USuncutMN says: Tax the corporations! Tax the rich! Stop the cuts, fight for social justice for all. Standing in solidarity with http://www.usuncut.org/ and other Uncutters worldwide. FIGHT for a Foreclosure Moratorium! Foreclosure = homelessness. Resist the American Legislative Exchange Council, Grover Norquist and Citizen's United. #Austerity for the wheeler dealers, NOT the people.



We Are The 99% event

USuncutMN supports #occupyWallStreet, #occupyDC, the XL Pipeline resistance Yes, We, the People, are going to put democracy in all its forms up front and center. Open mic, diversity, nonviolent tactics .. Social media, economic democracy, repeal Citizen's United, single-payer healthcare, State Bank, Operation Feed the Homeless, anti-racism, homophobia, sexISM, war budgetting, lack of transparency, et al. Once we identify who we are and what we've lost, We can move forward.



Please sign and SHARE

Monday, February 28, 2011

MUST MSNBC video of US Uncut co-founder. What we learned #226demo

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/41838823#41838823


Check out Cenk Uygur's coverage of #usuncut and of moveon.org's Saturday actions - and lots of information about corporate tax evasion.

The plan is to now take the spirit of Wisconsin into DC, where these decisions re the budget are made ... reframing the argument to revenue streaming NOT massive cuts within the next two weeks.


A revolution against neoliberalism? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

A revolution against neoliberalism? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

I post this is here as it is a haunting article, full of truth.

As we hit tax evaders, we are truly going for the heart of the matter here in the United States/Canada/UK - and the other nations signing on (France, Netherlands, et al).

This abuse of the public purse is part and parcel of the systemic abuse neoliberalISM causes.

What we are suggesting is not reformist, although that might appear to be the case at first glance. We are talking about morality, values something that "capitalISM", neoliberalISM and reformISM does not address in the least.


REPORT: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/26/main-street-tax-cheats/



Today, hundreds of thousands of people comprising a Main Street Movement — a coalition of students, the retired, union workers, public employees, and other middle class Americans — are in the streets, demonstrating against brutal cuts to public services and crackdowns on organized labor being pushed by conservative politicians. These lawmakers that are attacking collective bargaining and cutting necessary services like college tuition aid and health benefits for public workers claim that they have no choice but than to take these actions because both state and federal governments are in debt.
But it wasn’t teachers, fire fighters, policemen, and college students that caused the economic recession that has devastated government budgets — it was Wall Street. And as middle class workers are being asked to sacrifice, the rich continue to rig the system, dodging taxes and avoiding paying their fair share.
In an interview with In These Times, Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today’s UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers, explains that while ordinary Americans are being asked to sacrifice, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. As he says, if you have “one dollar” in your wallet, you’re paying more than the “combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America“:
[Gibson] explains, “I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.”
Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers — corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes:
BANK OF AMERICA: In 2009, Bank of America didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes, exploiting the tax code so as to avoid paying its fair share. “Oh, yeah, this happens all the time,” said Robert Willens, a tax accounting expert interviewed by McClatchy. “If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. The same year, the mega-bank’s top executives received pay “ranging from $6 million to nearly $30 million.”
BOEING: Despite receiving billions of dollars from the federal government every single year in taxpayer subsidies from the U.S. government, Boeing didn’t “pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes” between 2008 and 2010.
CITIGROUP: Citigroup’s deferred income taxes for the third quarter of 2010 amounted to a grand total of $0.00. At the same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. “John Havens, the head of Citigroup’s investment bank, is expected to be the bank’s highest paid executive for the second year in a rowwith a compensation package worth $9.5 million.”
EXXON-MOBIL: The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This was the same year that the companyovertook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of Exxon-Mobil’s CEO the same year was over $29,000,000.
GENERAL ELECTRIC: In 2009, General Electric — the world’s largest corporation — filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas. That same year GE CEO Jeffery Immelt — who recentlyscored a spot on a White House economic advisory board — “earned total compensation of $9.89 million.” In 2002, Immelt displayed his lack of economic patriotism, saying, “When I am talking to GE managers, I talkChina, China, China, China, China….I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion.”
WELLS FARGO: Despite being the fourth largest bank in the country, Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also saw his compensation “more than double” as he earned “a salary of $5.6 million paid in cash and stock and stock awards of more than $13 million.”
In the coming months, politicians across the country are going to tell Americans that the only way to stave off huge deficit and balance the budgets is by gutting programs for the poor, eviscerating support for the middle class, eliminating labor rights, and decimating the government’s ability to serve the public interest. This is a lie. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and income inequality is higher now than it has been at any time since the 1920′s, with the top “top 1 percentile of households [taking] home 23.5 percent of income in 2007.”
It is simply unfair for Main Street Americans who’ve already been battered by one of the worst economic crises in our history to have to continue to sacrifice while the rich and well-connected continue to rip off taxpayers and avoid paying their fair share. That’s why a Main Street Movement consisting of Americans who are fed up with the status quo is rocking the nation, and one of its first targets should be tax dodgers like Bank of America and Boeing.
UPDATEAll across the country, Main Street Americans are protesting tax dodgers like Bank of America. A picture from one such demonstration (HT: @loril):
UPDATEOn its Twitter account, US Uncut notes that protesters outraged at Bank of America's tax avoidance shut down a major branch in Washington, D.C. today.
UPDATEHundreds of demonstrators descended on a Bank of America branch in San Francisco, some carrying signs mocking the bank's logo as "Bankrupting America" (HT: @jashsf):
UPDATEOne Uncut US demonstrator carried a sign that read: "I pay almost 1/3 of my measly income, Bank of America pays NOTHING?!!!" (HT: @allisonkilkenny):
UPDATEThis art school dropout in Maine was outraged at having to pay more taxes than Bank of America (HT: RawStory):

