Think CEOs are overcompensated?

US Uncut Exposes Rush Limbaugh with One Simple Question

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?akid=7519.187755.owKoql&id=660961&rd=1&t=1

Sometimes It’s Easy: US Uncut Exposes Rush Limbaugh with One Simple Question

 Carl Gibson, one of the founders of US Uncut, just steamrolled the drugged one. It was a thing of beauty. Rush would take a punch, hit the canvass, struggle to his feet, only to be flattened again. Eventually, as is always the case when right wing talkers find their asses handed to them, Ruash cheated. He spoke over Gibson, cut him off, spewed a slew of irrelevant right wing talking points, hung up on him, and then spent the next 10 minutes flailing desperately in an effort to make his audience forget what Carl’s question was.

So… What was the question? Well, a bit of background is in order first. Did you know that 47% of American households pay no income taxes? Let me tell you, every listener to right wing talk radio has heard that tired old talking point hundreds of times. It’s the ear bug of right wing talk that establishes the foundation of their resentment politics. After all, somebody has to be paying for all those welfare checks, right?

I probably don’t have to mention it to this crowd, but it is true, of course, that Limbaugh and his lieutenants (and the cultists that tune in faithfully every day) ignore the fact that everyone that works pays payroll taxes to the feds (about 12% of every dollar they earn)… They don’t mention the federal tax on gasoline… Or state, local and sales taxes. The truth is that nobody escapes the tax man, and that many of the folks that pay no federal income taxes nevertheless lose a higher percentage of their earnings to taxes than the super-rich do.

So yeah, virtually every day, Limbaugh tells his listeners that they are paying income taxes so that leech scum underclass of America can be coddled by the nanny state. So Carl called and politely as can be, asked:

Carl:  “…several multi-billion dollar corporations paid their CEOs more than they pay the government in taxes. Now I know how you feel about folks, I mean individuals who don’t pay their taxes, but I want to know how you feel about corporations that don’t pay taxes. Do you have the same antagonism for them?”

Rush: “How do I feel about how he felt about corporations that don’t pay income taxes?”

Carl:  “No, corporations.”

Rush:  “No, you said you know how I feel about individuals that don’t pay taxes… How do I feel about that?”

Carl:  “Well, I’ve heard you refer to the 47% of Americans that don’t pay taxes.”

Rush:  “Well, that’s… uh… they’re not illegally avoiding taxes, they don’t have to pay taxes because they’ve been exempted. Their votes are being purchased.”

Carl:  “Well, they have to pay a third of their income in sales and property and payroll and excise taxes too… but..” 

Rush:  “Look, the only major corporation I know not paying US taxes is General Electric.” 

Carl:  “GE, EBAY, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Bank of America, Citibank, I mean I can go on…”

Rush:  “Are you trying to tell me that every one of those corporations pay zero US taxes?”

Carl:  “Zero US taxes Rush. Sometimes they get money back from the federal government.”

And on, and on, and on and on… 

Eventually, Rush came back from his break to inform his listeners that ExxonMobil paidbillions in taxes!  It was just the caller's clever use of a technicality that allowed for him to make his claim.  It turns out that United States corporations can deduct the taxes they pay to other governments from their US tax bill.  

Are you kidding me?

Rush thinks it's OK for us to cut Social Security and Medicare while ExxonMobil pays nothing in taxes because they are sending money to other countries instead?  From there, Limbaugh just became a caricature of himself.  The plain fact is this:  Limbaugh had no good answer for Carl's question.  Limbaugh refused to say why he takes umbrage at the poor not paying federal income taxes while multi-billion dollar corporations that are enjoying record profits either pay no taxes, or even get refunds from the federal government.  

