The federal tax system has turned individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.

goldfish1

The federal tax system has turned individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives.

"One of the greatest detriments to job creation in the US is the overseas income deferral law. This unbelievable gift to transnational corporations is at the heart of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. Presently these corporations are sitting on $2.2 trillion in untaxed profits, which is costing the American taxpayer almost $800 billion in lost tax revenue if like in 2006 they are allowed to bring the funds back at 5-1/4% taxation. Those conglomerates want to bring those funds back into the US tax free, which means $1 trillion in lost taxes, taking advantage of the current financial situation in the US. Five years ago Congress passed legislation allowing $350 billion to be returned to the US at 5-1/4% taxation, not the normal 35%, because these corporations said they would use the funds to create jobs. Very few jobs were created and a large part of the funds were used to purchase company stock, which rose in value, allowing the officers of these corporations to sell stock from options and make billions of dollars in profit for themselves. These are the same corporations that have been responsible for the loss of 11.7 million jobs, the loss of good paying jobs 450,000 American companies and the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue."
-International Forecaster

Jon Stewart to Fox News: Making the Super-Rich Pay Taxes is "Class Warfare"? No, the War Is on the Poor

It seems like everyone in America read Warren Buffett's recent New York Times op-ed, in which he implored the government to stop giving tax breaks to the country's super-rich. As Jon Stewart pointed out last night, conservatives on Fox News deemed Buffett's treatise -- and the very notion of raising taxes for the wealthiest Americans -- a declaration of "class warfare" against the rich. Oh please.

Doing what he does best, Stewart completely destroyed that line of reasoning, pointing out, among other things, that income inequality in the U.S. is worse than in many developing nations. Also: "Raising the income tax rate on the top 2% of earners would generate $700 billion. But taking half of everything the bottom 50% have in this country would do the same." YUP.

But there's so much more in this segment. It's really a fantastic spotlight on the class war that really is being waged -- not against the rich, but against the poor. I urge you to watch the whole thing (in two parts) here:

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/652418/jon_stewart_to_fox_news%3A_making_the_super-rich_pay_taxes_is_%22class_warfare%22_no%2C_the_war_is_on_the_poor/

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet

Posted at August 19, 2011, 7:21 am

Thom Hartmann: How Corporations Created the Tea Party ZombiesUnit

The corporations created a monster. That monster is a group of ideologues who've wormed their way into Congress - and now have the power to take down our entire economy and condemn all of us to a second Great Depression. Make no mistake about it - we have an established Third Party in Congress today for the first time in over 100 years - the Tea Party zombies. It's a third party based in political naivete - irresponsible idealism - and corrupted morality. It's a third party that thinks compromise is a bad word - that thinks if they yell and threaten enough they can get the Democratically-controlled Senate and White House to bend to their will. It's a party that thinks it's on a mission to crash the economy - thus setting the stage to drastically remake America and trash the New Deal-economics that have created the last century's prosperity - and replace it with a libertarian free-market that has defined the last century of, for example, Somalia. It's a third party that believes in morality - that the poor - the sick - and the elderly should be condemned to death - that the socially safety net - one of the greatest accomplishments of modern man - is evil. Do you know why John Boehner had to pull his debt-limit plan off the floor? It's because the Tea Party went nuts over Pell Grants. As in-no-way-no-how will they support a bill that helps students go to college. We can no longer believe that the Tea Party is controlled by Republicans - the Tea Party is on its own now - running roughshod through Congress as we've witnessed in this debt-limit debate - even John Boehner knows this himself by now. And what Republicans and the rest of us need to be asking ourselves today is...how did this happen? How did our constitutional democracy allow a group of destructive ideologues to take power in Congress and drag our country into economic ruin? What - happened? Tune in.

THE DEBT CEILING 'DEAL' : ‘class economic warfare by legislation’

“The $1 Trillion Debt Ceiling Deal of July 31”

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By Jack Rasmus

Monday, August 01, 2011

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Sunday evening, July 31, President Obama and Senate Majority and Minority leaders, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, announced they had reached an agreement on cutting $1 trillion in spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. House Speaker, Boehner, indicated he was also in agreement, subject to voting to take place in the House on Monday.

