The REAL government "moochers"?

I have 'em for you right here:

Twenty-six of the most powerful American corporations – such as Boeing, General Electric, and Verizon – paid no federal income tax from 2008 to 2012, according to a new report detailing how Fortune 500 companies exploit tax breaks and loopholes.

And then, of course, there's the entire NFL They pay no taxes whatever.  Legally, too.

The report:

​26 top American corporations paid no federal income tax from '08 to '12

And keep in mind, when we think "moochers"--you know, welfare moochers?--we aren't talking the ones getting oh, I don't know, $136 to live off of for two weeks or any "small potatoes" like that. We're talking billions of dollars here.

The 26?

Here they are:

They are, collectively, ladies and gentlemen, taking us for a ride.

A big, expensive, thieving, immoral ride.

And we're allowing it.

The original  report, conducted by the public advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice.

Link:  How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers

In this Independence Day, patriotic week

In this week of patriotism, in the build-up to our Independence Day, the Fourth of July, it's important to note what these very American companies pay as their fair share to keep the country functioning:

Money they're keeping away from the rest of us.

They don't even want to help keep up the infrastructure that make their businesses function and successful.

It's not just Apple--or GE--not paying taxes

This past week, Apple, Inc. took a beating in Washington and nationally for manipulating very legal tax laws to avoid paying any taxes.

We knew this of GE, General Electric, years ago and we've known other companies also do it but I think it's important to get out there more names of firms who do the same. Herewith, then, is a list of ten of the worst, biggest examples:

It gets worse, too, to an extent. There are companies who game our tax system so totally, WE'RE PAYING THEM TO BE IN BUSINESS, as a nation, you and me (click on picture for easier reading):

It's important to know.

I say again, companies should at least pay a minimum--say a 10% minimum, by law--for access to our markets and so we can keep up our infrastructure, whether they're from here in the US or elsewhere.

Link:  It's Not Just One Bad 'Apple'

First GE, now Apple Computer: Big profits, zero income tax paid

First it was GE, General Electric Company, famously not paying any US taxes:

General Electric Avoids Taxes 

It's insane, it's unfair, it's irresponsible on their part and it's even downright, truly immoral, even if it is legal, since they buy this kind of legislation from our government representatives with their "campaign contributions", which also need to be outlawed but that's a story for another day.

How do you take profits from and access the markets of a nation and then not pay anything back into it, so, well, let's see, that same nation can have good to great infrastructure like roads and schools and highways and sewage treatment, etc., etc. SO YOU CAN KEEP MAKING A PROFIT? 

Forget about patriotism for a minute, how about paying some taxes so the whole thing functions and continues to function and it stays afloat?

Now, today, Apple, Inc., is shown to be doing the same thing:

Corporations Are Stealing Billions in Tax Breaks ...

Apple CEO Tim Cook appears today before a U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that's charging Apple with using had a web of offshore entities to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. Apple has $102 billion in offshore accounts and shifted billions of dollars in profits out of the U.S. into affiliates based in Ireland where it negotiated a tax rate of less than 2 percent, according to the panel’s report. But Cook won't apologize today. Quite the contrary. In prepared remarks already distributed to the media, he and Apple have the chutzpah to recommend lower corporate tax rates on foreign earnings, in order to encourage companies to bring cash back to the U.S. and not “undermine U.S. competitiveness.” 

This is exactly the same argument being used by Google, Amazon, GE, and every other major corporation that's hiding its income abroad. It's the same argument they're using here in the UK. They couldn't care less about U.S. competitiveness, or British competitiveness, or the competitiveness of any other nation. Their only interest is shrinking their corporate taxes, reducing their costs, and making the most money they possibly can. I don't blame them: That's what corporations are supposed to do. But to dress this up as anything else is a sham."

--Robert Reich, Economist, Columnist for the NY Times, Professor, Writer, etc.