Listen for yourself (and you should - there's a lot of good stuff I left out):

By Mike Stark | Sourced from DailyKos 

The 'enraging' salaries of America's top execs: By the numbers

Corporate bigwigs like Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman got big pay raises from 2009 to 2010. The rest of us, not so much  

POSTED ON JULY 5, 2011, AT 3:47 PM


In 2010, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman pocketed $84.5 million for 9 months work, according to a recent report.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images


SEE ALL 61 PHOTOS

The good times are here again... at least for top corporate executives.
The New York Times reports that high-ranking executives at 200 of the biggest U.S. companies saw their pay increase an average of 23 percent from 2009 to 2010, bringing them ever nearer to pre-recession earnings. Those big paychecks didn't trickle down to the rest of the workforce, with the average American employee seeing less than a 1 percent increase in pay. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers, to the "enraging" salaries of America's top executives:

$10.8 million
Median pay in 2010 for top executives at 200 large companies, according to an Equilar report commissioned by The New York Times. "Total C.E.O. pay hasn't quite returned to its heady, pre-recession levels — but it certainly seems headed there," says Prandyna Joshi in The New York Times.

$7.7 million 
Median executive pay package in 2009, a 17 percent decline from 2008

38

Percentage increase in cash bonuses from 2009 to 2010. Executives' big paydays were due, in part, to the return of cash bonuses, says Equilar's

Aaron Boyd in The New York Times.

$84.5 million 

Pay package, for nine months of work in 2010, of Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, the highest paid exec in the report

$76.1 million

Pay package in 2010 for Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray R. Irani, a 143 percent raise from the previous year

$56.9 million

Salary in 2010 for CBS' Leslie Moonves, a 32 percent raise over the previous year

$752

Average weekly income of the average American worker in late 2010, just a 0.5 percent raise over the previous year. "It's not as if most workers are getting fat raises,"

says Joshi. After inflation, they're actually making less.

29.2

Percentage increase in profits for American businesses in the fourth quarter of 2010, "the fastest growth in more than 60 years"

2

Percentage increase, since the recovery began, in the amount businesses are spending on employees, according to the Commerce Report

26

Percentage increase in the amount they're spending on equipment and software. "The economy is producing as much as it was before the downturn, but with seven million fewer jobs," says Catherine Rampell in

The New York Times.

13.9 million

Number of unemployed Americans as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

9.1

Unemployment rate, in percent, as of May

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, New York, New York Times (2)(3)(4)

Meet the Global Financial Elites Controlling $46 Trillion In Wealth | | AlterNet

Meet the Global Financial Elites Controlling $46 Trillion In Wealth | | AlterNet

The economic elite have at least $46 trillion in wealth – but who are they? We look at the people and the industries picking the pockets of the working class.

August 11, 2011 |

The following is an adapted excerpt from David DeGraw’s new report on the financial destruction of the United States. The full report can be read here: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America.


“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,
the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?

While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90 percent of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion hidden in offshore accounts.

In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population.
f all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225 percent increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade.

Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion.

Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076 percent of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million in 2009.

The graph below, based on data from the Tax Policy Center, shows how much income is earned by a household at any given percentile in income distribution:



The highest bracket for annual income is $50 million or more. Only 74 Americans are in this elite group. The average income within this category was $91.2 million in 2008. As astonishing as that is, in 2009 they averaged $518.8 million each, or about $10 million per week. This means, in the depths of the recession, the richest 74 Americans increased their income by more than five times within this one year. These 74 people made more money than 19 million workers combined.

In context, overall, the richest 400 people in the US have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50 percent of the entire country. The top economic 1 percent of the US population now has a record 40 pecent of all wealth, and have more wealth than 90 percent of the population combined.

Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1 Percent

Here is an analysis from an investment manager with mega-wealthy clients breaking down the economic top 0.5 percent of the population, recently published by William Domhoff, sociology professor and author of Who Rules America?:

“Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the US. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits.

Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it’s infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn’t acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries…. Most of the serious economic damage the US is struggling with today was done by the top 0.1% and they benefited greatly from it…. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries…. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%.…

In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced….