US Uncut's Anti-Austerity Protests Start Small, Strong Against Bank of America

http://www.truth-out.org/us-uncuts-anti-austerity-protests-start-small-strong-against-bank-america68108


US Uncut's Anti-Austerity Protests Start Small, Strong Against Bank of America

by: Alissa Bohling, t r u t h o u t | Report
US Uncut's Anti-Austerity Protests Start Small, Strong Against Bank of America
Protesters participate in a US Uncut action on Bank of America in Washington, DC. US Uncut is a new movement that has sprung from a UK-based anti-austerity group and they have chosen Bank of America as their first corporation to target. (Photo:USUncut.org)
Anna Becker looks tired. Becker is leaning against the brick wall beside the entrance to Bank of America's Pearl District branch in Portland, Oregon, where one of over 50 nationwide protests by US Uncut has been underway for nearly two hours.
But Becker, a retired teacher, is just as energized as the protesters at the front of the crowd of about 60, who spill into the street and draw long, loud honks from the stream of cars driving toward the Willamette River.
"I have been waiting for 20 years for something like this to happen in America," says Becker. The words she has spoken in private for years are now plastered onto the canary yellow poster board she holds up like a shield: "B of A is al-Qaeda: financial terrorists."
Bank of America (B of A) is the first corporation to be targeted by US Uncut, the transatlantic offspring of the United Kingdom-based anti-austerity group UK Uncut, which held its first demonstration to protest corporate tax evasion in late 2010.
As a voice at the megaphone of the Portland protest said, "The United States does not have a deficit problem. The United States has a revenue problem." According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, 25 percent of the biggest corporations pay no federal income tax. B of A, the recipient of $45 billion in bailout funds, shuttles its would-be tax dollars into 115 offshore tax havens. Meanwhile, budget deficits are cited as justification for pay freezes for public workers and cuts to heating assistance programs, Social Security, and other social safety nets.
"The $3 in my wallet is more than ExxonMobil, GE and Bank of America paid in taxes last year, combined," said Carl Gibson, founder of the first American Uncut group, US Uncut Mississippi, in a release prior to the February 26 protests.
"There's a direct connection between corporate tax dodging and what's happening to real people's lives," said Gibson. "Because of overseas tax havens and other tax loopholes, US corporations are making profits in America but barely paying taxes here. If we close those loopholes, we wouldn't have to be cutting back on firefighters, library hours and student loans."
In its first weeks, the movement remains small but is already getting noticed. In Washington, DC, about 100 Uncut demonstrators closed down the B of A branch where their protest was staged. Boston organizer Chris Priest estimated turnout there at around 50.
Demonstrations in some other cities owed part of their numbers to spillover from MoveOn's 30,000-strong rallies in solidarity with Wisconsin's workers. In Philadelphia, a handful of people gathered in front of Comcast's headquarters to protest its unfair tax advantage grew to more than 30 as they drew the attention of MoveOn supporters demonstrating nearby. Alec Johnson, the founder of US Uncut Columbus, spoke to a crowd of about 1,000 gathered at the Ohio statehouse in a rally cosponsored by Planned Parenthood and MoveOn. And about 200 people turned out to the capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia, in a protest to support both US Uncut's message opposing attacks on the public sector and the wider worker solidarity movement that continues to ripple out from Madison.
Despite its size, the brand-new movement has already caught the attention of Fox News conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. In a February 24 segment, Beck painted the US and UK Uncut movements as a "radical" conspiracy.
"The fact that Glenn Beck is already coming after us, that's interesting to me," said Johnson. "When some big media gun gets on the airwaves and starts telling people that the organization I'm interested in is awful, that speaks to our power ... and I'm a lot less scared of him."
Kevin Shields, the high school senior who coordinated US Uncut Philadelphia's protest against Comcast, agreed. "I think that's actually some of the best press we can get," said Shields.
Other participants are less enthusiastic about right-wing interest in the growing movement. Some of DC's impromptu media representatives, who were culled from the event's participants, guarded their identities when speaking with reporters. One of them, a nonprofit-sector worker using the pseudonym Matthew, told Truthout, "Here in DC, we have a lot of sort of back channels to the UK group," who, in light of "some vicious right-wing hatchet jobs" against some of its members in the UK's conservative press, encouraged its counterparts in the United States to remain anonymous.
In addition to concerns about media smear campaigns, said Matthew, "We're dealing with a massive corporation with unlimited resources, and, as we've seen with the hacked emails, they're going to go after people." (When Anonymous, a group of hackers supportive of WikiLeaks, discovered the head of private security firm HBGary Federal claimed to have infiltrated Anonymous' ranks, it hacked the firm's emails anddiscovered that a law firm hired by B of A had approached HBGary about spying on Anonymous.)
The range of attitudes about identity and security among US Uncut supporters suggests a growing public uncertainty about how much a government increasingly indebted to corporations can be trusted to uphold its citizens' right to dissent. As of two days before the protest, at least one other city's Uncut organizers, in Los Angeles, were maintaining their anonymity. Before Brian Woodward came out to Portland's protest, he spoke with his mother, who was an observer at the Nuremberg trials. "She has some experience with the last bout of fascism this country saw, and her words to me were, 'Keep your head down,'" said Woodward.
Meanwhile, Johnson, a longtime activist who said he was arrested three times in the 1980's at protests against New Hampshire's Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, insists, "My retirement plan has pretty much always been to get shot off the barricades."
"People who want to be cautious, that's fine if that's what it takes for them to discover their agency," said Johnson. For his part, he said, "I've got two children, and I think they are counting on me to be their father, and if that means I have to take it on the chin from the Bank of America, then so be it."
Priest says he chose to use his full identity in his participation in the US Uncut movement for a different reason. "This isn't an underground movement. The point is to be mainstream," he said.
So far, US Uncut's self-described decentralized model appears to make room for multiple approaches.
"Americans are really searching for a new protest model. They don't want the same old thing of standing outside the mall every six months," said Matthew.
Shields, a labor activist, also welcomes US Uncut's unconventional strategy, which blends social media outreach with old-fashioned street protests. "As an activist myself, it's so frustrating - on the picket lines and everything, most people are fighting for things that affect their own lives - it's really tough to get people out for things that don't directly affect them." Shields said he was encouraged by the turnout in Philadelphia. "It was sort of weird," he said. "I did it accidentally. I sort of figured it was just going to be me and a few friends."
The pro-democracy movements spreading through the Middle East have been credited with influencing the recent resurgence of direct democracy in the US. "I don't think that overnight we're going to become Cairo," said Johnson, who nonetheless thinks the events in Madison and elsewhere have been an inspiration to many. "I'm going to be keen to see what we can pull off," he said.
A widespread sense of outrage could provide more fuel for US Uncut. In Portland, retired educator Marilou Baughman wondered what to make of the increasing disparity between the freedoms and privileges of ordinary people versus those of the super rich. "What's the next logical step?" asked Baughman. "Slavery?"
Between megaphone sessions denouncing corporate tax dodgers and "selective austerity," Jen Nichols explained why she took a lead in organizing the Portland protest. "I'm probably technically white collar," said Nichols, who works in IT and took a 10 percent pay cut after the recession hit, "but I'm still living paycheck to paycheck."
"I'm tired of paying taxes and being told there's not enough money for me or my daughter," she said.

