("B")ENDING BUSINESS IN THE NORTH CAROLINA LEGISLATURE

 Below is a letter to the Editor that I just sent to our local paper.  If any of my readers are in North Carolina...please take this information and contact your State Representatives and Senators.

(UPDATE:  This bill was defeated on May 15 in the NC House, but was referred back to committees for review at a later date.  So while we were able to defeat this madness two years in a row, it is likely to show up again sometime in another future session.  Vigilance is required!  But my thanks go to our good representatives who voted this down this time!)

To all of my business friends in Gaston County, you are about to be squashed by the General Assembly in Raleigh if you don't step up and stop them.

There is a legislation making the rounds in the committees that sets up C Corporations and S Corporations for a big fall.  The legislation is enacting something called the "B Corporation."  This is a supposedly "new" corporate designation that sets up a "different" model for doing business.  Why do we need that?  We don't.  But "B Corporation" has deep pockets and expensive lobbyists who are selling this to our legislature with all sorts of cool sounding propaganda;  like giving out tax breaks for "B Corporations" who use low flow toilets, or hire enough diverse minorities, or upfit their buildings to be "green," or sell "green" products, or ...just about anything that the B Corporation folks think satisfies their own agenda or criteria.  The "B Corporation" website states the idea is to give companies a "new" way of capitalizing on doing "social good," such as Social Justice and Environmental Justice.  We already have environmental laws, social programs, and a legal structure that is supposed to provide for equal protection.  The "B Corporation" would create yet another system of regulations affecting whether or not your company is allowed to operate on a capitalist model of profit making.  According to "B Corporation," the profit motive is greed, therefore, you must conduct your business for "the social and environmental good."  According to "B Corporation," doing business as a capitalist provides NO social or environmental good."  How do you like that, Mr. or Ms. Businessperson? Your business is just not measuring up!  Nope.  You just aren't "good" enough.

Who is "B Corporation?"  Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Aspen Institute, the founders of "B Corporation" are very wealthy and successful capitalists who decided to get wealthier by creating a system where you have to go to them to get "certified" to qualify as a "B Corporation."  Their certification comes from another arm of "B Corporation" called "B Labs."  So they get fees for certifying businesses who want to become a "B Corporation." They even have set up their own bank and created a stock exchange category just for "B Corporations" to lure their investors.  

Why is that a problem?  Well, for one thing, the Secretary of State of North Carolina is in charge of determining business classes in our State, not some outside group of unelected people.  Why would the legislature want to take that power away from the Secretary of State?  Bad idea.  Then you have the tax manipulation problem.  While not in this bill as yet, the stated goal of the "B Corporation" is to get States to provide extra tax breaks to companies who pay "B Labs" to get certified as a "B Corporation."  Should the State of North Carolina give special tax status to "B Corporations?"  What happens to the C Corporations and the S Corporations in that scenario?  This is happening elsewhere already.  Philadelphia has put "B Corporations" in the front of the line for all government contracts.  If you are a C Corp. or an S Corp. go to the back of the line.  And that is just what the "B Corporations" are selling....big advantages for themselves over our normal, traditional, business model.  This doesn't work unless you have State legislatures and elected officials cooperating with "B Corporation" to implement their scheme.  Once "B Corporation" is adopted by our State legislature, it is just a hop, skip, and jump to put the preferred status for bids and taxes into the mix.  The well-heeled lobbyists know this and their mouths are watering at the prospects.

Charities will be hurt by this as well.  Why give voluntarily if the State of North Carolina is giving tax breaks to "preferred" businesses who do supposed "social and environmental good?"  Not only that, but the consumer would be financially supporting this scheme by purchasing goods and services from State sanctioned "B Corporations," not by choice of charity, but by the act of purchasing something they may need.  The taxpayers lose by the State handing out more tax breaks to favored "B Corporations" while the rest of the taxpayers carry the extra tax burden on their shoulders. 

This legislation has made it through two committees already.  If you agree with me that this is a very bad idea for North Carolina and for the business sector here in North Carolina, please contact your representatives and tell them to vote against the "B Corporation."  And do it quickly.  Time is of the essence.