Don't get me wrong, here, either. I don't for a moment think these are the only two firms doing this, far from it. I just think these are two of the worst, most egregious examples of this national theft and greed.

What I think we need to do, as a nation, and I've said this before, is to, first, make offshoring profits illegal because as crazy and destructive as all this is, it's quite legal in our country to do this, to offshore profits, however unpatriotic and even, possibly, I think it can be argued, treasonous. Then, second,  put into place a minimum, say, 10% base tax all companies and corporations and even the wealthy must pay for both having access to our markets but also so we can help pay for the infrastructure that makes their company's profits possible in the first place.

This whole magical, wonderful thing we call the United States of America can't operate, obviously, without good roads and highways and sewage treatment plants and airports and schools, etc., as we all know.

It's not much to ask and it's the only way we can keep this whole thing running.

Oh, and again, it should and would also be patriotic.

At least, with all this sudden pressure on Apple lately, it apparently brought out the following result, just announced within the last few hours:

Next Mac will be made in Texas, Tim Cook says 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only way, the only way companies and executives of them are going to be brought around to any good change for this country. That is, we have to keep the pressure on them to do the right thing, the moral thing and not just what is legal.

What "news" in America has become

From the article 

The Day That TV News Died

by Chris Hedges:

 It is what these news celebrities do not mention that exposes their complicity with corporate power. They do not speak about Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that allows the government to use the military to hold U.S. citizens and strip them of due process. They do not decry the trashing of our most basic civil liberties, allowing acts such as warrantless wiretapping and executive orders for the assassination of U.S. citizens. They do not devote significant time to climate scientists to explain the crisis that is enveloping our planet. They do not confront the reckless assault of the fossil fuel industry on the ecosystem. They very rarely produce long-form documentaries or news reports on our urban and rural poor, who have been rendered invisible, or on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or on corporate corruption on Wall Street. That is not why they are paid. They are paid to stymie meaningful debate. They are paid to discredit or ignore the nation’s most astute critics of corporatism, among them Cornel West, Medea Benjamin, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky. They are paid to chatter mindlessly, hour after hour, filling our heads with the theater of the absurd. They play clips of their television rivals ridiculing them and ridicule their rivals in return. Television news looks as if it was lifted from Rudyard Kipling’s portrait of the Bandar-log monkeys in “The Jungle Book.” The Bandar-log, considered insane by the other animals in the jungle because of their complete self-absorption, lack of discipline and outsized vanity, chant in unison: “We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true.”

More links:

Read Chris Hedges’ interview with Tomas Young on Truthdig.

Watch Bill Moyers’s 2008 interview with Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro about Body of War.

Watch Bill Moyers’s 2012 interview with Chris Hedges about his new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt a collaboration with comics artist and journalist Joe Sacco.

Electricity--what Tesla said nearly a century ago

 

‎"Dennis Siegel, a student at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany has built what he calls an electromagnetic harvester—it converts electromagnetic fie...lds in the immediate environment into electricity to recharge a common AA battery. He's won a 2nd place award in the HfK Bremen Hochschulpreis 2013 competition for Digitale Medien, for his efforts."

 

"Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature."

 

--Nikola Tesla, "Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency" (February 1892)

 

We likely don't need big, expensive, very-polluting electrical power plants, folks.

 

Link: Student builds electromagnetic harvester that can recharge AA battery

GE just made a BIG sale--and probably won't pay any taxes this year

GE makes a sale, sells a company for nearly 20 billion dollars:

GE sells rest of NBCU to Comcast for $16.7 billion

Do you suppose they'll pay any taxes to the federal government this year?

They haven't, for some time.

Maybe they'll start now.

On American energy independence

"There is enough wind West of the Mississippi to supply three times the amount of power you currently use." --Dr. Helen Caldicott on American electrical power and possible energy independence. Link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAKZGse5SCw&feature=relmfu; Information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Helen_Caldicott

Don't believe in human-influenced "global warming" or climate change yet?