Nichols is not the only one who is tired. In the lead-up to the protests, on February 21, a tweet sent out on the US Uncut handle seemed intended for those Americans who are struggling to meet their basic needs, plan for the future or get ahead in a recession. "THIS is your fight, the fight for a job, for benefits, FOR SURVIVAL, do not expend what little energies you have fighting for anything else."
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This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

~ ZIP FILE FOR US UNCUT SIGNS ~


USE FUN MONEY !!!

Having on hand lots of play money, and on it, handwritten is the following:

"Dear Federal Express,  Please pay your US Taxes.  Here's something to
help you get started.  Love, US Students"


The Uptake's request for coverage from us all

http://bit.ly/fY86np
Hello Virginia,


Can you pass this along to the other state organizers of US Uncut?

We're covering the tax fairness/middle class/workers' rights story that US UnCut's actions are part of.

We're trying to collect video from as many of the 50 states tomorrow with your actions so it can be seen on our site as well as Free Speech TV, Grit TV, Mother Jones and other members of the Media Consortium.

We've set up a way for people to easily send video of your events to us.
http://theuptake.org/actions/send-us-a-video/

If you could pass along this information to attendees, we can help them become the media.

Michael McIntee
Executive Producer
The UpTake
(651) 261-2272
michael.mcintee@theuptake.org
www.theuptake.org