This latest ‘deal’ is essentially the same that was reached by Harry Reid in the Senate on July 29 and Boehner in the House on July 27, with two major changes—one favored by the Republicans and another by Obama. These two changes were then ‘traded off’ this weekend, bringing the parties to a deal.

Boehner and Reid essentially came to an agreement last Friday, July 29. Their respective July 29 (Reid) and July 27 (Boehner) positions called for $917 to $927 in spending cuts, only $10 billion apart. Both proposals contained no reference to tax loophole closings. The tax hikes idea was given up by Obama and the Democrats early last week, bringing the Democrats to essentially the Republican position on spending vs. tax hikes. The only substantive difference as of July 29 between the two was that Reid also proposed $1.044 trillion in additional cuts in Defense spending, as well as a measure that prohibited a re-opening of the debt ceiling issue before the 2012 November elections.

Today’s Boehner-Reid final agreement effectively drops explicit cuts in Defense, another Republican position all along. Reid’s defense cuts are now replaced with ‘triggers’ in defense spending reduction. The ‘triggers’ concept has been a maneuver used by Congress on occasion in the past. It is designed to let one party save face, allowing it to appear that their provision is retained in the bill, when in reality it will never be implemented. In fact, ‘triggers’ have never been implemented in any instance since 1980 in which they were included in a spending bill.

With Defense spending cuts taken effectively ‘off the table’ this weekend, the only remaining substantive issue was whether the debt ceiling would be allowed to come up as an issue before the 2012 elections. Republicans now agree it will not.

This Republican shift means Reid’s previously proposed $1 trillion additional cuts in Defense appears, in retrospect, to have been a ‘trading item’ and tactical maneuver all along to get the Republicans to agree not to revisit the debt ceiling issue again before the coming 2012 elections.

But the Republican leaders in the House and Senate don’t need a debt ceiling issue again to get further cuts. The 2012 budget deadline of October 1 will do just as well for a threat to shut down the government.

So, in summary, it appears the deal just negotiated means both parties agree on cutting $1 trillion in spending only, with no tax hikes. The Republicans will shift to the 2012 budget deadline for a new hammer to extract extra spending cuts. Defense will remain effectively untouched. And, in exchange for $1 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes and leaving defense spending untouched Obama gets an agreement not to raise the debt ceiling issue again before his next election. But don’t think that’s the end of the story. It’s just the beginning.

The bigger attack on social security, Medicare, Medicaid is still to come. The next round in what amounts to ‘class economic warfare by legislation’ is the 2012 budget negotiations that are supposed to conclude by September 23. Republicans will get another ‘bite of the apple’ in spending only cuts at that time. And Obama and Democrats will likely cave in to those demands yet again, as they have repeatedly the past year.

But the even bigger bite will come as a result of another provision in today’s agreement: the creation of a so-called ‘Bipartisan Commission’ to reduce the debt and deficits by even greater magnitudes. That Commission will make still further major proposals for cuts by November of this year, to be voted on by Congress before year-end.

Following Senators Reid and McConnell, President Obama spoke on national TV tonight to endorse the tentative Boehner-Reid agreement and to announce the ‘Bi-Partisan Debt Reduction Commission’. In his brief comments this evening he employed an important phrase that TV commentators mostly overlooked. He said,  “The Commission’s proposals will be submitted for an up or down vote only” by members of Congress. That means some small group—no doubt appointed by him or Congressional leaders—will now decide solely between themselves the composition and magnitude of cuts in Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, how much tax loopholes will be closed, and how much Defense spending will be cut. The rest of Congress will then be limited to voting ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ and that’s it.

The conservative composition of such appointed commissions in the recent past are well known. There was the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission appointed by Obama in 2009 that was lopsidedly conservative. And Obama’s commission to recommend Health Care legislation that was composed of mostly conservative Republican and Democrats. The forthcoming ‘Bipartisan Commission’ will almost certainly assume the same conservative-leaning composition. We can expect $2 in cuts in Medicare and Social Security for every $1 in tax loophole closing and Defense spending reductions…if we’re lucky.