A mostly destroyed home hit by a powerful tornado in Marysville, March 3, 2012.

If you look at the links below, you'll see that scientists do, by a large majority, our government does, the military does, the insurance companies and industry does and businesses and business people do--huge, powerful and well-known Dupont and GE are just two. Those 62 tornadoes in the US yesterday? It's yet another example of how insurance companies are losing at least some money, due to these claims. Of course, that just means our insurance premiums will be going up. So if you're still holding out and don't believe the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere is changing anything significantly, if at all, just know you are more and more becoming alone and isolated in those disbeliefs. (Please note, too, that the links to sources I've found for this entry are non-partisan. I absolutely didn't want to rely on sources people see as heavily biased like The Huffington Post, etc.). Links: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/basicinfo.html; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force; http://articles.marketwatch.com/2011-09-09/commentary/30750008_1_climate-change-climate-research-community-global-warming; http://www2.dupont.com/Media_Center/en_US/position_statements/global_climate.html

How about if we kill THIS kind of welfare first?

From Senator Bernie Sanders (Indep., VT) Facebook page: "From '08-'10 General Electric made $10.46 billion in US profits, paid $0 in federal taxes, received $4.7 million in tax rebates, spent $84.35 million on lobbying and laid off 4,168 employees. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, is also the head of President Obama's 'Jobs Council'". Source: http://publicampaign.org/sites/default/files/ReportTaxDodgerLobbyingDec6Final_rev.pdf

A simple change we need from Washington

I've said repeatedly here that one of the easiest, simplest and smartest things we need to do is have one enterprising representative in Congress in Washington introduce a bill that would take away incentives to take any manufacturing or business offshore.  Here's proof of what I'm saying from an article yesterday on Alternet:

According to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), eighty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations utilize such tax havens to reduce their U.S. tax liability. Ironically, these accounting tricks aren’t available for companies that only do business in the United States, so Congress in effect is providing tax incentives to ship jobs overseas and dismantle the middle class.


It would be so easy.


And smart.


Some bright--even demagoguic--representative or senator should sponsor a bill taking away tax benefits to offshore business and first, they'd be a huge media darling, overnight.  Second, they'd be hugely popular with the people, just as quick.  Third, they would gain a great name for themselves locally, in their own districts but also nationally, in case they wanted to run for some other, higher office later.


This would be perfect for ANYONE in any political party--Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent but especially a Tea Party member.


I don't understand why this isn't happening.


Well, other than the fact that some corporations might not want to give them more campaign money.  Other than that.


Link:   http://www.alternet.org/economy/150598/how_12_multinational_corporations_avoid_paying_taxes

Robbing hoods

We have it backwards in America.  We take from the poor--and middle-class--and give to the rich.  To with, from Truthout and Alternet today:

7 Examples of How the Poor Are Being Robbed to Give More Wealth to the Rich

For years, the rich have been getting richer and the poor and the middle class have been getting poorer.  (But we knew that)

--Between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10 percent of families in the US claimed 33 percent of average income growth. Between 2000 and 2007, the richest 10 percent claimed a full 100 percent of average income growth in the US, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

--Business taxes were cut from 46 to 34 percent 25 years ago, according to ProPublica. But today, 115 of the big 500 companies listed on Standard and Poor's stock index paid federal and other taxes of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to David Leonhardt of The New York Times.

--General Electric's tax rate for last year was seven percent, according to ProPublica.

--The top five percent of US households claim 63 percent of the entire country's wealth. The bottom 80 percent hold just 13 percent of the growth, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

--Last year, John Paulson, a hedge fund manager "earned" $4.9 billion, according to The New York Times. Ten years ago, it took 25 such managers to collectively earn that much. Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers pocketed (a much better word) a total of $22 billion. It would take over 440,000 people each earning $50,000 a year to match that amount.