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the US financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the US political and legislative processes.

They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%….

… the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.”

To get into the top economic 0.01 percent (one-hundredth of one percent) of the population, you have to have a household income of over $27 million per year.

If you look at some of the central players who caused this economic crisis, you will see that they are among this Economic Elite group.

Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had already amassed at least $700 million prior to moving to the US Treasury in 2006. Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and a few other top executives at Goldman Sachs just received $111.3 million in bonuses. Blankfein just took home $24.3 million, as part of a $67.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s President Gary Cohn took home $24 million, as part of a $66.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s CFO David Viniar and former co-president Jon Winkelried both took home over $20 million in bonuses.

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit just took home $80 million, in what may eventually total more than $200 million in compensation and bonuses. Coming in at the top of the list is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who just took home $90 million.

If you think people in this income level don’t control the US political process, you are not paying attention. After they caused this economic crisis, they got the government to give them trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, and then, after taking our tax dollars, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. 2009 was an all-time record-breaking year for Wall Street executives bringing in a total of $145 billion. And then, in 2010, they raised the bar even higher, breaking the all-time record set the year before by pulling in another $149 billion. The audacity of it all is stunning.

Finding people more grotesquely greedy than Wall Street executives would seem to be impossible. However, health insurance CEOs are giving them a run for their money. As the LA Times reported:

“Leaders of Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna received nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009, according to a report, while the companies sought rate increases as high as 39%….

H. Edward Hanway, former chief executive of Philadelphia-based Cigna, topped the list of high-paid executives, thanks to a retirement package worth $110.9 million. Cigna paid Hanway and his successor, David Cordani, a total of $136.3 million last year….

Ron Williams, the CEO of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc., earned nearly $18.2 million in total compensation, down from $24.4 million in 2008.”

Aetna CEO Ron Williams has recovered from hisdownyear in 2009 by making $72 million in 2010.

Given this level of obscene profiteering within the health care industry, it is not surprising that Americans pay more for medical care than any other nation in the world. In fact, Americans are forced to pay twice as much as most nations, and get lower quality care in return. As health insurance companies admitted, they have been reaping windfall profits because peoplewith health insurance plansstill cannot afford to go to the doctors and have stopped going unless it is an absolute emergency. With well over 50 million people unable to afford health insurance and the skyrocketing costs, it is not surprising that over 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies are the result of medical bills. In fact, 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people whohave health insurance.

Within this Economic Elite group, you also have the war profiteering oil companies, which themselves are in large part owned by the big Wall Street banks. The biggest five oil companies, while gas prices have been skyrocketing, reaped $36 billion in profit last quarter. These companies also receive an average of $6 billion per year in tax subsidies.

Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us

To further demonstrate how the mega-wealthy have seized control of our political process, consider that the richest 400 Americans paid 30 percent of their income in taxes in 1995, but they now pay only 18 percent.

In fact, 1,470 Americans earned over $1 million in 2009 and didn’t pay any taxes.

The average tax rate for millionaires was 22.4 percent in 2009, down from 30.4 percent in 1995. The average millionaire saves $136,000 a year due to reduced tax rates.

Looking at the tax rate from a long-term perspective, the amount of money the richest people and most profitable corporations pay in taxes has fallen dramatically since 1955. Corporate tax accounted for 27.3 percent of federal revenue in 1955. In 2010, corporate tax accounted for only 8.9 percent of federal revenue. Corporate taxes accounted for 4.3 percent of overall GDP in 1955, in 2010 they accounted for only 1.3 percent.

Deliberate Systemic Attacks

The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the topone-tenth of one percentof the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9 percent of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States, is not using hyperbole, it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.

