Local hero profiled in City paper
Many of you have heard of Pulitzer prize winning New York Times columnist David Cay Johnston. What you may not now is that he lives right here in Rochester. The City Paper has an excellent interview with him this week. I recommend you read the whole thing.
First, a bit about Mr. Johnston:
His 2004 book, “Perfectly Legal,” which detailed the way the superrich get away with evading taxes, spent a month-and-a-half on the New York Times bestseller list and was named Book of the Year by the Investigative Reporter and Editors organization.
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Johnston has just published “Free Lunch,” an even more provocative book, as indicated in the subtitle: “How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (And Stick You With The Bill).” The book has cracked the top 10 on Amazon.com.
Here’s a brief snippet of the interview:
Before we get into specifics, what is your book’s overriding message?
Under the guise of market reforms, deregulation and getting government out of the way, new rules have been put into place that take money from the pockets of ordinary Americans and funnel it to the super-wealthy in ways that people have no idea about.
In many of the big retail stores you walk into, like Wal-Mart and Cabela’s [outdoor supplies], you pay sales taxes and they never get to the government. The owners of the store get to keep the taxes you are required by law to pay. That’s outrageous.
It’s called Tax Increment Financing, TIF. The theory is these stores bring new jobs and economic development, but they don’t. People don’t spend more money on retail because there’s a new store. In the book I tell the story of Jim Weaknecht, who, even though he had lower prices and gave better service, was put out of business due to subsidies given to Cabela’s. This is going on all over the country.
But read the whole thing.
Do you think it would be possible to get David Cay Johnston into this forum to talk about COMIDA? Seems like the obvious connection…
He was also interviewed on the NPR program “Fresh Air” last week:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17808622
[...] may have read about David Cay Johnson on this blog via City News, you viewed him on Bill Moyers - Now see him in person. From an email I received. Saturday Feb 16th [...]