--A federal development program intended to help poor communities, the New Market Tax Credit, instead funnels up to ten billion taxpayer dollars to big corporations like JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs and Prudential to build luxury hotels, office buildings and a car museum. Bloomberg Markets Magazine pointed to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, which was renovated for $116 million. Prudential got $15.6 million in tax credit from the US Treasury for helping fund the project because the hotel was in a census zone that included two colleges that housed a lot of lower income students.

--According to the Financial Times, there are now more people living in poverty in the US than at any time in the last 50 years. Foreclosure filings were nearly four million in 2010, up 23 percent since 2008, according to RealtyTrac.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He is also a member of the legal collective of School of Americas Watch.

Link to original posts:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/150543/7_examples_of_how_the_poor_are_being_robbed_to_give_more_wealth_to_the_rich;   http://www.truthout.org/

Terrific examples of why we should eat the rich

Well, at least some of them.

Back in high school, a friend of mine once mentioned he had seen a lapel button once that said "Eat the Rich" and that he wanted one.  Ever since I heard of it, I'd never forgotten it and, like him, wanted one.

Herewith, an article out today on Yahoo! News from Kiplinger of some of the most egregious perks given by corporations--publicly-held corporations--to executives, showing why such a button might be created:

8 Outrageous Executive Perks

by Kathy Kristof
Tuesday, April 5, 2011

$2 Million Birthday Party

Company: Tyco International (NYSE: TYC - News)
Perk recipient: Dennis Kozlowski

When Dennis Kozlowski's second wife hit the magic age of 40 in 2001 -- only a few months after they wed -- the former Tyco chief went all out. He threw a weeklong Roman-themed party on the island of Sardinia -- replete with scantily clad models, chariots and an ice-sculpture vodka fountain made to look like Michelangelo's David. Tyco, now based in Switzerland, paid half of the $2 million tab.

Tyco also paid for Kozlowski's dog-shaped umbrella stand ($15,000), a gold-plated waste basket and artwork in his mansion -- but apparently not with the company's knowledge or consent. Four years later, Kozlowski was convicted of grand larceny for misappropriating millions in shareholder assets for his own benefit.  (MR:  At least they caught one).

Post-Mortem Non-Compete

Company: Shaw Group (NYSE: SHAW - News)
Perk recipient: James Bernhard

Companies are sometimes willing to pay executives vast sums for promises not to compete or divulge company secrets when they change employers. But Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group wants CEO James Bernhard to keep that promise a little longer than normal -- two years past death -- and is willing to pay dearly for his silence in the grave.

According to the company's most recent proxy statement, Shaw will pay Bernhard -- or his heirs -- $15 million (plus interest) when he leaves for his promise not to compete -- even if he can't compete because he's dead.

[Dream Jobs: Big Salaries and a Bright Future]

Housekeeping

Company: Tyson Foods (NYSE: TSN - News)
Perk recipient: Don Tyson

Don Tyson retired in 2001, but Tyson Foods was so grateful for his past leadership that it financed vacations for Tyson and his close friends, paid their personal credit-card bills, and allowed him to charge unusual purchases -- such as an $8,000 horse and a $20,000 oriental rug -- to the company.

But perhaps the most objectionable perk was having Tyson company employees clean Mr. Tyson's house and mow his lawn. According to a 2005 SEC settlement, Tyson Foods spent $203,675 having employees clean five different homes owned by Don Tyson, his family or friends. The company, headquartered in Springdale, Ark., also sprang for $84,000 in lawn-maintenance costs for the same five homes.

Flying School Bus

Company: Qwest Communication International (NYSE: Q - News)
Perk recipient: Edward Mueller

Executives are often given the right to use the company jet for pleasure travel, but their spouses, children and friends are usually only allowed to use the plane when they're accompanying the employee. But Edward Mueller demanded an exception to that rule when he became CEO of Denver-based Qwest in 2007.

