In typical double speak method, the Democratic Party Obama Administration is proposing to supposedly raise corporate tax revenues by actually lowering them! The tax rate for corporations is now at 35% with numerous loopholes out of actually paying that, so Obama has come along with a proposal to lower the rate even more to 28%. Really, Obama? 'The current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, but the abundance of loopholes and deductions enable many businesses to pay far less than that — or nothing at all. Companies in the United States pay almost half the taxes that companies in other rich countries pay, compared with the size of the economy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.' This issue of corporations not actually paying their taxes is what makes many national capitalist economies of the world 'Third World'. And Mitt Romney actually wants to lower the corporate tax rate to just 25%, so Obama has countered by saying he will do almost the same! What's the difference in the two corporate funded parties rush to make the US more like a Third World country? I'm not so sure there is any difference. They both are in a mad race to give out taxes monies to huge corporations rather than to tax these behemoths. For full article about the Obama corporate tax proposals, see the Bloomberg report Obama to propose lowering corporate tax rate to 28 percent
Tag: Taxes
The irony of seeing a wage slave dressed up as the Statue of Liberty
...Every year at this time we see a motley crew of bedraggled lower echelon wage slaves forced to be circus clowns in the name of what???? 'LIBERTY'? I don't think so! It simply would be more dignified and more real about how these poor unfortunate souls must actually feel if they were dressed up in giant fried chicken suits instead, wouldn't it? YES, only in the US do we get slaves dressed up as Statues of Liberty! To associate LIBERTY with the private company called Liberty Tax Services or US society is totally insane. Probably half these poor types are one step from sleeping in the streets and begging outside of Walmarts... I feel so sorry for them, and how they actually have come to represent wage slavery USA more than any real thing called LIBERTY. There is no way I'd ever use this so-called 'Liberty Tax' service at all.
An 83% Payroll Tax, on the Workers and paid directly to the Corporations
That's what I paid and, everybody who works for a "Slave Market" minimum wage Labor Contractor Service such as Labor Ready, Apprentice, Manpower, Kelly... The "tax" is paid to a Non-Governmental Organization, and is paid before the Worker gets his check. I base the 83% figure on the fact that the workers are paid only 1/6th of what the Parasite Corporation gets for his "product". Under the various manifestations of the "Right To Get Screwed At Work" law, the workers aren't allowed to negotiate wages, working conditions, pensions or Insurance through the use of Collective Bargaining. We're supposed, instead, to go hat-in-hand and beg the employer for a slight fraction more of what is actually owed us. On an individual basis and, under the RTW law, the employer can cut your wages just as quickly as he "gives" them to you. They can take 5 times what we get, producing absolutely NOTHING themselves. We're not allowed to do what the Corporate Masters do, insist on a profit for our product. Nor, according to the laws as interpreted by their Tame Supreme Court, are we even allowed to break even. You can't go to King Soopers or Safeway and buy a $3 loaf of bread for only a dollar, insisting that that's all you'll pay them. If you leave the dollar and take the loaf, they'll call the Korporate Kontrolled Kops on you and have you arrested. And they call their TeaParty stooges, most of them the Stupid members of the Working Class, to defend their Corporate Masters from the "theft" of paying income tax. They have the government at every level in their service, coercing workers around the world to accept Slave Wages, at public expense, so every dime in their bark accounts is a Direct Government Subsidy. If the "peasants" rebel, like in Honduras, the U.S. Military will intervene, and ALWAYS on behalf of the Corporate Masters. Like their Death Squadsjust did "Gunmen have shot dead farm workers' leader Secundino Ruiz in Honduras." Gunmen paid and protected by the Pentagonistas. Whenever a soldier tells me how "lucky" I am to be here in America rather in the Banana Republics he was deployed to, TO MAKE SURE CONDITIONS NEVER CHANGE THERE, AND TO BACK UP THE GOON SQUADS OF HIS AND THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS I think of this. But, hey, TeaBags, other RepubliKlan sucks, be proud! You're trying your best to make sure your own families have to live under the same slavery. And it's only acknowledged as theft when the Corporations are required to pay a fraction of what they've stolen back to the people who stole it for them.