Corporate Pay Way, Way Up… Average Pay Not So Much

JUL 3

Posted by theministerofinformation

 

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Andre Tartar for New York Magazine is reporting that:
A study of executive pay commissioned by the New York Times and published yesterday reveals that those at the very top of the economic food chain seem to have moved on from the doldrums of the Great Recession. The number crunchers found that median pay last year for top executives at 200 of the country’s biggest companies was close to $11 million, a 23 percent jump from 2009. (Interestingly, many of the most generous pay packages went to the CEOs of media companies, with the head of Viacom topping off the list with an $84.5 million take.) All this at a time when the unemployment rate is flirting with the double digits and the average American’s wages are flatlining — the Bureau of Labor Statistics says median weekly pay during the fourth quarter of 2010 was up just 0.5 percent from the year before.
Read more at Common Dreams

We Knew They Got Raises. But This?: NYT

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News

Philippe Dauman of Viacom led the executive pay list in 2010. The median was $10.8 million.

By PRADNYA JOSHI

T turns out that the good times are even better than we thought for American chief executives.

Multimedia

Graphic

Executive Pay, Revisited: Even Higher Than It First Seemed

 Weekend Business

Related

• How the Pay Figures Were Calculated (July 3, 2011)

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• International Business Machines Corporation
• Exxon Mobil Corporation
• Amazon.com Inc
• Dell Inc
• Viacom Inc
• Altria Group Inc
• Comcast Corporation
• Oracle Corp
• Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc
• CBS Corp
• Walt Disney Company

Go to your Portfolio »

Anindito Mukherjee/European Pressphoto Agency (Top); Paul Sakuma/Associated Press (Center); Kim White/Reuters (Bottom)

Among the executives who registered huge gains in the value of their company stock and options in 2010 were Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, top, Lawrence J. Ellison of Oracle, center, and Jeffrey P. Bezos of Amazon.com. Together, the three men's holdings climbed by more than $13 billion for the year.

A preliminary examination ofexecutive pay in 2010, based on data available as of April 1, found that the paychecks for top American executives were growing again, after shrinking during the 2008-9 recession.

But that study, conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm based in Redwood City, Calif., was just an early snapshot, and there were even more riches to come. Some big companies had not yet disclosed their executive compensation.

So Sunday Business asked Equilar to run the numbers again.

Brace yourself.

The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

Total C.E.O. pay hasn’t quite returned to its heady, prerecession levels — but it certainly seems headed there. Despite the soft economy, weak home prices and persistently high unemployment, some top executives are already making more than they were before the economy soured.

Pay skyrocketed last year because many companies brought back cash bonuses, says Aaron Boyd, head of research at Equilar. Cash bonuses, as opposed to those awarded in stock options, jumped by an astounding 38 percent, the final numbers show.

Granted, many American corporations did well last year. Profits were up substantially. As a result, many companies are sharing the wealth, at least with their executives. “We’re seeing a lot of that reflected in the pay,” Mr. Boyd says.

And at a time of so much tumult in the media business, it might be surprising that some executives in media and communications were among the most richly rewarded last year.

The preliminary and final studies put Philippe P. Dauman, the chief executive of Viacom, at the top of the list. Mr. Dauman made $84.5 million last year, after signing a new long-term contract that included one-time stock awards.

Leslie Moonves, of the CBS Corporation, got a 32 percent raise and reaped $56.9 million. Michael White of DirecTV was paid $32.9 million, while Brian L. Roberts of the Comcast Corporation and Robert A. Iger of the Walt Disney Company each received pay packages valued at $28 million.

“Media firms seemed to be paying a lot,” said Carol Bowie, head of compensation policy development at ISS Governance, which advises large investors on corporate governance issues like proxy votes. “Media companies in general tend to be high-payers, and they tend to feed off each other.”

Other big payers included oil and commodities companies like Exxon Mobil and a few technology giants like Oracle and I.B.M.

Some of the other highly paid executives on the new list who were not in the April survey are Gregg W. Steinhafel of Target, who had a $23.5 million pay package; Michael E. Szymanczyk of Altria, $20.77 million; and Richard C. Adkerson of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, $35.3 million.

