| Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins |
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TiM Bulletin 2013-04 May 21, 2013 |
A 15-year update to "When Will Wall Street Bubble Burst?"-a Washington Times 1998 column Rotten Apples in Our Midst Second American Revolution was carried out by corporations against individuals in last 100 years; Now it may be time for Third American Revolution - to root out all our rotten apples, not just Apple |
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
AMERICAN/GLOBAL AFFAIRS
AN ESSAY ON AMERICAN POLITICS
New York Times on rotten corporate apples...
Top News - New York Times - May 21, 2013
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Apple's Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and CHARLES DUHIGGA Congressional inquiry's findings were remarkable both for the tens of billions of dollars involved and for Apple's audacity in saying some of its subsidiaries were stateless and beyond any tax authority's reach. |
A 15-year update to "When Will Wall Street Bubble Burst?"-a Washington Times 1998 column
Rotten Apples in Our Midst
Second American Revolution was carried out by corporations against individuals in last 100 years; Now it may be time for Third American Revolution - to root out all our rotten apples, not just Apple
"In 2011, individual income taxes contributed $1.1 trillion to federal coffers, while corporate taxes added up to $181 billion." (New York Times, 5-21-13)
Which means, for every dollar Apple, Starbucks, Google, Amazon etc. pay into the federal treasury, you and I pay six dollars.
How can such a travesty occur without a whimper from the
individual American taxpayers who are brainwas
hed
into believing they live in a democratic society? Because
there is a collusion between big business and big government.
Wall Street can and literally does buy influence in Washington.
Corporations do it by sending their executives to run the
government. And they do it and by hiring powerful lobbyists to
make sure they do.
The net result has been nothing less than a Second American Revolution. This one has turned this country and everything it stands for upside down in the last 100 years. Americans have been dumbed down into believing as truisms things which are clearly against their best interests. Such as income taxes, for example.
Most Americans today believe the nonsense Benjamin Franklin first proffered (in 1817) "nothing is certain except death and taxes" as an axiom. It is not. One hundred years ago, there were no income taxes in America. Check out this excerpt from this writer's Washington Times column "When Will Wall Street Bubble Burst?" (Aug 1998), published 15 years ago:
"Ever since the 16th Amendment, the Wall Street's "vulture capitalists" have been gradually tightening the noose around Americans' collective necks. The income tax, for example, is NOT these plutocrats' God-given entitlement, as some would have us believe. It was enacted only in 1913, after much debate and treachery, 137 years after this Republic declared its independence from the British crown.
At the time, the entire U.S. income tax law was 17-pages long. Today, it has grown to over 3,000 pages. More business opportunities for the politicians, lawyers and accountants; more financial tyranny for the taxpayers - the New World Order's "gladiators."
For example, even as late as the 1930s, the beginning of the socialist (FDR) era in America, the individuals' income taxes accounted for only 1.4% of the U.S. GDP. The corporations, on the other hand, bore a bigger 1.6% burden. No longer. In 1990, for example, the respective individual/corporate GDP shares were 8.8% and 2.0% respectively - a six-fold increase for individuals; only a 25% rise for the Princes (corporations)."
And now, individual American taxpayers shell out six times (!) more in taxes than the corporations, according to today's New York Times story.
Nor is this anything new. Check out this excerpt from the article "Sellout of America" (Annex Bulletin, Oct 2004) which this writer published 9 years ago:
"The overall effective tax rate for the 250 of largest U.S. companies was 17.2% in 2003 and 2002, down from 21.4% in 2001, according to a Forbes Sep 23, 2004 article. So the current effective rate is about half the 35% tax rate on profits of large companies.
Furthermore, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, whose study is cited in the Forbes article, found that in 2003 alone, 46 of the 275 companies it reviewed paid no taxes at all, despite reporting a total of $42.6 billion in pre-tax profits. In fact, these companies received $5.4 billion in tax rebates that year.
In the last three years, 82 of the country's largest profitable corporations paid no federal income tax at all."
"While the company (Apple) cited an effective rate of 24 to 32 percent in its disclosures, its effective tax rate was 20.1 percent, based on the committee’s findings. And for a company of Apple’s size, the resulting difference was substantial — more than $8 billion in 2009, 2010 and 2011."
Which is why our Washington lawmakers' statements to of outrage to NYT ring hollow.