Friday, February 25, 2011

~ Day of demo instructions ~

Our international day of action has arrived.
This is the day that the wealthiest corporations are finally forced to listen to the people they've been bankrupting for a generation.
Here are 5 things every US Uncut demonstration should do for a successful protest.
1. ARRIVE EARLY. Get to your meeting place at least a half-hour before your protest is scheduled.
2. REHEARSE YOUR CREATIVE DEMONSTRATION. Creativity in your protests is paramount. Any unique presentations, visuals, skits and other forms of political theatre should be rehearsed prior to performance.
3. DESIGNATE SPEAKERS TO TALK TO REPORTERS AND POLICE. Have someone ready to take questions from the press and to be diplomatic when police show up to break up your protest.
4. EXECUTE YOUR ACTION. Creativity and nonviolence are emphasized. Stay on message. Corporations dodging their tax duties are the direct cause for draconian budget cuts that the rest of us have to suffer.
5. REPORT BACK. Those of you who took the responsibility of logging your actions on the US Uncut action map must also be responsible for the feedback form after your action. Remember- pictures and/or video, or it didn't happen!
I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I'm absolutely blown away by the efforts of organizers from across the nation over the last two weeks. Let's do this. Let's be loud. Let's be heard. And let's keep working together and speaking out in public, as one, as much as we can until America's corporate tax dodgers start playing by the same rules as the rest of us.
Solidarity,
CG

BofA targeted by new direct-action group

By Matt Kennard in Washington

Published: February 25 2011 21:48 | Last updated: February 26 2011 02:02

A direct-action group targeting “tax-dodging” big corporations and banks plans to bring thousands of Americans to the streets on its first national day of action on Saturday.

US Uncut has protests planned in over 50 cities against making “unnecessary and unfair cuts to public services”, arguing that forcing financial institutions and companies to pay more taxes would be a fairer way of bringing down the fiscal deficit.

The group, which started in the UK, has seized on a 2008 congressional study that found nearly two-thirds of US corporations do not pay federal income taxes thanks to use of loopholes and offshore tax havens.

Their first target is Bank of America which has been chosen as a place for “co-ordinated sit-ins and protests” across the country on Saturday. BofA is the biggest bank by deposits in the US. It received $45bn in federal bail-out money in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

“I don’t know they are protesting against us,” said a bank spokesman. “The bank paid back all of the Tarp [federal bail-out[ money in 2009 with interest. Our practice is to follow all relevant tax policies and pay taxes when taxes are owed.”

The group’s British analogue and inspiration, UK Uncut, has made headlines since it began five months ago after targeting retailer Topshop and its owner Philip Green, as well as mobile phone company Vodafone, with spontaneous demonstrations at stores in London and around the country.

“In the UK, it’s a wildly successful model for compelling people to organise themselves,” said Rizvi Qureshi, an organiser for US Uncut based in Washington. The group calls itself a “decentralised, horizontally arranged network of people”, using US Uncut’s website as a messaging hub.

The organisers of the movement, which has received the backing of intellectuals such as journalist Naomi Klein and linguist Noam Chomsky, hope to channel the union and worker demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin to create a wider “progressive Tea Party movement” and shift the emphasis away from an attack on entitlement programs to corporations and banks.

US Uncut wants to turn its protest sites into symbols of public institutions being cut in the latest 2011 budget. “One idea is for people to to use props and turn the bank into a school to protest the cuts in funding for the vital Pell grant,” said Mr Qureshi. Pell grants help support undergraduate education for students from low-income families.

Like in the UK, which saw hundreds of people come out on the streets for protests, the organisers said they have been inundated with interested people who have found out about the demonstrations through social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. The US Uncut site has been live for just a few weeks but has already received thousands of visitors, say organisers.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Accurate FED EX tax rates information, recent

from their 10k filing with the SEC- (The annual report that corporations are legally responsible to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission)

calculated by Citizens for Tax Justice.

US TAX RATE for Fed ex

2009  (-3.1%)  revenue: 35.5 billion
2010:  6.5 % revenue 34.7 billion
 
 

The Republican Shakedown

The Republican Shakedown



Wednesday, February 23, 2011
 
You can’t fight something with nothing. But as long as Democrats refuse to talk about the almost unprecedented buildup of income, wealth, and power at the top – and the refusal of the super-rich to pay their fair share of the nation’s bills – Republicans will convince people it’s all about government and unions.

Republicans claim to have a mandate from voters for the showdowns and shutdowns they’re launching. Governors say they’re not against unions but voters have told them to cut costs, and unions are in the way. House Republicans say they’re not seeking a government shutdown but standing on principle. “Republicans’ goal is to cut spending and reduce the size of government,” says House leader John Boehner, “not to shut it down.” But if a shutdown is necessary to achieve the goal, so be it. 

The Republican message is bloated government is responsible for the lousy economy that most people continue to experience. Cut the bloat and jobs and wages will return.  

Nothing could be further from the truth, but for some reason Obama and the Democrats aren’t responding with the truth. Their response is: We agree but you’re going too far. Government employees should give up some more wages and benefits but don’t take away their bargaining rights. Private-sector unionized workers should make more concessions but don’t bust the unions. Non-defense discretionary spending should be cut but don’t cut so much. 

In the face of showdowns and shutdowns, the “you’re right but you’re going too far” response doesn’t hack it. If Republicans are correct on principle, they’re more likely to be seen as taking a strong principled stand than as going “too far.” If they’re basically correct that the problem is too much government spending why not go as far as possible to cut the bloat? 

The truth that Obama and Democrats must tell is government spending has absolutely nothing to do with high unemployment, declining wages, falling home prices, and all the other horribles that continue to haunt most Americans.
Indeed, too little spending will prolong the horribles for years more because there’s not enough demand in the economy without it. 

