Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1249465620080812
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.
The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.
More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.
-----
But obviously it's really important to go after individual tax payers because there is absolutely no other game in town.
::rolls eyes::
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The Corrupt Nexus Between Church, State and Forced Labor
Capitol Crimes
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08012008/watch.html
Really, you just have to go see or read it for yourself. All I can do is recapitulate it here in a savagely abbreviated form.
This is how and why the GOP and the Christian right do not deserve one moment of your time or money.
In the course of my entire life I have yet to discover one reason to support the GOP or its candidates for office. I simply cannot be meaningfully represented by those kinds of thugs and morally superior assholes.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08012008/watch.html
Really, you just have to go see or read it for yourself. All I can do is recapitulate it here in a savagely abbreviated form.
This is how and why the GOP and the Christian right do not deserve one moment of your time or money.
In the course of my entire life I have yet to discover one reason to support the GOP or its candidates for office. I simply cannot be meaningfully represented by those kinds of thugs and morally superior assholes.
Gas Prices
Bold Prediction 1: Gas will drop below $3 a gallon by 2010.
Bold Prediction 2: Gas will drop below $2 a gallon by 2012.
Yup, I could be wrong but this is how I see it right now. The big X Factors to consider are mainly to do with alternative energy sources and whether americans are smart enough to insist upon their implementation.
You have to vote with your own dollars too. That's not somebody else's job, that's your job.
Bold Prediction 2: Gas will drop below $2 a gallon by 2012.
Yup, I could be wrong but this is how I see it right now. The big X Factors to consider are mainly to do with alternative energy sources and whether americans are smart enough to insist upon their implementation.
You have to vote with your own dollars too. That's not somebody else's job, that's your job.
A War for Oil is Prosecuted on What Grounds?
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered George Tenet, then head of the CIA, to forge a “backdated, handwritten letter” from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein and thereby create an evidentiary link between Hussein and the attacks of 9/11. Read more here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/05/suskind-iraq/
Calls for Suskind's head are already being made loud and clear. But there is a snag in for the naysayers in this whole affair...
Many americans no longer believe that the Iraq War was justified and basically want the hell out of it. Many now accept that the war was indeed fought for oil rights. But we all know that the war was not justified on the basis of exchanging american blood for oil - the claim at the time was that we were there to get Saddam Hussien, to make the world safe against his stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and still later it was argued that we were there to bring democracy to Iraq.
I find Suskind's allegations extremely easy to believe. The allegations are entirely in keeping with the agenda of the White House at that time.
So yes, our government has become a ministry if misinformation and disinformation. The intended target audience for all of their bullshit is you and I. And the rest of the world looks on and laughs at our foolishness.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/05/suskind-iraq/
Calls for Suskind's head are already being made loud and clear. But there is a snag in for the naysayers in this whole affair...
Many americans no longer believe that the Iraq War was justified and basically want the hell out of it. Many now accept that the war was indeed fought for oil rights. But we all know that the war was not justified on the basis of exchanging american blood for oil - the claim at the time was that we were there to get Saddam Hussien, to make the world safe against his stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and still later it was argued that we were there to bring democracy to Iraq.
I find Suskind's allegations extremely easy to believe. The allegations are entirely in keeping with the agenda of the White House at that time.
So yes, our government has become a ministry if misinformation and disinformation. The intended target audience for all of their bullshit is you and I. And the rest of the world looks on and laughs at our foolishness.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Usury Crisis: Two Must See News Segments
Usury (noun) The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate.
Yes, we used to have laws against those kinds of practices. To understand the enormous political shifts taking place you really need to get back to a roots word like usury. It's really just another way of saying that someone was conned by a financial transaction the complexity of which was too much for them to fully grasp.
In truth, and I've said it before, the whole monetary system is a con of exactly that kind - a con that is too complex for most people to fully understand. This failure to understand the financial landscape also means that people are equally unable to meaningfully manage their own positions in relation to their surroundings. They just don't get it and our financial institutions don't want them to understand it too well anyway.
No one's going to bail you out of a financial crisis. Hell, they are trying to make a proper bankruptcy damned near impossible for an individual. But if you are a corporation or another kind of favored business, then no problem - you might not only get your bankruptcy but even a bail out that makes a bankruptcy unnecessary.
Welcome to the financial crisis of 2008!
Is your name Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae? Then we don't care how much you screwed up, we have taxpayer money for you. Do you find the cushion comfortable enough? We got taxpayer monies on tap! You keep risking it and we'll keep bailing you out...
This makes people in Japan, China, England and all over Europe very happy.
