“How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat? The only way you’ll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain’t got no business with!”
–Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long, 1934
It was August 11, 2011–one year before he would receive the official Republican nomination for President.
Hustling for votes, Mitt Romney was speaking to a crowd of hundreds at the Iowa State Fair. He was being pressed about raising taxes to help cover entitlement spending.
Suddenly, a heckler suggested raising corporate tax rates.
Romney responded: “Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings, my friend.”
The line earned him a sustained round of applause from the crowd.
If it’s true that corporations are people, then they are exceptionally greedy and selfish people.
A December, 2011 report by Public Campaign, highlighting corporate abuses of the tax laws, makes this all too clear.
Public Campaign is a national nonpartisan organization dedicated to reforming campaign finance laws and holding elected officials accountable.
Summarizing its conclusions, the report’s author writes:
“Amidst a growing federal deficit and widespread economic insecurity for most Americans, some of the largest corporations in the country have avoided paying their fair share in taxes while spending millions to lobby Congress and influence elections.”
Its key findings:
- The thirty big corporations analyzed in this report paid more to lobby Congress than they paid in federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010, despite being profitable.
- Despite making combined profits totaling $164 billion in that three-year period, the 30 companies combined received tax rebates totaling nearly $11 billion.
- Altogether, these companies spent nearly half a billion dollars ($476 million) over three years to lobby Congress. That’s about $400,000 each day, including weekends.
- In the three-year period beginning in 2009 through most of 2011, these large firms spent over $22 million altogether on federal campaigns.
- These corporations have also spent lavishly on compensatng their top executives ($706 million altogether in 2010).
Among those corporations whose tax-dodging and influence-buying were analyzed:
- General Electric
- Verizon
- PG&E
- Wells Fargo
- Duke Energy
- Boeing
- Consolidated Edison
- DuPont
- Honeywell International
- Mattel
- Corning
- FedEx
- Tenet Healthcare
- Wisconsin Energy
- Con-way
The report bluntly cites the growing disparity between the relatively few rich and the vast majority of poor and middle-class citizens:
“Over the past few months, a growing protest movement has shifted the debate about economic inequality in this country.
“The American people wonder why members of Congress suggest cuts to Medicare and Social Security but won’t require millionaires to pay their fair share in taxes.
“They want to know why they are struggling to find jobs and put food on the the table while the country’s largest corporations get tax breaks and sweetheart deals, then use that extra cash to pay bloated bonuses to CEOs or ship jobs overseas.
“….At a time when millions of Americans are still unemployed and millions more make tough choices to get by, these companies are enriching their top executives and spending millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists to stave off higher taxes or regulations.”
Assessing the results of corporate tax-dodging, the report states:
- Using various tax dodging techniques, including stashing profits in overseas tax havens and tax loopholes, 29 out of 30 companies featured in this study succeeded in paying no federal income taxes from 2008 through 2010.
- These 29 companies received tax rebates over those three years, ranging from $4 million for Corning to nearly $5 billion for General Electric and totally nearly $11 billion altogether.
- The only corporation that paid taxes in that three-year period, FedEx, paid a three-year tax rate of 1%, far less than the statutory rate of 35%.
The report bluntly notes the hypocrisy of corporate executives who call themselves “job creators” while enriching themselves by laying off thousands of employees:
“Another area where these corporations have decided to spend lavishly is compensation for their top executives ($706 million altogether in 2010).
“Executives doing particularly well work for General Electric ($76 million in total compensation in 2010), Honeywell International ($54 million), and Wells Fargo ($50 million).
“Executives who have seen the greatest increase work for DuPont (188% increase), Wells Fargo (180% increase) and Verizon (167% increase).
Despite being profitable, some of these corporations have actually laid off workers.
Since 2008, seven of the corporations have reported laying off American workers. The worst offenders are Verizon, which laid off at least 21,308 workers, and Boeing, which fired at least 14,862 employees.
Insisting that “corporations are people” wins applause from the wealthiest 1% and their Right-wing shills. But it does nothing to better the lives of the increasingly squeezed poor and middle-class.
If the nation is to avoid economic and moral bankruptcy, Americans must demand that powerful corporations be held accountable–and punished harshly when they behave irresponsibly.
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IF TRUMP IS OUR HITLER, WHO WILL BE OUR STAUFFENBERG?: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 30, 2015 at 12:03 amThe ad opens with ominous music–and the face of a snarling Donald Trump.
“I would like anyone who is listening to consider some thoughts that I’ve paraphrased from the words of German pastor Martin Niemoeller.”
The voice belongs to Tom Moe, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force–and a former Vietnam prisoner-of-war.
It’s a video produced by the 2016 Presidential campaign for John Kasich. Kasich, the governor of Ohio, has been peddling a message of creating jobs, balancing the Federal budget and disdain for Washington, D.C.
John Kasich
But he remains far behind in the polls, dropping 50% in support in just one month–from September to October. Meanwhile, Trump, the New York billionaire developer, is backed by 25% of Republican primary voters.
So, with nothing to lose, Kasich has decided to take off the gloves. He’s invoked the “N” word for Republicans: Nazi.
“You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims must register with the government, because you’re not one,” continues Moe.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
Donald Trump
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care of Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
Click here: Trump’s Dangerous Rhetoric – YouTube
The above is indeed a paraphrase of a famous quote by Martin Niemoeller (1892–1984), a prominent Protestant pastor. Although he had been a U-boat commander during World War 1, he became a bitter public foe of Adolf Hitler.
A staunch anti-Communist, he had initially supported the Nazis as Germany’s only hope of salvation against the Soviet Union. But when the Nazis made the church subordinate to State authority, Niemoeller created the Pastors’ Emergency League to defend religious freedom.
Martin Niemoeller
For his opposition to the Third Reich, Niemoeller spent seven years in concentration camps. With the collapse of the Reich in 1945, he was freed–and elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947.
During the 1960s, he was a president of the World Council of Churches.
He is best remembered for his powerful condemnation of the failure of Germans to protest the increasing oppression of the Nazis:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Neither “Adolf Hitler” nor “Nazi Party” was mentioned during the one-minute Kassich video. But Trump is furious.
“I will sue him [Kasich] just for fun,” said Trump, if he can find anything “not truthful” within the ad.
So says the man who has called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and accused President Barack Obama of being a Muslim and born outside the United States.
The Kasich ad is by far the darkest attack so far made against Trump by any candidate–Republican or Democrat. And it raises a disturbing question:
If Donald Trump is America’s Adolf Hitler, who will be its Claus von Stauffenberg?
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the German army officer who, on July 20, 1944, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).
While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943 when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
For most of these officers, the motive was craven: Germany was losing the war it had launched on the world–and they feared the worst. This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg–more than many Germans–knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “1,000 year Reich” fell.
Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans–even members of the Wehrmacht–were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces–well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany.
For Stauffenberg, arresting Hitler wasn’t enough.
Stauffenberg wanted him dead. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But–how to do it?
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