Sources below:

http://www.bcorporation.net/
http://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps/the-non-profit-behind-b-corps/our-funders
http://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps/the-non-profit-behind-b-corps/our-history
http://www.pappasontaxes.com/index.php/2010/06/26/whats-a-b-corporation/
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dangers-of-quasi-capitalism

"LEVERAGE"- THE NEW WORD FOR POLITICAL THEFT

If someone came up to you and said they wanted to make your life WONDERFUL by curing the world's ills, but also say in order to do that you would have to give them 60% of your earned income, what would you say?  If someone came up to you and said you are at fault for a typhoon in Japan, so your penance will be giving up 40% of your land, what would you say?  If someone came up to you and said they would give you $100 million for a project, but in order to receive that you MUST spend it they way they tell you and THEN you must match that amount of money over the next 5 years on the same exact project they propose, what would you say?  

Welcome to "leveraging."

Feel like you are being manipulated?  Well, guess what?  You are.  We all are.  But the operative word lately is not "manipulate."  It is "leverage."  As in using "levers" to manipulate.  Levers are powerful devices to move something.  Trying to sound cool and businesslike,  bureaucrats, politicians, and non-profit foundations are using the word "leverage." 

Here is an EXAMPLE

According to the Sacramento Bee, “B Lab will establish partnerships with organizations that have regional presence and expertise and leverage financial and technical support provided by the Inter American Development Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, Halloran Philanthropies, Prudential Foundation, Linklaters, the Ford Foundation, the Avina Foundation, InnovaChile CORFO and Deloitte LLP.”
The B Corporation journey has thus far been characterized by pioneers like Yvon Chouinard, the iconoclastic CEO of Patagonia, who was the first CEO to sign on once B corps became recognized in California.
Chouinard has called prior laws governing corporations and charities too restrictive. He says that for-profit firms often face pressure to abandon social goals in favor of increased profits, while non-profits are overly restricted in their ability to raise capital when they need it to grow.
The B Corporation is another important step in the journey to build a new, more Earth-centered, more sustainable economy.  Perhaps something along the lines of what David Korten writes about in his latest book, Agenda for a New Economy, where he says, “to create an economic system that works for all, we need a different design grounded in different values and a different understanding of wealth, our human nature, and the sources of human happiness and well-being.”

 Note the effort there to change the language of prosperity to "redistribution of wealth."  "Earth-centered?"  "Human happiness and well-being," the author declares, is to place "social goals" on the backs of corporations, without exactly defining what those "social goals" are.  But gee, whatever he says ends in "human happiness and well-being."  Really?  

Also note the players in this B Corporation Scheme.  The Rockefeller Foundation.  The Ford Foundation.  Prudential Foundation.  Have the Rockefellers, Fords, and the insurance giant, Prudential given up all of their profits?  I missed the memo if they have.  These are foundations that are busy greasing their tax status with the government while preaching that the rest of us should not be profit motivated.  Hmmm.....interesting how that works.  They became rich from capitalism and now create foundations "leveraging" money to implement Socialism?  Anyone asking why that would be?

Trust me when I tell you this is only one small example of this word, "leverage" showing up in just about every policy document I've seen lately.  The grant application from the unelected Centralina Council of Governments uses the word "leverage," often and in many places, to describe their intent on how to use the Federal money.  They will "leverage" the funds to either get matching funds or to bend local policies to conform to HUD compliance in the grant. 

A "lever" is a lien on existing or future assets and labor.  It is also a bribe, but sadly the bribe, used as a "lever," has been given cultural legitimacy in our vernacular. 

What happens when property rights are "leveraged" away from Constitutional rights?   When politicians are "leveraging" away our rights by accepting bribes, they completely rescind the oath they took to protect and defend the Constitution.  But the bribes they are taking, which create the levers, are on your back, not on theirs.  So "leveraging" comes with no consequences.  Just as the previous noted foundations are receiving tax breaks from the government and using their donors' money to do it, politicians are putting feathers in their caps by running around shouting "I BROUGHT IN GRANT MONEY," but using your money to do it.  They NEVER tell you it is your money or that they stole your money to get that grant in the first place.

The supposed cure for curing the world's ills, these days, is always political theft of our rights, our liberty, our labor, our property, whatever our assets may be. 

So how does it feel to be "leveraged?"