The truth is that while the proximate cause of America’s economic plunge was Wall Street’s excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause — and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for most Americans — is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums. American’s aren’t buying cars (they bought 17 million new cars in 2005, just 12 million last year). They’re not buying homes (7.5 million in 2005, 4.6 million last year). They’re not going to the malls (high-end retailers are booming but Wal-Mart’s sales are down). 

Only the richest 5 percent of Americans are back in the stores because their stock portfolios have soared. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has doubled from its crisis low. Wall Street pay is up to record levels. Total compensation and benefits at the 25 major Wall St firms had been $130 billion in 2007, before the crash; now it’s close to $140 billion.

But a strong recovery can’t be built on the purchases of the richest 5 percent. 

The truth is if the super-rich paid their fair share of taxes, government wouldn’t be broke. If Governor Scott Walker hadn’t handed out tax breaks to corporations and the well-off, Wisconsin wouldn’t be in a budget crisis. If Washington hadn’t extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, eviscerated the estate tax, and created loopholes for private-equity and hedge-fund managers, the federal budget wouldn’t look nearly as bad. 

And if America had higher marginal tax rates and more tax brackets at the top – for those raking in $1 million, $5 million, $15 million a year – the budget would look even better. We wouldn’t be firing teachers or slashing Medicaid or hurting the most vulnerable members of our society. We wouldn’t be in a tizzy over Social Security. We’d slow the rise in healthcare costs but we wouldn’t cut Medicare. We’d cut defense spending and lop off subsidies to giant agribusinesses but we wouldn’t view the government as our national nemesis. 

The final truth is as income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. The reason all of this is proving so difficult to get across is the super-rich, such as the Koch brothers, have been using their billions to corrupt politics, hoodwink the public, and enlarge and entrench their outsized fortunes.  They’re bankrolling Republicans who are mounting showdowns and threatening shutdowns, and who want the public to believe government spending is the problem. 

They are behind the Republican shakedown. 

These are the truths that Democrats must start telling, and soon. Otherwise the Republican shakedown may well succeed. 

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

How to handle teabaggers and other extremists

This article is a must read regarding uber conservatives and tea party types. Once you read this their illogical mindset makes a bunch more sense.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12395

The reason I post this is people were discussing how to handle the potential arguments that you may encounter talking to people on the street.

Tea partiers will on the surface cloak their ideas in lighter more vague arguments. They will argue with you about a company paying their taxes.
I had a very long argument with one last week who was making excuses for corporate tax dodgers. When it came down to it he really thought that
companies should not have to pay any taxes and had zero problem with companies illegally hiding money or otherwise violating IRS an federal law.
The really dedicated tea partiers that are deeply invested in this whole ideology actually want corporations to be in charge of everything instead of the government and the people. They seriously think this is a good idea. They also want to dismantle public education and replace it with a private corporate run education system.
These crazy ideas at least make sense in the way that you can see how they came to these ideas after reading the buzzflash article. In their heads all of this insanity is a good idea.

People that brushed with the tea party during the last election because they were mad about paying their taxes and the govt. not giving back, those people you could sway to what we are promoting. The deeply invested into this Koch brothers, John Birch society mindset members of the Tea Party are never going to come around. They seriously want the entire government dismantled and corporations to run everything. It feeds into their damaged psyches. Just be aware of what your dealing with if you run into one of these people. They are anti-government and care nothing for logic or reason. Your best to avoid an honest argument with these types and focus on getting the facts out to everyone else that doesn't know yet how bad BofA is ripping us all off.

Nancy in SD

WHAT TO SAY - FUN FACTS

WHAT TO SAY/FUN FACTS



WHAT TO SAY/FUN FACTS
Posted on Thu Feb 24th 2011, 7:40am UTC

Saturday is two days away.

This Saturday 2/26, US Uncut activists in approximately 50 major U.S. cities will stand in solidarity with our friends in UK Uncut to demand that corporate tax dodgers pay their fair share of taxes, just like we do.

(Are you ready? If not, feel free to read our "What to do" blog post for details on how to plan an action your community.)

Here’s what to say to the Press, the Police, and to People who disagree. (Just to be clear, these aren't verbatim orders from anyone, but rather suggestions for anyone who needs guidance.

WHAT TO SAY TO REPORTERS

WHO/WHAT is US Uncut?

US Uncut is a grassroots movement organized solely through word of mouth and social media that protests the fact that corporations aren't paying their fair share in taxes, which leads to cuts in valuable public services.

WHY are you targeting FED EX and corporations?

If FED EX alone paid their taxes, we could ‘uncut’ alot of the cuts to early childhood education (Pell Grants).

WHERE did you get this idea?

US Uncut is inspired by an article that appeared in The Nation magazine about UK Uncut, a nationwide grassroots movement in Europe that protests corporate tax dodgers and unnecessary budget cuts. The article was called “How to Build a Progressive Tea Party.”

SUMMARIZE US Uncut's cause in 30 seconds.

