Liberal Jonathan Alter: America needs to mandate corporate loyalty oaths

You know how liberals scoff at things like flag-waving and the Pledge of Allegiance, calling it "jingoism" that they see as a symbolic and meaningless fraud in lieu of real patriotism?

So what, then, is real patriotism as they see it? And who might serve as an example of someone who exemplifies real patriotism? How about the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy? If left-wing columnist Jonathan Alter has his way, say hello to loyalty oaths that come right out of McCarthy's playbook from the days of the so-called "red scare." The only difference is that Alter would apply the loyalty pledge requirement to corporations, and he would soften the language by calling them "non-desertion agreements." What's this all about? It's about the latest thing that's got liberal knickers in a twist, which is the corporate inversion. This is where corporations acquire a foreign entity and then move their headquarters to the foreign entity's location in order to avoid the U.S.'s confiscatory 35 percent corporate tax rate. It's a fairly basic tax strategy you can expect from smart companies who operate globally and recognize the need to minimize unnecessary costs wherever they can. If liberals don't like this, the logical solution is to change the corporate tax code to make it more competitive. That way, you'd have corporations wanting to come here instead of move their base of operations elsewhere. But yes, I just used "liberals" and "logical" in the same sentence, so you know where that gets us. Instead, they're using the corporate inversion as an excuse to propose new laws that would ban the practice outright. But Alter takes it one step farther. Are you now, or have you ever been, an inverter?

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Because oaths and pledges are a little creepy, this effort needs something else—something that comes out of the legal and business worlds: a contract. More specifically, an NDA. Non-disclosure agreements are common in corporate America, where tens of thousands of senior managers and employees sign contracts promising to keep all sorts of information confidential. It’s often a condition of employment. Now it’s time to change the “D” and expect the same from boards of directors—a “non-desertion agreement” with the John Hancock of every board member and CEO in the United States. If boards thought for even a second about the long-term interests of their companies, they would summon their lawyers and sign. It’s protection against the risks of resurgent nationalism that could strip them of the many advantages (indirect government subsidies, easy access to American markets) that they currently enjoy. For those companies less able to act as Americans or recognize their real interests, there are two ways to make this work. The president should issue an executive order that says any company that wants to keep its federal contracts must sign a new-fangled NDA. It’s reasonable to expect most federal contractors to be American companies. Obama has already used that leverage to raise the minimum wage for companies doing business with the government and, in a little-noticed move, to force government contractors to pay their suppliers on time.

Nice touch at the end there, urging Obama to once again use an executive order to get what he wants. Herman wrote recently about the danger inherent in the explosion of the federal government such that just about everyone becomes a federal contractor, or at least wants to become one, thus giving Obama pretty much carte blanche power to force them to do whatever he wants via executive orders - since he essentially becomes their biggest client. Alter doesn't appear to know much about business, but he's got that part down. Dig down into Alter's thinking here, and you find something pretty revealing about the liberal mindset. Whether you're using the word "loyalty" or "non-desertion," what they're really referring to is not loyalty to the country but to the government, specifically as it relates to the payment of taxes. After all, companies that undertake a corporate inversion don't stop operating in America. They still make things and sell things here, and they still pay taxes here. They just don't pay as high a rate because it would be stupid to do that if they can find a way not to. The liberal mindset wants corporations to pay the highest tax rate possible, and they frame it as a loyalty issue because in their minds, there is no greater destination for any dollar of capital than the U.S. Treasury, where the political class can spend it as the political class sees fit. This is the real reason liberals hate corporations. They earn capital and keep it in the private sector, whereas the goal of every liberal is to get every dollar they can flowing into government. If you do anything to counter that, you're not just trying to run your business successfully. You are disloyal and unpatriotic. This is why they complain about "desertion" when it comes to corporations who are looking to pay less in taxes, but they don't get too concerned about it when it comes to the likes of, say, Bowe Bergdahl. All he did (allegedly) was desert the U.S. military in a time of war, and liberals don't support the war anyway so what do they care? Yes, pledges and oaths are kind of creepy, although most of us are happy to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because we feel that allegiance. The pledge the left wants is your pledge to give them your money, and it's corporations they want it from because that's where the money is. I'd say Sen. McCarthy would have been proud, but even he never thought of applying his scare tactics in this convoluted way.