“Clean” Coal on defensive, downplaying REAL Clean power
So they're spending a few hundred million nationwide promoting their bid for MORE unsupervised unregulated Mountaintop Removal Coal (and other minerals) Extraction, with the accompanying subsidies they'll get if WHEN the Tame Departments of Interior, Defense and Energy and the even Tamer Congress grant them the Official Clean Energy Okey-Dokey. They downplay wind and solar as not being viable ("the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow") AND claim that even when they're used they'll "need" to Strip Mine and destroy the environment for the metals. Which is bullshit on several levels, there's far more recyclable metals ready for harvest than can be gotten from any level of mining in the conceivable future. One Industry LIE down the tubes. With Solar and Wind producing their PEAK output at the same times of day that the PEAK demand is, there isn't actually any need to build MORE coal power plants or start new strip mines. AND the production of Wind and Solar is going up even with a tiny fraction of a percentage of the Public Subsidies that the Coal, Oil and Gas industries have enjoyed for more than a century. Almost a century and a half. The Railroad Act, the Public Utilities Act, to name a couple. Military and civil grants to develop technologies specifically to use the products they're first stealing and then selling. To their own Publicly Subsidized utility companies. And having the Military simply TAKE any coal, oil and gas that's not offered at a price the Oil and Gas and Coal companies demand. The Police State apparatus they use to keep the Workers doing what Workers do and Corporate Leeches DON'T (which is, say it with me class: Actual WORK) by suppressing Unions and other private organizations, and also suppressing any Public Regulation of their own Workplace Safety and Environmental Protection. The Mountaintop Removal mining which they also claim is safe and doesn't affect anybody downstream has been proven wrong so many times it's hardly worth mentioning, but the "Clean" Coal companies keep consistently LYING about it that it has to be mentioned. The Male small-mouth bass turning into Female small-mouth bass downstream from their "safe and clean" mountaintop removal operations is just one example. The Mining Company TOXIC "gold hill mesa" Waste Dump here in Colorado Springs and is being sold as a "Traditional Colorado Springs Community" yeah, right, if you count the many times the mining industry has poisoned this area of Colorado and everyplace downstream from it... sure, that's a "Tradition" that the Mining Corporations and their Real Estate Accomplices have long practiced. Another prime example of how "safe" their industry is to the people who, unlike the Corporate Executives, don't make money off them poisoning us. BUT... the fact that they're running these ads and the very nature of these ads means they've got a chance of LOSING their fat Government Subsidies and they Know It. That's another project for the TeaBags, too, Stop Sucking up to the Energy Corporations and start
Operation Home Front = fake patriotism
Enough already. If you "support" the troops or the war, then why don't you actually "support" them? Dig down deep and pay your God-damn taxes to fund it. Can't afford the war under the current Tax Scheme? Too GOD-DAMNED BAD. You should have protested George Bush and his Corporate Thieves when they STARTED the bitch. You should have protested THEN and you really need to protest it NOW, the tax-breaks given to the Wealthiest People On The Planet so they don't have to pay for the "troops" to go out and rob one of the poorest nations on the planet, Afghanistan, on their behalf. Those Corporate Murderers who are benefiting from the war are getting their blood money essentially for FREE because STUPID PEOPLE or LAZY PEOPLE wouldn't ever stand up to them. Some of you who have influence in the major parties, maybe people with military titles in front of your names? The kind of name-and-title combinations politicians drool over when it's election time... YEAH, YOU! Get off your Fat Uniformed Butt and make Congress aware that THEIR bribe-taking and favoritism to the Blood-sucking Corporations have NOT gone un-noticed. TeaBags, you bitch and whine about a health care plan that might stop the rapidly accelerating bleed-off of American Health Care money, or even just maybe slow it down? Get off your Racist Butts and start protesting the Pentagon giving away TEN TIMES as much to a bunch of Parasites who don't even Pay God-damn taxes! Do it NOW! Instead of waving a piece of cloth and a plastic magnetic yellow ribbon at ME. And stop putting up signs at the grocery stores begging for money to go to the families of the Troops, if you're too God-Damned stingy to pay them for the war YOU support. It's also very worthy of note that Operation Home Front and the USO and other such organizations give you a Tax Credit for your donations. That means, in plain English, that the people who practice the FAKE patriotism of "donating" to these organizations are getting THE DONATIONS RETURNED TO THEM, courtesy of other people who ACTUALLY DO PAY THEIR TAXES. Such Love! Such Caring! Such Generosity! Such Goddamn Chutzpah! Pretending to give anything, giving nothing and hitting other people with the bill for YOUR "warm fuzzy feeling". Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ollie North, y'all taking any notice? Especially you and the rest of the Fox News Pukes. You make YOUR ENTIRE FORTUNE spreading propaganda for the wars, but you want to shirk on paying taxes... instead investing it in your War Profiteering industries like the Oil Companies. You're a bunch of nauseating lying SLUGS in dire need of a bag of salt. You feast on the blood of Soldiers and "enemy" Civilians alike, then take a tax break for making yourselves look pious and Patriotic about it. Closer to home, Michelle Malkin, Doug Lamborn, "Gunny" Bob, YEAH, YOU!