Before you fire one more teacher, before one more police officer gets handed a pink slip, before one more firefighter has to depend on food stamps to keep her family fed, let's make sure the richest of the rich play by the rules and pay their fair share, just like everyone else.
------------------------------------------------------

WHAT TO SAY TO POLICE

(REMEMBER: Police Officers & Bank Tellers are not your enemies here, and Video Cameras are your best friend. Never touch a Police Officer or get physically aggressive.)

POLICE. So what the hell are you folks doing?

YOU. Hello OFFICER, first of all, I know you are just doing your job, and we're all completely willing to follow your instructions. Second, this is a nonviolent, creative protest of corporate tax dodgers (like Bank of America) because their tax avoidance creates cuts in vital public services like public safety.

POLICE. Well, we were called here because FED EX says you're trespassing on private property. So you gotta go.

YOU. Okay, OFFICER, we understand and will comply with your instructions. Before we leave, may I briefly explain how this bank's corporate tax dodging impacts you?

POLICE. You've got 30 seconds.

YOU. OFFICER, we're on your side, here. I know you've heard about the budget cuts, due to low tax revenue, that threaten our children's future, and the jobs of teachers, firefighters and police officers like yourself, right?

POLICE. Right.

YOU. OFFICER, we want you to do your job. But as long as corporations like Bank of America don’t pay their fair share in taxes, we’re going to continue to see cuts in School budgets & Police Officers.

POLICE. Well, as much as I may agree with you, I've still gotta make you leave.

YOU. Okay, OFFICER, that’s fine. We have made our point and will go peacefully. Thank you for doing your job, OFFICER.

exeunt.

---------------------------------------------------

WHAT TO SAY TO OPPOSITION

OPPOSITION. "What are you lefties rabble-rousing about this time?"

YOU. "All we're asking is for FED EX to pay their fair share in taxes. This is a company that made tens of billions in pure profit last year. But they don't pay their share in taxes.We work hard. We pay our taxes. Why don't they?"

OPPOSITION. "Businesses are only responsible to their shareholders. Taxing them more makes them less competitive."

YOU. "We lose out on $100 billion in corporate tax revenue every year. Big business has to learn to be responsible to the American taxpayers who make it possible for them to run an American business. If you earn income here, you should pay income taxes here. And that's why we're here."

OPPOSITION. "So these are anti-business protests, right?"

YOU. "Not at all. We're just asking that FED EX along with numerous other corporations pay their fair share in taxes so more folks keep working. I'd say lost jobs and less local spending are both anti-business, wouldn't you?"

OPPOSITION. "Why don't we just cut back on big government and help businesses get tax breaks to spur job creation?"

YOU. "How can we give a corporation more tax breaks if they don't pay taxes in the first place? (pulls a dollar from wallet) This dollar is more than the combined income tax liability of Bank of America, GE and ExxonMobil combined. That means someone's gaming the system."

OPPOSITION. "So are you saying we raise taxes on corporations to pay off our debt?"

YOU. "No, just that multi-billion dollar corporations simply pay their fair share like you and I do. FED EX made billions in profit yet avoides taxes. We work multiple jobs and pay our taxes, why aren't they paying theirs?"

Education Related Cuts - important near Macalaster ..

• Congress had proposed a $5.7 billion cut to the Pell Grant program which will directly target lower income students who want a higher education

• Congress has proposed a $1 Billion cut to the Head Start program which will directly target lower income and poverty stricken children

• Congress has proposed a $700 million cut to Title I grants which will directly target children in lower income school districts

• College tuition has risen nearly 20 percent in just two years, making higher education unaffordable, saddling students with crippling debt.
 
 

- DEMO CHANGE -

St. Paul, Sat Feb 26th 2011

Facebook event »
Added on Wed Feb 16th 2011, 10:16pm UTC — last updated Fri Feb 25th 2011, 9:03am UTC
SUPER CHANGE !! ATTENTION !! SUPER CHANGE !!
Originally planned for Midway Super Target - BUT although Target is "guilty" of many things, tax evasion despite having offshore subsidiaries is NOT one of them. So the plan, taken in consultation with US Uncut (Jackson MS had the same Target) is to go visit the St. Paul Fed Ex location. Then we would move onto the Capitol to support WI workers. Moveon.org has organized this day of support for NOON. Since the deal has been struck, it is not certain what will happen on Saturday at the Capitol, but it would be an ideal location to look for people who will be genuinely interested in our cause.
FEDERAL EXPRESS FEDERAL EXPRESS FEDERAL EXPRESS FEDERAL EXPRESS FEDERAL EXPRESS
It is only a hop, skip and a jump to get to the Capitol. Well, one bus transfer - #21 to the #16.
Directions to Grand Avenue Fed Ex. bit.ly/hFWwGd
58 Snelling Avenue - right near Macalaster College, on Grand Avenue.
Fed Ex Meanwhile WE all experience cuts to our services.
Stop the cuts! Tax the rich! STOP CORPORATE TAX EVASION!
If your services are affected by tax cuts or you face job loss, do you think Federal Express should be avoiding its share?
- Let's educate people about tax evasion, potential and actual job cuts, cuts to services and social justice So, bring your literature, microphones, pan lids, scissors, signs, costumes, music, street theater and be part of a new international movement ! USuncutMN@gmail.com USuncut.org UKuncut.org
#226demo #usuncut #ukuncut #usuncutmn #canstopagoodidea
Please read the blog - usuncutmn.blogspot.com for current info and for information on what to say to the press, police officers and the general public. They will also be placed on the US Uncut MN page !!
This is a nonviolent protest.
11% of all homes in the U.S. are empty – Banks will repossess 1 million homes in 2011. 3 million homes repossessed in 2007-2010. The poverty rate is higher now than any time since 1948. Childhood poverty in the U.S. is 17% and the highest of all the industrial countries.
Federal Express should pay its fair share!