And Obama will not save you. He's too busy contemplating the "moral hazard" represented by the people that accepted the loans instead of scrutinizing the overweening greed on the part of the lenders that made the loans in the first place. Obama is willing to bail out the corporations but not you lowly individuals - nope, not gonna happen. You see, those corporations and financial institutions pay him to cover their asses but you aren't worth shit to Obama.
Bill Moyers Journal: Mortgage Mess, William Greider, Justice and the American Dream
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07182008/watch.html
Democracy Now: Naomi Klein Reexamines “The Shock Doctrine”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/15/with_crises_in_fuel_food_housing
Yes, we used to have laws against those kinds of practices. To understand the enormous political shifts taking place you really need to get back to a roots word like usury. It's really just another way of saying that someone was conned by a financial transaction the complexity of which was too much for them to fully grasp.
In truth, and I've said it before, the whole monetary system is a con of exactly that kind - a con that is too complex for most people to fully understand. This failure to understand the financial landscape also means that people are equally unable to meaningfully manage their own positions in relation to their surroundings. They just don't get it and our financial institutions don't want them to understand it too well anyway.
No one's going to bail you out of a financial crisis. Hell, they are trying to make a proper bankruptcy damned near impossible for an individual. But if you are a corporation or another kind of favored business, then no problem - you might not only get your bankruptcy but even a bail out that makes a bankruptcy unnecessary.
Welcome to the financial crisis of 2008!
Is your name Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae? Then we don't care how much you screwed up, we have taxpayer money for you. Do you find the cushion comfortable enough? We got taxpayer monies on tap! You keep risking it and we'll keep bailing you out...
This makes people in Japan, China, England and all over Europe very happy.
And Obama will not save you. He's too busy contemplating the "moral hazard" represented by the people that accepted the loans instead of scrutinizing the overweening greed on the part of the lenders that made the loans in the first place. Obama is willing to bail out the corporations but not you lowly individuals - nope, not gonna happen. You see, those corporations and financial institutions pay him to cover their asses but you aren't worth shit to Obama.
Bill Moyers Journal: Mortgage Mess, William Greider, Justice and the American Dream
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07182008/watch.html
Democracy Now: Naomi Klein Reexamines “The Shock Doctrine”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/15/with_crises_in_fuel_food_housing
Friday, July 18, 2008
Do your fucking job, you silly cunt!
Pelosi: Bush 'a total failure'
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/17/pelosi.interview/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Bush "a total failure" on Thursday, among the California Democrat's harshest assessments to date of the president.
"God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.
...
But Pelosi's comments come as a new Gallup poll registers the lowest level of congressional approval among Americans in the polling organization's 30-year history of conducting that survey.
-----
What explains the arrogance of this woman?
I am pretty sure I voted her and her god-damned party in so that they would get us out of these wars and impeach the motherfucking Prez. But she declared both of those fundamental moves off the table. I am quite sure that the Dems thought they could delay dealing with Bush so that it would more significantly affect the outcome of the next major election cycle. Put another way, they traded more American blood for political advantages.
I will now vote for anyone but Pelosi, because I have to vote against someone with the ability to make such a ghastly ethical trade-off. And let's be clear, she put her own political party and personal motives above doing her congressional duties and impeaching a Prez who is almost certainly guilty of several felonious federal offenses.
I can only hope that the plan is to go after Bush after the next election, once he no longer has executive privileges protecting him. I do want this one Prez to end up behind bars with his pals.
But I won't hold my breath.
Already the next Prez apparent, cocksucking Obama, has it in mind to keep these wars going - maybe going bigger in Afghanistan. What a dolt! Already he appears to be another puppet for big oil and the military industrial complex. I might as well vote McCain - at least McCain is honest about his overweening greed and his transparent desire to follow in the footsteps of Bush.
What a world, what a world...!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/17/pelosi.interview/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Bush "a total failure" on Thursday, among the California Democrat's harshest assessments to date of the president.
"God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States -- a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.
...
But Pelosi's comments come as a new Gallup poll registers the lowest level of congressional approval among Americans in the polling organization's 30-year history of conducting that survey.
-----
What explains the arrogance of this woman?
I am pretty sure I voted her and her god-damned party in so that they would get us out of these wars and impeach the motherfucking Prez. But she declared both of those fundamental moves off the table. I am quite sure that the Dems thought they could delay dealing with Bush so that it would more significantly affect the outcome of the next major election cycle. Put another way, they traded more American blood for political advantages.
I will now vote for anyone but Pelosi, because I have to vote against someone with the ability to make such a ghastly ethical trade-off. And let's be clear, she put her own political party and personal motives above doing her congressional duties and impeaching a Prez who is almost certainly guilty of several felonious federal offenses.