His employment agreement gave his wife and daughter the right to use the company jet to commute to and from California, where his daughter was still in high school. The phone company expensed $281,182 that year for Mueller family joy rides on the jet and ended up buying his California home for a $1.8 million premium to its resale price, too.

[5 Hot Careers for the Future]

Tax-Free California

Company: Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY - News) 
Perk recipient: Ray Irani

When Ray Irani moved to California to take Oxy's top job, he was apparently horrified by the Golden State's high income tax rate. So in 1991, Irani struck an employment deal that required Oxy to pay his state income tax bills.

Over the course of the next six years, the Los Angeles-based energy company shelled out $5.8 million to pay taxes for Irani. But the problem with paying taxes for someone is that even the tax payment is taxable. There's also tax on the tax on the tax, making this one of the most egregious corporate perks in America. Occidental, long a target of pay critics, responded to shareholder objections by paying Irani a lump sum of $95 million in 1997 to buy out his contract and rescind the company tax subsidy.

Flying Cash Cow

Company: Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL - News)
Perk recipient: Steve Jobs

In 1999, Steven Jobs was "interim CEO" of Apple Computer, having returned in 1997 to the then-struggling company that had fired him a decade earlier. Directors were so grateful for his leadership and his refusal to accept any cash pay -- he still works for $1 annually -- that they gave him a plane.

A $90-million Gulfstream V is a pretty good perk. It became even better in 2002, when the Cupertino, Cal., company started reimbursing Jobs whenever he used his plane on company business. In 2002, Apple paid $1.1 million in flight-cost reimbursements for his use for the past two years.

[Resume Rules: Fact or Fiction?]

Super Security

Company: Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL - News)
Perk recipient: Larry Ellison

To say that Oracle's Larry Ellison is security-conscious is a bit of an understatement. He installed a security system at his expansive northern California home, and Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Cal., pays about $1.4 million annually to monitor it. (To put this in perspective, Qwest pays about $3,000 annually to protect Mueller.)

Few details are available about Ellison's "residential security program," except that it includes "security personnel."

Box Seats 'Til Death

Company: General Electric (NYSE: GE - News) 
Perk recipient: Jack Welch

Nobody knew what fabulous perks Jack Welch got from GE. The 2000 proxy statement said he'd only received $54,019 in giveaways. In 2001, it was $171,772 -- mainly for financial counseling.

But during a bitter divorce, Welch's ex-wife detailed a multimillion-dollar litany of perks that GE provided -- both before and after Welch retired. Among them: fresh flowers and a wait-staff for his New York City apartment; floor-level seats for Knicks games; a sky box for Red Sox games; and VIP seating at the French Open. Experts say the resulting brouhaha is one of the reasons regulators revamped corporate-disclosure rules. Welch subsequently gave up the bulk of his perks.

"...all the little piggies, in their starch-white shirts...", ladies and gentlemen.

Enjoy the beautiful weather.

Link to original story:  http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112473/outrageous-executive-perks-kiplinger?mod=career-salary_negotiation

Note to Washington: A minimum corporate tax makes sense

There is a great article out right now on The Huffington Post by Chuck Collins making a terrific point:

We're chumps unless we force Congress to stop tax haven abuse.



Instead of cutting state and federal budgets, the United States should crack down on the corporate tax dodgers thumbing their noses at us.


Across the nation, states are making deep cuts that will wreck the quality of life for everyone to close budget gaps that total more than $100 billion.


But there's a more sensible option. Overseas tax havens enable companies to pretend their profits are earned in other countries like the Cayman Islands. Simply making that ruse illegal would bring home an estimated $100 billion a year.


The next time you read a story about some politician bemoaning that "there's no money" and "we have to make cuts," just point to artful tax dodgers in our midst.

They include some of the banks that trashed the economy but gladly took our tax dollars to stay alive after the economic meltdown. Bank of America. Wells Fargo. Citigroup.