Contact details

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Glen Bec k on us troublemakers ....

 -

I refuse to publish his face here.  Sorry.  Editorial privilege.  You'll have to push the link.

Journalist Johann Hari on corporate tax dodgers and dispatches from Wisconsin’s union protest

http://wearecitizenradio.com/2011/02/21/20110221-journalist-johann-hari-on-corporate-tax-dodgers-and-dispatches-from-wisconsins-union-protest/

 
Listen now!
Episode #240 Journalist Johann Hari talks UK Uncut, US Uncut, and decides who he'd rather fight: David Cameron or Nick Clegg. Also, Godless Maniac 

Joseph Thoennes reports from Madison, Wisconsin about the protests and spirit of solidarity in the Capitol. 

Beforehand, Allison and Jamie dispell some myths about the Wisconsin protests and unions (http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/479560/12_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_uprising_in_wisconsin/,) and offer some advice about how to stick to your Progressive ideals when your friends are being little assholes about it.

Much like Tunisia's influence on Egypt, the spirit of Wisconsin appears to be spreading with the murmurs of uprising in Indiana due to some deceptively named "right to work" legislation. 

This, and all CR podcasts, are brought to you by the good folk at Vegan Essentials (http://veganessentials.com/). Buy cruelty-free products there and tell ‘em Citizen Radio sent you!

VIdeo: Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge Testifies to Minnesota Legislature on Corporate Tax Reform

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/27030.html


On February 1, 2011 Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge testified to Minnesota's House Taxes Committee on proposals to lower or eliminate the state corporate income tax.  [yes, really !]

Must go to link - video will not embed - highly controversial.


Some states ARE raising the rates:  Check out Illinois ....

"US Uncut" Calls Out Corporate Tax Deadbeats: Truthout

by: Allison Kilkenny, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
A few weeks before he died, Howard Zinn had lunch at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan with New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Their topic of conversation was, of course, social justice.

"If there is going to be change, real change," Zinn told Herbert, "it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens."

A year later, the streets of London erupted with citizens who were engaging in Zinn's favorite pastime: active democracy. Students gathered in protest at Parliament Square, but there were also other protests in Oxford, Scotland, Glasgow, Cambridge, Birmingham and Leeds. Across the region, students displayed their frustration with a government that sought to triple tuition fees, effectively pricing young men and women out of their educations.

The UK government's message was clear: Sorry, there's not enough money for the little people. Yet, it soon became clear there should have been enough funds to cover the educations of Britain's youth, and to provide housing for every poor man, woman and child in the country. However, there were some entities - corporations - that were committing the equivalent of economic treason, and that is why the UK is currently experiencing a shortfall in tax revenue.

UK Uncut, a grassroots movement compromised of average citizens, organized in an effort to figure out where the money had gone. As The Nation reports, they made some startling discoveries:
All the cuts in housing subsidies, driving all those people out of their homes, are part of a package of cuts to the poor, adding up to £7 billion. Yet the magazine Private Eye reported that one company alone - Vodafone, one of Britain's leading cellphone firms - owed an outstanding bill of £6 billion to the British taxpayers. According to Private Eye, Vodaphone had been refusing to pay for years, claiming that a crucial part of its business ran through a post office box in ultra-low-tax Luxembourg. The last Labour government, for all its many flaws, had insisted it pay up.

But when the Conservatives came to power, David Hartnett, head of the British equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service, apologized to rich people for being "too black and white about the law." Soon after, Vodafone's bill was reported to be largely canceled, with just over £1 billion paid in the end.
Once news of the theft reached the people, UK Uncut's ranks swelled. They staged peaceful sit-ins that shut down Vodafone's stores. Following the successful protests, the group shifted its attention to one of Prime Minister David Cameron's official advisers, Sir Philip Green.

As The Nation notes, Green, the ninth-richest man in the UK, is also a shameless tax dodger:
Although Green lives and works in Britain and his companies all operate on British streets, he avoids British taxes by claiming his income is "really" earned by his wife, who lives in the tax haven of Monaco. In 2005, the BBC calculated that he earned £1.2 billion and paid nothing in taxes - dodging more than £300 million in taxes.
UK Uncut pointed out that the school sports partnership, one of the programs axed under Cameron's recently implemented cuts, could have been saved if Green was made to pay his taxes.

