carries quite a wallop. Which is why, as a model for the entire country, it becomes extremely important.
It’s also extremely popular, at least according to a scientifically selected poll of approximately a thousand Chicagoans which Not With Our Money commissioned. The margins for banning contracts and grants to corporate malefactors started at a 3-to-1 ratio for such bans against firms which broke civil rights laws, and the ratios only increased from there, reaching as high as 6-to-1.
Take away those federal contracts, and the violators get hurt hard. Like we said, hit ‘em in the wallet, unless they really obey workers’ rights and civil rights.
Could Johnson have taken another step against the corporate crooks by denying them local tax breaks, too? He might have needed the city council to OK that move, and you can bet your bottom dollar the corrupters would target council members in next year’s election with campaign cash or attack ads.
Such “tax increment financing” is another big pot of money, according to labor-supported Good Jobs First. That non-profit, co-founded by Chicago native Greg LeRoy, also splits out TIFs by company.
One guess who reaped the most TIF dollars—money that otherwise would go to cities and states for social services and not into corporate profits and pockets. Amazon, of course: $11.61 billion over the last decade. About 40% was a TIF for one data center in New Carlisle, Ind. Nobody else was close.
In short, Mayor Johnson’s campaign against the corporate boodlers, bribers, and palm-greasers is a great start. If the next Congress winds up in control of Democrats, who at least still have to take account of workers’ demands, putting through such a national grant and contract ban would really shake things up in the CEOs’ suites.
Who knows, the threat of taking their money away might even induce them to obey the law.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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