This deal of the past weekend to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for $1 trillion in spending cuts—with no tax hikes or defense cuts—shows clearly that politicians in Washington are concerned first and foremost with their re-elections. Democrats don’t want to be confronted with another debt ceiling debacle during their re-election campaign. Both Republicans and Democrats are, furthermore, intent on protecting their Defense industry friends, and on ensuring their corporate campaign contributors don’t have to pay their fair share in taxes. The rest of America gets to pay the bills and pay the price.

Jack Rasmus is the author of ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’, Palgrave-Macmillan and Pluto Press, 2010; and the forthcoming ‘Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few’, same publishers, 2011. His blog is jackrasmus.com and website: www.kyklosproductions.com.

US debt crisis: US House passes debt bill

http://crisisboom.com/2011/08/01/us-debt-crisis-us-house-passes-debt-bill/#more-8219

As the House of Representatives passed a last minute bill to raise the US borrowing limit while cutting spending by $2.4 trillion, Left-wingers felt betrayed by the White House, saying the price paid to win Republican support had been much too high.

The legislation is due to be approved by the Senate on Tuesday, just hours before the US was due default on its obligations for the first time in its history.

It was approved by 269 votes to 161 votes as both discontented liberals and Tea Party Republicans who wanted even more spending cuts voted against.

Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, said: “This deal is a sugar-coated Satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see.”

Another, Cedric Richmond from New Orleans, said he feared it would have a “devastating impact” on working and middle class families, whom he said would bear the brunt of the cuts.

The agreement reached by the White House and party leaders in the House and Senate during tense talks over the weekend will allow Mr Obama to borrow the same amount, $2.4 trillion, to allow the government to meet its debt obligations into 2013.

But it came with considerable strings attached to cut the ballooning $14.3 trillion national debt.

About $1 trillion will be cut immediately from government spending, with a further $1.4 trillion to be agreed by the end of the year.

Liberals who once lionized Mr Obama were enraged that the White House failed to twist Republicans’ arms in Congress and include revenue increases in the deal, through closing tax loopholes for oil companies and removing various tax deductions that benefit the wealthy. The savings are made up entirely of spending cuts, though conservatives have had to swallow unwanted savings on the military.

The left-leaning grassroots organisation MoveOn described the deal as “grotesquely immoral”.

“Our members are wondering, ‘What in God’s name is going on in D.C.?’” said Justin Ruben, executive director of the group, which claims five million members. “The country needs jobs, and Washington is debating what vital programme needs to be cut.”" Michael Tomasky, a leading liberal commentator, wrote: “This is the lowest moment of Obama’s presidency.”

While George W Bush wrecked the country “through rank incompetence”, Mr Obama “is simply handing the Republicans the keys to the house and saying ‘take what you want’,” he said in the Daily Beast.

In the New Republic, Jonathan Chait said: “There’s a limit to how much faith one can place in a man who has so badly misjudged his political opponents time and time again.”

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for American Future, a liberal think tank, accused Mr Obama of yielding to “the Tea Party terrorists – the extremist faction willing to hold the economy hostage to get their way”.

The cuts would not improve the slow recovery, which would in turn affect Mr Obama’s prospects of a second term, he claimed.

Figures revealed yesterday showed that US manufacturing grew at its slowest pace in two years in July as new orders contracted.

“I think he is in increasing danger. The whole argument against him that he has been there four years and there are no jobs, that he has failed, will be an increasingly strong argument,” said Mr Borosage.

Without a major push to create jobs, the alliance of young voters, African Americans , Latinos and single women that elected Mr Obama in 2008 may well not turn out to vote next time, he added.

“Right now, his base is all he has left from 2008. The independents and working-class Democrats have begun to flee,” said Ed Morrissey on the Hot Air blog. “This deal won’t bring those voters back, and his source of organization and funding may largely give up on him.”

The White House defended the deal, saying it was “not the case that Democrats “got nothing”.