These kinds of lucid examples of corporate theft spoke to the public. More protests and occupations broke out, inspiring journalist Johann Hari to declare in The Nation that this is how the United States might build a progressive Tea Party. Here were real people exercising the method Zinn advocated his whole adult life: average people, building from the bottom up.

Now, the UK Uncut movement has come to America. US Uncut just recently launched, but there are already chapters springing up across the country. The whole thing is moving faster than Carl Gibson, the director of US Uncut's founding chapter in Mississippi, could have ever hoped for.

"This is snowballing so quick," said Gibson. "I made the Twitter page and Facebook group and invited a few friends and said, 'Guys, we've got to do something about this,' and this is right after I read the article about UK Uncut in The Nation that had the ten steps to launching a US Uncut movement,  and I got busy."

Now, Gibson is helping to coordinate movements in twenty states. UK Uncut helped him organize a unified day of protest against the banks. He's spoken with BBC World and The Guardian. Additionally, Gibson says certain US Uncut participants have reached out to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in order to bridge the divide between liberalism's two great abandoned resource pools: the poor and labor.

"I think this just indicates that people are so, so ready for a movement like this to come out," he said, "especially when you consider how the right-wing has stolen the mantle of populism in order to preach corporate propaganda and get people to protest against their own economic self-interest in the Tea Party movement."

As part of their efforts to nurture their fledgling counterpart, UK Uncut is helping Gibson locate those easy-to-recite tax dodging figures that captured the attention of Brits everywhere. The figures shouldn't be difficult to find.

The IRS estimates that individuals and corporations currently hold $5 trillion in tax haven countries. Nearly two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes at all, and the great vampire squid, Goldman Sachs, which received $10 billion dollars in taxpayer money during the bailout, negotiated their tax rate down to one percent. The entire tax haven scam costs taxpayers as much as $100 billion per year.

To help illustrate the massive hole this con game leaves in the budget, consider that President Obama made the recent decision to end the year-round Pell Grant policy in order to save $3.4 billion in 2011 and $4.2 billion in 2012. Another example: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are braced for more than $6 million in cuts, a shortfall that could easily be made up if the US recovers just .06 percent of the annual taxes owed to it by tax haven criminals.

Some of the worst corporate offenders are Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Chevron, Ford, ExxonMobil and Bank of America. The biggest dodger is General Electric (GE), which, during a time of national economic crisis, actually made money on their tax filing in 2010. Though the company generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, it recorded $1.1 billion in tax benefits. Forbes calls this GE's "uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the US and make lots of money overseas, where tax rates are lower." Such activity is also known as tax dodging, but publications like Forbes prefer to avoid such shrill language.

Conservatives frequently cite the fact that America's corporate tax rate is 35 percent, which is higher than the average of other industrial countries, but that doesn't take into account these kinds of tax evading practices. In fact, 115 companies on the S&P 500 pay less than 20 percent in taxes, and that doesn't take into account the 37 companies, such as Citigroup and American International Group (AIG), that receive more in credits than they ultimately pay out (companies that pay less than five percent in taxes include Boeing and Amazon).

In 2010, if you made between $34,001 and $82,400, your marginal tax rate was 25 percent. That means you paid more in taxes than a company like Carnival Corporation - the entity behind the floating eyesores of Carnival cruises - which, over the last five years, has paid only 1.1 percent of its cumulative $11.3 billion in profits, according to The New York Times. You even paid more if you were in either of the next two lowest income brackets. For singles earning between $0 and $8,375, the marginal tax rate is 10 percent - a positively patriotic sum considering that income won't keep an individual above the poverty line, and yet would cause any Fortune 500 CEO to experience cardiac arrest.

Despite these glaring instances of stolen revenue, the right has been marvelously successful at using astroturfing campaigns to create its Tea Party, a movement that is more likely to focus on illegal immigration than foreign tax havens (unsurprisingly, given that large corporations like Koch Industries bankrolled such endeavors).

Gibson blames the propaganda from networks like Fox News for brainwashing the lower classes into fighting against their own interests, yet he's optimistic about the future. The US Uncut web site is up and growing, as are its Facebook group and Twitter page. "It's time for the people to speak up and do whatever we can," said Gibson.

When my Citizen Radio partner and I interviewed Zinn in his home a couple months before he died, we asked him why it's so important for students to have an intimate understanding of history.

"To me, understanding history is a matter of life and death," he said. "If you don't understand history, you're a victim." By that, he meant that if citizens didn't understand their own history of exploitation at the hands of robber barons and tycoons, who fought for deregulation at the expense of their employees in order to accumulate larger profits, they would be doomed to repeat those tragedies. Now here we are in 2011, and an entire movement branded as a populist uprising is screaming about illegal immigrants and Obama's birth certificate while corporations rob the country blind.

Luckily, it seems as though enough sane Americans are learning the correct history lessons from their brothers and sisters in struggle. Here's hoping US Uncut never forgets its history.

US Uncut's official website is http://www.usuncut.org/. They are also on Facebook and Twitter.