Most ordinary Americans aren’t getting raises anywhere close to those of these chief executives. Many aren’t getting raises at all — or even regular paychecks. Unemployment is still stuck at more than 9 percent.

In some ways, chief executives seem to live in a world apart when it comes to pay. As long as shareholders think that the top brass is doing a good job, executives tend to be well paid, whatever the state of the broader economy. And some corporate boards were probably particularly generous in 2010 after a few relatively lean years for their top executives. In other words, some of this was makeup pay.

“What is of more concern to shareholders is that it looks like C.E.O. pay is recovering faster than company fortunes,” says Paul Hodgson, chief communications officer for GovernanceMetrics International, a ratings and research firm.

According to a report released by GovernanceMetrics in June, the good times for chief executives just keep getting better. Many executives received stock options that were granted in 2008 and 2009, when the stock market was sinking.

Now that the market has recovered from its lows of the financial crisis, many executives are sitting on windfall profits, at least on paper. In addition, cash bonuses for the highest-paid C.E.O.’s are at three times prerecession levels, the report said.

Of course, these sorts of pay figures invariably push the buttons of many ordinary Americans. Yes, workers’ 401(k)’s are looking better than they did in some recent years, but many investors still have not recovered from the hit they took during the financial crisis. And, of course, millions are out of work or trying to hold on to their homes — or both.

And it’s not as if most workers are getting fat raises. The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less.

On the flip side, some chief executives have consistently taken token salaries — sometimes, $1 — choosing instead to rely on their ownership stakes for wealth. These stock riches don’t show up on the current pay lists, but they can be huge.

Multimedia

Graphic

Executive Pay, Revisited: Even Higher Than It First Seemed

 Weekend Business

Related

• How the Pay Figures Were Calculated (July 3, 2011)

Add to Portfolio

• International Business Machines Corporation
• Exxon Mobil Corporation
• Amazon.com Inc
• Dell Inc
• Viacom Inc
• Altria Group Inc
• Comcast Corporation
• Oracle Corp
• Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc
• CBS Corp
• Walt Disney Company

Go to your Portfolio »

Warren E. Buffett, for instance, saw his stock holdings rise last year by 16 percent, to $46 billion. Other longtime chief executives or founders who are sitting on billions of paper profits include Jeffrey P. Bezos of Amazon.com and Michael S. Dell, the founder of Dell.

Resurgent executive pay has some corporate watchdogs worried that companies have already forgotten the lessons of the bust. Boards have promised to tie executive pay to company success, but by some measures pay is rising faster than performance. The median pay raise for chief executives last year — 23 percent — was roughly in line with the increase in net corporate profits. But it far exceeded the median gain in shareholders’ total return, which was 16 percent, as well as the median gain in revenue, which was 7 percent.

FOR the moment, shareholders aren’t storming executive suites. And while they received a say on pay under new federal rules last year, their votes are nonbinding. In other words, boards can still do as they please.

Pay specialists say companies are taking a hard look at these votes. Still, only about 1.5 percent of the 200 companies in the Equilar study were rebuffed by their shareholders on pay. A vast majority of the votes passed overwhelmingly, with 80 percent or 90 percent support, according to Mr. Boyd of Equilar.

Mr. Boyd says companies are making an effort to explain their pay plans. “We saw companies take it very seriously,” he says of the new rule.

In some respects, the mere possibility that shareholders might reject a proposed pay plan is enough to make corporate executives think again. Ms. Bowie of ISS says that outrageous payouts — such as so-called tax gross-ups, in which companies cover executives’ tax bills on perks like corporate jets — are becoming rarer.

Disney for instance, eliminated tax gross-ups this year in the face of shareholder ire, she said.

Company directors have the power to rein in runaway executive pay, but it is unclear whether either they or shareholders will do so in 2012. “It can be done if there is the will,” Ms. Bowie says.