Goldman Sachs took a $10 billion taxpayer bailout but then gamed its effective tax rate down to one percent through what its shakedown-artist executives call "changes in geographic earnings mix." Shame on them. Pay up.


See that FedEx delivery van go by on the roads you paid for? Pay up FedEx! Don't pretend you're not making billions in the U.S. Don't lie and tell us you made all those profits on some island with more palm trees than people. We know the demand for coconut delivery isn't that big.


These corporations are heavy users of our taxpayer funded public infrastructure and property rights protection systems. They use our regulated marketplace, call upon our law enforcement system and judiciary to remedy disputes. They're protected by U.S. police forces and firefighters. They enjoy all the privileges and benefits of tax-paying citizens. They just don't pay their fair share for them.


So, ExxonMobil: the next time your gas station erupts in flames, why don't you call the fire department on the Cayman Islands? Or when someone holds up the joint, how about calling the Luxembourg police, since that's where you claim your profits so you don't have to pay the taxes you owe Uncle Sam.


Hey, Pfizer. Without our remarkable taxpayer-funded system of patents and intellectual property rights protections, everyone and their brother would be making Viagra and undercutting your sales of little blue pills. Pay up!


Those of us who pay sales taxes and have income taxes withheld from our paychecks will bear the brunt of state and federal budget cuts in schools, public transportation, and recreational facilities. Our most vulnerable family members and neighbors will suffer thanks to cuts in mental health services, elder care, and Medicaid.


Oh yes, and children. Arizona is cutting health care for 47,000 children. California, New York and Mississippi are cutting K-12 education funding. Hey, kids don't vote. Nor do they have corporate lobbyists. An estimated 900,000 jobs will be cut, including teachers, firefighters, police officers, and medical first responders.


Boeing, you want another contract for a taxpayer-funded military jet? Well, pay up! Pay up General Electric, Mattel, Dow Chemical, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco. Yes, we know you pay some taxes. But look these children who are losing their health insurance and teaching aides in the eye. Tell them you're paying your fair share.


These global corporations will complain that forcing them to pay their fair share of taxes will "kill jobs." Let's be clear: the patriotic businesses that currently pay their taxes and have to compete against these tax dodgers are the employers we want. It undercuts U.S. jobs for domestic banks, retailers, and manufacturers to have to compete against companies that can game the tax system.


The next time you're waiting longer for a bus or train than you should, or someone you know can't get timely mental health or drug treatment services, remember the tax dodgers. The next time your car hits a pothole or your kid's teacher loses her job, remember the corporations that are using armies of accountants to lower their tax bills.


In a democracy, if we sit back and just grumble, we get what we deserve. We're chumps until we wake up and force our members of Congress to stop tax haven abuse.

I ask here again, why isn't there at least say a 10% minimum corporate tax (or some such fair and wise amount) which any and all should pay so a) they have access to our markets and b) they support our infrastructure and so, in effect, the country itself they're benefiting from?

Isn't that the least they can do?  Isn't it the least we can ask of them?

Wouldn't it be downright patriotic to pay, on their part, let alone fair?

And why is no one proposing this?

Link to original post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chuck-collins/pay-up-corporate-tax-dodg_b_828925.html   (Thanks and a hat tip to longtime friend Dennis for pointing out this article).

Quote of the day--it's all agin' us

"It's a shitty world and the fix is in. The drinks are watered, the decks are stacked and the laws are cobwebs for the rich and chains for the poor. You can eat all you want, but that's because they know you'll just fill up on bread. The House always wins and democracy means you get to choose between two straight male protestant businessmen who went to school together. Meanwhile the oil rigs explode and the wars go on and the taxpayers pay the bankers' bonuses because a contract's a contract. In sæculum, et in sæculum sæculi. Like the Jerk said, it's a profit deal, and anyone who tells you different is either protecting you or they don't know what they're talking about." And get this--it's actually from a comedian, writing comedy. I love this guy. Link to original post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/i-love-america-because-no_b_635696.html