[S]ome of the country’s biggest corporations are getting away without being asked to pay anything at all. In 2009, mega corporations like Boeing and General Electric managed to avoid paying a penny in federal taxes — while also netting enormous benefits in tax benefits and subsidies.
Now, with many companies releasing their financial reports for 2010, it appears that Bank of America — the nation’s largest bank — has gone a second year in a row paying absolutely no federal corporate income taxes. In fact, not only did the company use its losses to avoid paying taxes last year, but it actually reported a tax benefit of almost a billion dollars …
Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages
New American Dark Ages
GE has chutzpah but not a shred of decency
Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”
After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.
Reminds me of the definition of chutzpah: killing both parents and asking for mercy as an orphan. Rob the public and the workers.
“Voter Fraud” is More Nonsense from the Frightened Right
The Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor.
ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Hardly a Call To Man Ramparts
THE MARCH 16 front page Journal story states that Secretary of State Dianna Duran found 117 people who were registered to vote who were foreign nationals when they applied for their licenses, and 37 had voted between 2003 and 2010.
A scandal in the making? Hardly. Consider this: 3.8 percent, or 36,122, of registered voters in New Mexico were "New Americans" — naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants who were raised during the current era of immigration from Latin America and Asia that began in 1965 — according to an analysis of 2006 Census Bureau data.
Now I don’t know how many were naturalized between 2003 and 2010, but I personally have attended two very inspiring naturalization ceremonies over the last three years where more than 500 were naturalized. And, unlike many citizens born in the United States, they register to vote and take their duty to vote seriously.
RICHARD P. MASON
Rio Rancho
ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The same people who are certain that *Democrats* are stealing elections seem unconcerned by the fact that voting machine makers support Conservatives. And let’s not even re-live Republican shenanigans of 2000 – I hate seeing red-faced Scalia’s spittle-soaked disdain.
Believing Obama is not American-born is STUPID and racist. Wake UP!
[The Donald] wants Obama to present a Certificate of Live Birth, but here it is, widely available on the internet, as it has been for nearly three years.
Moreover, Trump’s argument isn’t even internally coherent. First he questions why no doctors or nurses in Hawaii remember Obama’s birth, noting “this is the president of the United States!” (It’s unclear if Trump believes Obama was born the president):
TRUMP: Hey look, you have no doctors that remember. You have no nurses — this is the president of the United States! — that remember. That ad that was placed in the Houston paper — that was placed in the paper days after he was born. So he could have come into the country.
But just moments later, Trump doubts the governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie’s recollection of Obama’s birth, noting it was over 50 years ago. Abercrombie has said, “I knew his mom and dad. I was here when he was born.” Trump called for the governor to be “be investigated” for lying about the memory:
TRUMP: You know what I get a kick out of? The governor of Hawaii says, oh I remember when Obama was born. I doubt it! I think this guy should be investigated. He remembers when Obama was born? Give me a break! He’s just trying to do something for his party.
Trump seems to be leading yet another resurgence of the myth that “refuses to die” on the right — talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has been increasingly focusing on the issue, and praised Trump for providing a “valuable service” by questioning it; on Friday, Fox News host Sean Hannity refused to believe that Obama had released his birth certificate; and potential 2012 candidates like Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee have been hitting the issue as well lately.
I do hope The Donald continues his campaign. I’d love a Trump-Palin ticket as the last gasp of the Loony Right.
BTW: I was born in Hawai’i while it was still a Territory of the United States. And, no, you can’t see my fucking birth certificate.
“Are we still in America?”
Read the whole thing – it won’t take very long. Well-reasoned.
Robert Reich (Why Governor LePage Can’t Erase History, and Why We Need a Fighter in the White House)
The Governor’s spokesman explains that the mural and the conference-room names were “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”
Are we still in America? …
Big business and Wall Street thought Perkins and Roosevelt were not in keeping with pro-business goals. So they and their Republican puppets in Congress and in the states retaliated with a political assault on the New Deal.
Roosevelt did not flinch. In a speech in October 1936 he condemned “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.”
Big business and Wall Street, he said,
“had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”
Robert Reich (Why Governor LePage Can’t Erase History, and Why We Need a Fighter in the White House)
Your Tax Money Went to GE Shareholders
On its front page this morning, the New York Times reported that General Electric — the world’s largest company — made $14.2 billion in profits ($5.1 billion in America) and managed to not pay a dime in federal taxes. In fact, the company actually received “a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.”
The mega corporation’s tax dodging flies in the face of the rhetoric of its CEO Jeffery Immelt — also the head of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness — who sought to portray his company as one that values fairness in a speech at West Point in 2009.
The Loons Gather in New Mexico
Wilson is “too moderate.” No one will be more conservative unless they’re on the “loon right,” which is “like coming back around on the left.” (Yes, they’re so conservative their liberal!) It’s going to be great fun watching Republicans shoot each other in the foot in 2012.
Sanchez also was dismissive of the tea party movement, saying, “I don’t necessarily need to be the Tea Party candidate.” He did say that he agreed with tea party positions like smaller government and less taxes.
Sowards: ‘There will be no one to my right’ in GOP primary | New Mexico Independent
“There will be no one to my right, and I believe the other candidates are more conglomerated around the moderate area,” Sowards said, according to David Cantanes. “I don’t see how anyone would get between me and conservative principles. They can go to the loon right, which is, as far as I’m concerned, like coming back around on the left.”
Sowards also said that Pearce supporters had told him they would oppose a second Senate run from the Republican congressman.
Sowards: ‘There will be no one to my right’ in GOP primary | New Mexico Independent
Sowards sells himself as the conservative candidate | NMPolitics.net
Sowards has run for federal office twice in the past, without success; however, with the growth of the tea party movement, he appears to be getting a closer look from some influential groups this time around. He also recently got a prominent mention in an investors.com article.
One of Sowards’ missions is to keep U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., out of the race.
Sowards sells himself as the conservative candidate | NMPolitics.net