LTE, 1899: May the thunderbolt which is to fall from heaven upon this nation
For Independence day we might ask: is it more patriotic to support illegal wars than to oppose them? I'd like to revisit a century-old letter to the editor submitted to the Springfield Republican on April 21, 1899, by Caroline Hollingsworth Pemberton a few days after tax day. She wrote to defend another letter writer, critic of America's imperial expansion into the Philippines, accused of "treason" for suggesting that his taxes should not be funding a war of aggression. The number of persons who share, without expressing, the sentiments of the young single taxer, F. Stevens, is doubtless increasing daily. It may be a wise economical policy for the government executives to decide that his utterances do not constitute "treason," for the reason that there are not, and probably never will be, enough prisons in his land to contain all the "traitors" that now reside in it. Alas! we are all of us made traitors (and against our wills in many cases) by the deliberate acts of those whom we have chosen to represent us. We are already traitors to the high ideals of a free people: traitors to our constitution and to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Whether we want to or not, we "treacherously" support a policy of "criminal aggression" whenever we lick a revenue stamp and stick it on a check or receipt, and help pay the cost of sacrificing our principles before the world. My soul loathes this Filipino slaughter, yet I am actively supporting it out of my own pocket every day of my life. I count myself the worst kind of a traitor, --yet it is well that our government has decided to look leniently on traitors, for there are thousands and millions like me, some willingly and many most unwillingly made traitors like myself! One can choose between two kinds of treason. Mr. Stevens chooses what he takes to be the lesser kind. We have that much choice and that is all that is left to us. For my part, I pray that the thunderbolt which is to fall from heaven upon this nation for its career of crime in the Pacific ocean may fall quickly and end the iniquities for which in the sight of God we are all individually responsible. If this is "treason" of the peculiar brand that newspapers do not approve, it is to be remembered as an "extenuating circumstance" that my education in treason has not progressed far enough yet for me to distinguish with certainty the various brands, --accidentally, as it were, I have picked up the wrong kind-- for which I ask their kindly indulgence. C. H. Pemberton Springfield Republican, April 21, 1899 Quoted in The Anti-Imperialist Reader, Volume I, Philip S. Foner, ed., p. 404
War Funding in trouble? I would hope so, but I don’t think so…
The AP report is that War Funding increases were passed by the House, that's a kind of Dog Bites Man story that's never changed in my lifetime. Is it a call from the Propaganda Ministry to have "concerned patriots" flood their senators with requests to "get behind the troops" once more? It's not bloody likely that anybody in elected office will ever stand up to that baseless emotional plea that not funding for-profit private corporate wars with public money somehow puts "The Troops, Holy and Noble" in more harms way than actually starting such wars in the first place would. The same loudmouth Hawks, especially those of the ChickenHawk species, who push funding for expanded war every Election Cycle and every Congressional Session are either curiously silent on the subject of compensating the families of the soldier-slaves when they're destroyed either partially or completely in the course of giving their lives In Defense Of Freedo Conquering Lands and People which and whom do not actually belong under our jurisdiction.... or actively cutting any such compensation. Far less holding the Corporations that make the money from the bloodshed ever being held responsible for their crimes or even financially responsible for paying the bills on the Wars that profit them, and only them, in the way of Taxes. They even get extra tax incentives to take part in the War Effort. How sick is that? It would be refreshing to see, more often that is, a Senator or Representative actually stand up in Congress even in committee and demand that any increase in War Funding should be done by a raise in income tax, Specifically On Money, including capital gains, gotten from ANY so-called "defense" contract but, that's always done by somebody on the "far left" who isn't going to get any support from the political establishment, and the WarMonger propaganda industry will immediately call out their trusted Voter Shock Troops to make a loud noise about Treasonous! non-support for "The Brave Troops". Do these same Fox News inspired Morons ever get out in the street and demonstrate against sending Their