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Corporate Tax Avoidance At 40 Year High

Reposted From Jobsanger

We have been hearing about corporations avoiding taxes for a while now. This excellent piece from Think Progress shows just how bad corporate tax avoidance has become. Something must be done about this. Americans pay their taxes (except for the rich like Mitt Romney) and it's time for the corporations to pay their share also. Here is what Think Progress had to say about corporate taxes:

In recent decades, corporate tax revenue has plunged, falling from about 6 percent of gross domestic product in the 1950′s to less than 2 percent today, due to a proliferation of corporate tax breaks and the use of offshore tax havens. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in fact, corporate tax receipts as a share of corporate profits have hit their lowest point in 40 years:

Corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest level in at least 40 years.
Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s the lowest level since at least 1972. And well below the 25.6% companies paid on average from 1987 to 2008.

Even the 25.6 percent share of profits that went to corporate taxes over the last quarter century comes in below the top statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Meanwhile, corporate profits are currently at a 60 year high, rebounding back to above where they were before the Great Recession hit.

At the same time that corporations are pulling in huge amounts of money, workers are seeing their wages shrink. Last year, real wages fell by 2 percent, and “many employees are also working longer hours and getting more done without raises or overtime pay.” “Part of the reason why business profits are so high is it is a zero-sum game, so labor is on the losing end of that,” said Aaron Smith, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Businesses are getting more out of each worker they have.”

Why the Tea Party fights Renewable Energy

Charles and David Koch are owners of a primary funders for the tea party and other extreme conservative groups. $21.5 billion each make them the 5th richest people in America and controlling stockholders for Koch Industries Inc. They are a private global conglomerate located in over 60 countries, including interests in oil, refining, pipelines, paper products, chemicals, fertilizer and commodities trading with annual revenues around $100 billion.
A review of documents and tax records for frequently connected interconnected web of corporate front groups, supported by the Koch brothers, shows how dangerous these groups espousing free markets and liberty have become to society.

The Koch brothers’ decision to create a nonprofit network dates back to 1977 when Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute, an organization the Koch foundations continue to fund. According to Cato’s web site, David Koch continues to sit on its board along with Kevin Gentry, Vice President for Strategic Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and chief honcho of the secret, annual strategy meetings of the Kochtopi.

From 2002 to 2006 the Koch funded Mercatus Center paid Lawrence Kudlow, a CNBC co-host and later host of his own show “The Kudlow Report”. “Mercatus spent at least $227,000 on more than 400 trips for lawmakers and their aides from 2000 to mid 2005”. Kudlow and frequent guest of the Kudlow Report Stephen Moore are big names and have a huge impact on who gets the presidential slate in 2012.

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There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.—Aldous Huxley

One of my Heros

Stealing From Social Security

The above quote from Senator Bernie Sanders is the truth. Social Security is not in immediate trouble, and the problems that might pop up 25 years down the road could be easily fixed for generations by simply having the rich pay the same percentage in FICA taxes that working and middle class people have to pay. So why do the Republicans (and blue dogs) keep whining about how Social Security is going broke?

It's because they have been raiding the Social Security fund for years to give tax cuts to the rich, subsidies to the corporations, more bloated contracts for military toys, and to fund unnecessary wars. Now they don't want to pay that money back, and if they cut benefits and raise the retirement age they won't have to. The Republicans want to use money workers have paid in to the Social Security program to pay for their own proliferate spending.

Don't let the Republicans (and blue dogs) steal retirement money from hard-working Americans! It's the big-spending Republicans' giveaways to the rich that must be cut -- not Social Security!

And for those of you who still doubt that it's the Republicans who are the biggest spenders, view the following graphic:

Reposted from Jobsanger

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Almost

Four painful years after the Great Recession struck and wiped out 8.7 million jobs, the United States may finally be in an elusive pattern known as the virtuous cycle — an escalating loop of robust job growth, healthier spending and higher demand.
The nation added 200,000 jobs in December in a burst of hiring that drove the unemployment rate down two ticks to 8.5 percent, its lowest in almost three years, and led economists to conclude that the improvement in the job market might just last.
“There is more horsepower to this economy than most believe,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. “The stars are aligned right for a meaningful economic recovery.”
It was the sixth month in a row that the economy added at least 100,000 jobs, the longest streak since 2006. The economy added jobs every month last year, the first time that has happened since 2005.
And the unemployment rate, which peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009 and stood at 9.1 percent at the start of last year, has fallen four months straight.

Economic Hitmen

Happy 2012

“Of course I believe in free enterprise, but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.”- Harry S Truman –


“The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.”- Clarence Darrow –


“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant work ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. –


“Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most – that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.”
_ Eugene V. Debs –


“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. “
- Bertrand Russell –


“The forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
- Jawaharlal Nehru –


“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. ..”
- Abraham Lincoln –


“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of what dictatorships are made.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt –


“The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I.”
- Karl Liebknecht -

Some Millionaires Made A Video And This Is What They Said

OCCUPY

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Occupy Sesame Street

Reposted from jobsanger

Amazingly, there are still some people who claim not to know why the Occupy Wall Street movement is necessary. Well this comment at AV Club, from a person calling him/her self Cookie Monster, puts it in the words of the famous Sesame Street character. It is the simplest explanation I have seen (and it is funny). Here is how "Cookie Monster" explains it:

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.
Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.
Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system -- your friends on Wall Street -- and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).
It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy -- knowing full well what could and would happen -- putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.
That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

This will make your blood boil!

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Major General Smedley Butler & The Fascist Takeover Of The USA - A Warning From History

Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not

An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.

As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.)

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

Do we really need reminding?

When camping on public / private property is okay