“We think the president’s leadership has been essential to this process,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.

12 Top U.S. Corporations Spent $1 Billion to Maintain Tax Breaks, Corporate Loopholes

Washington, D.C.--Twelve top U.S. corporations known as corporate tax dodgers spent over $1 billion in political money over the past decade to help maintain their tax breaks and corporate loopholes, according to a new report by campaign finance watchdog Public Campaign.

“Everyone in Washington uses the buzzwords ‘shared sacrifice’ but the billion dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses made by these corporate tax dodgers means that they don't sacrifice, in many cases, one thin dime,” said David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign. “And everyday Americans without millions to spend on lobbying and campaign cash foot the bill.”

The report’s findings were echoed on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers are concerned about the pervasive corporate special interest influence in the deficit and budget debate.

"If they want to invest in our government, let big corporations pay their fair share of taxes rather than paying for politicians who'll write them special tax breaks," said Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine). "It's time to get corporate money out of politics and put elections back in the hands of ordinary Americans."

The report, “The Artful Dodgers,” shows that 12 major American companies from different sectors of the economy—oil companies, banks, transportation firms, and telecommunications and technology companies—have over the past decade spent more than $1 billion on campaign contributions (through their political action committees and executives) and lobbying fees to influence the policy debate on Capitol Hill. Many of them have, in return, been required to pay little to no taxes after raking in billions in profits. Bank of America, for example, received $163 billion in taxpayer bailouts and guaranteed loans, made $4.4 billion in profits in 2010, and received a $1.9 billion tax rebate. It’s political action committee (PAC) and employees have spent $11 million on campaign contributions in the past decade and $24 million on lobbying.

The full report is available online at www.publicampaign.org/reports/artfuldodgers.  

Last week, Rep. Pingree, along with Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.), introduced the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1404), legislation that would ensure politicians were accountable their constituents—and not the big tax dodging corporate interests that currently fund campaigns. With Fair Elections, candidates could run competitive campaigns for office by relying on small dollar contributions from people back home, freeing them to make decisions based on what’s right, not what will affect their campaign bank account. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

Top 10 US Corporate Tax Avoiders Named on Senate Floor

posted by: Nancy Roberts 1 day ago

163 comments

Despite complaints about the U.S.'s burdensome 35% corporate tax rate, two-thirds of American corporations pay no taxes in a given year. In a speech last week on the Senate floor, Senator Bernie Sanders  (I) of Vermont called out the top 10 corporate tax avoiders:

Among those actually getting money back from the Feds:

• ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009, paid no federal income taxes, received a $156 million rebate

• Bank of America received a $1.9 billion IRS refund despite $4.4 billion of profits

• General Electric had $26 billion in profits, and $4.1 billion refund (GE made it onto another top 10 list of top corporate lobbyists in 2010, spending $39 million)

• Chevron nabbed a $19 million refund after making $10 billion in profits

Wall Street made the list as well; the Senator's office notes,"Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department."

Spreading the Burden, if not the Wealth

Given the nation's $1.6 trillion deficit, Senator Sanders suggests that the burden of deficit reduction be shared more equally, rather than hurting working people, sick children, and others ill-equipped for optimal lobbying.

Senator Sanders has called for eliminating corporate tax loopholes and getting rid of tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He has introduced a bill that would raise an estimated $50 billion through an "emergency" 5.4 percent extra tax on people with adjusted gross incomes of over one million dollars.

Sharing the pain...not happening

Senator Sanders says that serious times call for shared sacrifice. Those are beautiful words, but sharing sacrifice seems like a fairy tale in a country where the top five percent own nearly two-thirds  of our nation's wealth.

Despite the Supreme Court 's finding that corporations are basically people in the eyes of the law, corporations themselves cannot be moral or immoral -- they are entities, not sentient beings. We have a system that rewards the gamers, where winners take all, and influence peddling is rife; where the defense for a highly profitable company not paying taxes is that it is within the law. As American families face the looming April 15 tax deadline, it is tough to hear corporations claim that mere compliance is enough in a system where laws and loopholes can be bought and sold.