Own Families and Friends off to kill, die or become crippled or D) All Of The Above for the profit of Rich People who buy their way out of every such war? Slave-soldiers, break your chains! Break the chain of your sons and now, daughters, for generations to come, being gulled into "serving the country" and Other LIES the recruiters tell them. For God's sake, there are still people telling their kids that their Great Great Great Great Grandpa "fought and died for States Rights" and that they need to carry on the Family Tradition, but when the "tradition" is one of abject servitude and absolute unquestioning obedience to people who Tell You that they have the authority to order you around like some kind of slave... they're not being recruited to fight for Freedom in any form. They're being recruited to fight for Corporate Slavery, and to make people in other countries
Census 2010: a Snapshot of America or mugshot?
The publicized inducement for participating in the census is to improve government representation and equalize disbursements. Apparently up until now chiefly corporations have been counted. Badaboom. Which explains why tax collection pretends to gain nothing from the census. Nor homeland security, nor domestic surveillance. What utter hogwash. My favorite census fluff piece portrayed a census-taker donning snowshoes to reach Vermont residents living off the grid. How pray tell will a census grid assert to help them? As for our concerns for the urban poor, social service organizations already know full well their number by their need, a Federal census only facilitates predatory access to them. Though barred by law from using the census info, does it matter to whom the government give it? Will public outcry be for or against revelations it's been given to ICE, complete with GPS coordinates for all the addresses? What public figure is going to argue that tax cheats should be protected from discovery? Ultimately state security will trump the libertarian pleas for personal privacy. This census is meant to dovetail with NSA records, pure and simple, and provides very little not already known. It is prison role-call, meant to be a reminder of the state's control. Look at the 2010 CENSUS brochure cover. Not very obscurely, it's a finger print.
Joe Stack’s Piper Cherokee Manifesto
It's getting so you can't fly a plane into a federal office building and hope somebody will finally find your website. Though engineer Joseph Stack left an online statement to explain his last act of desperation against the IRS, it was deleted "in compliance with a request from the FBI." I guess his web hosts think the 1st Amendment has an FBI exemption. Even Google's cache was expunged. This has freed Reporters to characterize Stack's missive as a crazed rant. Nothing threatens the establishment like this conclusion: "Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, ... violence ... is the only answer. The cruel joke is that [those] at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at ... fools like me all along." I don't know about you, but when I hear that a self-made engineer-businessman who has his own plane, commits suicide on principles he has articulated in a manifesto, I'm curious to hear him out. I'm reminded of the sad story of the desperate antiwar activist who set himself on fire as a final protest of the escalating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He knew accomplices would only dissuade him, so he chose an isolated spot where he could proceed unmolested and set up a video camera to record the act. Naturally, policemen were the first to encounter his body and thus the footage of dramatic statement are consigned to the obscurity of their files. Fortunately the internet is still too porous for redaction on the grounds of national security, or whatever reason the FBI contrived to censor Stack's suicide note/screed/diatribe. The Smoking Gun has the usual non-text scans of what Joseph Stack wrote before he piloted his single-engine Piper PA-28 into the Austin TX IRS office. Here's the full text of Stack's manifesto. If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our
To mandate health insurance premiums is to privatize tax collection & spending
Compulsory insurance premiums represent the privatization of taxes. Talk about taxation without representation. How would a personal expense mandated by the government be any different than a tax? The burden is contributed toward the common good, but administrated privately. While oversight might fall to civil service regulators, nowhere is an elected official part of the loop. They're privatizing the public sector: the military, the utilities, the media, the schools, the Postal Service, and of course they're after Social Security. Taxpayers pay for the social safety net. Making them pay health insurance premiums is to privatize their taxes.
