Catching up: WSJ on corporate welfare, Noticing New York on the connection between public hearings and the lack of public trust

From today's Wall Street Journal, an editorial headlined The Corporate Welfare State: A cause to unite the tea party and the Occupy Wall Street crowd.":

For those who say this is good for American competitiveness, consider that ending all corporate welfare programs would finance a substantial cut in the 35% corporate income-tax rate that makes U.S. business less competitive but does a poor job of raising revenue because of these loopholes. A big rate cut would generate far more jobs and wealth than passing out checks to businesses one at a time.

As important as this economic damage is the corrosive effect that corporate welfare has on public trust in government. Americans understand that powerful government invariably favors the powerful, who have the means and access to massage Congress and the bureaucracy that average citizens do not. This really is aid to the 1% paid by the other 99%.

The public trust

Thematically connected is Noticing New York's Michael D. D. White, in Public Hearings For Big Real Estate Projects: Refining Your Sense of the Absurd (with an AYR reference):

There is a theory, a rather frightening one, that there is now a club, a political and financial class, that is above the law. I heard this theory propounded by Glenn Greenwald, the author of “With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful” on a Leonard Lopate show segment yesterday.