I can only hope that the plan is to go after Bush after the next election, once he no longer has executive privileges protecting him. I do want this one Prez to end up behind bars with his pals.
But I won't hold my breath.
Already the next Prez apparent, cocksucking Obama, has it in mind to keep these wars going - maybe going bigger in Afghanistan. What a dolt! Already he appears to be another puppet for big oil and the military industrial complex. I might as well vote McCain - at least McCain is honest about his overweening greed and his transparent desire to follow in the footsteps of Bush.
What a world, what a world...!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Disinformation and the Economy
There's a lot of near panic out there. People are acting as if the sky is actually going to fall.
Here's some good news: the sky will not fall.
And when they sky doesn't fall what you will discover is that life goes on. People will work, eat, shelter themselves, etc. Not much will change. The U.S. dollar doesn't really mean anything - in fact it has no intrinsic value whatever beyond the paper it is printed upon. The dollars you so wish you had more of aren't actual wealth - they are the mere signifiers of wealth. And as fewer people carry actual paper currency and tend to carry plastic credit cards instead, what you really have is a situation where 1s and 0s in a computational machine are the signifiers pointing at nothing.
The situation is actually worse once you take into account our system of fractional reserve banking where banks effectively invent dollar entries in their computers for dollars that don't actually exist in a ratio of something like 1:10. For every one real paper dollar a bank can claim to have constructive control over it can lend out ten that are created by the mere act of lending out the money. This is a radically simplified description of what is written in Title 12 of the Federal Code. But again, the main point is this: dollars have no real intrinsic value and the whole economy is mainly a matter of faith in a system perpetuating the economic myth of perceived value.
Sleight of hand economics: now you see it and now you don't.
So if the economy is in the toilet, it's really more a crisis of faith than anything else. Do you believe the economy is tanking and cannot recover; or, do you believe that the economy is rough right now but will recover and become far more robust in the near future? Decisions, decisions...
Smart money says the economy will recover and our economic cycle of bubbles and busts will continue on its merry way.
Smart money also says that you do generally the opposite of what the media tells you. The owners of mass media have a message for you - the lowly consumer - and it runs usually exactly the opposite of what the media owners - and economic puppet-masters - are going to do. When they say the economy is bad what they really means is that they want you to panic and to sell low so that they can buy low. When they tell you the economy is in a boom cycle what they really mean is that they want you to buy high so that they can sell high.
This is really no different than people that try to spike the buying and selling of stocks by deseminating rumors that favor the way they want the sheep to move. The sheep move one way and the rumor-mongers move another way.
If you have the means, find the bottom in your favorite market and buy in bigtime. The move up is coming soon.
Here's some good news: the sky will not fall.
And when they sky doesn't fall what you will discover is that life goes on. People will work, eat, shelter themselves, etc. Not much will change. The U.S. dollar doesn't really mean anything - in fact it has no intrinsic value whatever beyond the paper it is printed upon. The dollars you so wish you had more of aren't actual wealth - they are the mere signifiers of wealth. And as fewer people carry actual paper currency and tend to carry plastic credit cards instead, what you really have is a situation where 1s and 0s in a computational machine are the signifiers pointing at nothing.
The situation is actually worse once you take into account our system of fractional reserve banking where banks effectively invent dollar entries in their computers for dollars that don't actually exist in a ratio of something like 1:10. For every one real paper dollar a bank can claim to have constructive control over it can lend out ten that are created by the mere act of lending out the money. This is a radically simplified description of what is written in Title 12 of the Federal Code. But again, the main point is this: dollars have no real intrinsic value and the whole economy is mainly a matter of faith in a system perpetuating the economic myth of perceived value.
Sleight of hand economics: now you see it and now you don't.
So if the economy is in the toilet, it's really more a crisis of faith than anything else. Do you believe the economy is tanking and cannot recover; or, do you believe that the economy is rough right now but will recover and become far more robust in the near future? Decisions, decisions...
Smart money says the economy will recover and our economic cycle of bubbles and busts will continue on its merry way.
Smart money also says that you do generally the opposite of what the media tells you. The owners of mass media have a message for you - the lowly consumer - and it runs usually exactly the opposite of what the media owners - and economic puppet-masters - are going to do. When they say the economy is bad what they really means is that they want you to panic and to sell low so that they can buy low. When they tell you the economy is in a boom cycle what they really mean is that they want you to buy high so that they can sell high.
This is really no different than people that try to spike the buying and selling of stocks by deseminating rumors that favor the way they want the sheep to move. The sheep move one way and the rumor-mongers move another way.
If you have the means, find the bottom in your favorite market and buy in bigtime. The move up is coming soon.
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