Obama talks of lowering the deficit even as he does the opposite
Obama sure knows how to talk out of both sides of his mouth at once! And that's exactly what makes him and the Democratic Party so dangerous to the American people. With the Republican Party of Open Violence everybody knows what's coming down, but with the Democrats it's quite different. Here's the latest Obama-con as the mass media hits us with... Obama Seeks to Halve Deficit to Half Trillion Per Year by 2013 all timed to hit us with headlines across the nation in the corporate dailies' Sunday issues today. So how is Obama, with as corporate loaded a Cabinet as ever was, going to reverse course from his new give outs to the corporate big guys, and now tax them as he says he will? How is he going to cut the military spending even as he sends 17,000 or so new troops into Afghanistan? How is he going to tax corproations more even as he gives out more tax refunds to everybody right away? Barack Obama surely is the guy who can talk out both sides of his mouth at one and the same time, isn't he? It's amazing! Slick Willie and his triangulation abacus had nothing ever at all that the duo team of Barack and Hillary we now are stuck with for 4 years can't match and even double in shenanigans. We should all be very concerned with this double talk. Barack is setting the deck for a ruling class attack on what the rich call 'entitlements', but what we know as social programs... programs like Social Security... for just one example. Yes, General Barack is not going to cut the real billion ton gorilla entitlement program that is known as the US military, but is going to go after social programs, even as he double talks to us about expanding them! We are being scammed. The Democratic Party with Barack Obama at the helm might just be running the biggest ponzi scheme of them all on the American public? How does it all work? Well just study the cartoon picture that leads this commentary off. Say one thing and do another.
When you don’t pay ‘war taxes,’ is it ‘peaceful nonviolence’ or more like smug self-righteous religious complacency?
Monday night I got asked out of the clear blue sky at a meeting of self described 'Peace' advocates if I paid taxes? I was kind of drowsy from shift work I had just finished doing, and didn't really consider the fact that Jesus was asked just about the same question in his time, but by those he considered to be spies of the Roman Empire. I was being asked the question though from a self righteous and complacent 'Quaker' woman who was in the process of giving me her idea of a litmus test, for whether I would be allowed by her and her husband to be in one local antiwar grouplet here in Colorado Springs called the PPJPC? I failed her test when I answered that I did indeed pay taxes (too much so IMO), and my statement that it was so was soon followed by a self righteous and complacent harangue about her opinion that the woman and her 'leader' husband did not pay 'war' taxes and that that was that and why did I not do as they do? The implication was that I should just shut up and let them run things in the group and keep my mouth shut up for good. Why? Well because I pay my taxes! Further I was told at the meeting by the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission that I was not ever going to be considered a member of the group, no matter what. I was told that I gave neither time nor money to the group!, and that I was out of it in their eyes because I had written previously in the local press about how the leader of the group had called the cops on us for trying to hold a meeting to plan antiwar activities outside the locked doors of the group's offices. "All those bad things you said about us of the PPJPC!" Locked out, because as members of the group we wanted some democracy inside an organization that has but one pretend membership meeting per year and is run by salaried office folk who want to be small business adminstrators instead of anything much else! I have been told too that I must sign onto some sort of 'adherence' statement to the 'non-violence' aim of the group. Further the religious pacifists running the show have stated to the press that I and others, too, do not adhere to their Christian motivated 'nonviolence', implying to the police and press that we are time bombs about to go off! Meanwhile, they continually invite representatives of the police to 'meetings' with themselves so that they can supposedly make their events more 'nonviolent', I guess? A hug here, a handshake there, and let us know what you want us to do, Peace Officers? So back to the question of whether it
Taxes, a public service announcement
TAXES BUY BOMBS! It might seem taking the antiwar fight to the IRS would be to enmesh your energies with a tar baby. But it bears considering that if you want the killing to stop and the Legislature won't tighten purse strings, it may be up to you. The government can print the money it needs, but ultimately the funding is going to come from you.