Washington's deficit plan -- shifting more money from the poor to the rich that own the Republican Party (GOP) and many Democrats -- makes no sense until you look at the fraudsters behind the fallacies.
Financial inequality in the U.S. is at all-time highs. Large corporations, as well as those that own them, are paying little or no taxes on multi-billion dollar profits while the Lower- and Middle Classes are being nickel and dimed to death. Washington's efforts to enrich and protect their corporate masters at our expense are also at all-time highs. The very same Wall Street fraudsters responsible for destroying world economies in 2008 have recovered nicely while the rest of us have not. There will be a heavy price to pay if the fraudsters that own most of Washington get their way.
Federal income tax is a joke. Ordinary working Americans are crushed by aggressive levels of taxation and Washington consistently dreams up new schemes for extracting more money from us every year. Meanwhile, extraordinarily wealthy Americans and the vast majority of large corporations making billions of dollars in profit pay little or no taxes at all. Indeed, tax avoidance has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States.
The wealthy elite use shady shell corporations, offshore tax havens and thousands of loopholes in the U.S. tax code to avoid paying as much as taxes as possible. Like Washington, the federal income tax system is totally broken and dysfunctional. A lot of people don’t believe that corporations making billions of dollars in profit don’t pay taxes, but as a recent report from the Public Campaign reveals, it is very true.
OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS HELP CORPORATIONS AVOID TAXES Of 30 large corporations listed in Public Campaign’s report, 29 had a tax burden for 2008 through 2010 of less than zero, despite making enormous profits. Fedex made more than $4.2 billion in profit from 2008 through 2010 and only paid $37 million – less than 1 percent – in taxes for those 3 years. General Electric, PG&E, Verizon, and Wells Fargo made more than $97 billion collectively in profits from 2008 through 2010 and didn’t pay one cent in taxes. The combined profits of the 30 large corporations listed made combined profits of more than $163 billion dollars yet the combined net tax liability of those companies was negative $10.6 billion dollars.
26 other large corporations listed in Public Campaign’s report made more than $62.2 billion in profits over the same time period and didn’t pay one cent in taxes. Facebook, who was not included in Public Campaign’s report, made more than $1 billion in 2012 but did not pay one cent in Federal or State taxes. Instead, Facebook will receive net tax refunds totaling $429 million courtesy of America’s dysfunctional tax system, and according to a recent BusinessWeek report, Facebook has an additional $2 billion in tax credits that it will be able to use in future years.
But large corporations have nothing on the fraudulent antics of Wall Street. For example, Brian Moynihan, Bank of America (BofA) CEO, had 371 offshore tax havens in 2010 and paid zero in taxes. If not for offshore tax havens, BofA would have owed $2.5 billion in taxes. Instead, BofA received a $1.7 billion refund. James Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase – which made billions of dollars through massive fraud – had 83 offshore tax havens in 2010. Were it not for their offshore tax havens, Chase would have owed $4.9 billion in taxes but instead paid nothing, and ended up receiving $416 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts. Goldman Sachs had 39 offshore tax havens in 2010 and would have paid $3.32 billion were it not for their shadowy tax dodging tactics. Instead of paying taxes and being held accountable for their massively fraudulent antics, Goldman Sachs received $824 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts. The list goes on and on.
The truth is, large fraudulent banks and corporations make billions of dollars in profit but pay nothing, or next to nothing in taxes while working Lower-and Middle Class Americans pay dozens of different taxes. In 1950, corporate taxes made up 30 percent of all federal revenue as opposed to 2012 when corporate taxes accounted for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue. There are a multitude of international tax havens set up to help corporations avoid taxes.
ESTIMATED $32 TRILLION STASHED IN OFFSHORE BANKS BY GLOBAL ELITE The ultra-wealthy have also mastered the deceptive art of avoiding taxes and it is estimated that the global elite have up to $32 trillion stashed in shady offshore banks around the globe. Congress has had several decades to fix America’s tax problems, but most refuse to do so because they are bought and paid for.
When you throw fraudsters who are partially responsible for the financial mess America is in into the mix to “fix” the problems they created, it doesn’t bode well for the American people. One of the latest scams aimed at deceiving the U.S. public into believing cuts are necessary to preserve Medicare and Social Security was created by the “Fix the Debt Campaign” which was founded by a treacherous trio of fraudulent morons: Alan Simpson, a former GOP Senator from Wyoming, establishment Democrat Erskine Bowles who now serves on the board of Morgan Stanley, and Pete Peterson, who has a long history of deficit scaremongering.
Simpson and Bowles were two of the right-wing nuts appointed to co-chair the 2010 bi-partisan commission that would prevent sequester cuts from taking affect if an agreement couldn’t be reached over the political charades revolving around the debt ceiling two years ago. The delusional plan dreamt up by Simpson and Bowles two years ago failed. The new plan concocted by the treacherous trio is pretty much the same as the last one, only it involves more cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and “reforms” to Social Security – which is code for privatizing it to bankrupt and destroy those who need it while enriching those who fraudulently run it.
As with all shock doctrines and fabricated economic crises used by the right-wing GOP to roll back social protections, the treacherous trio uses scare tactics and fabricated lies to try and justify their scheme, but it always inevitably fails because it is basically a fraud. The latest scheme concocted by the treacherous trio has deeper cuts to social programs and virtually no plans for raising revenue from taxes. Disastrous cuts to social programs and fraudulent reforms are not the answer since America doesn’t have an entitlement problem as Simpson, Bowles, Peterson and company would have you believe.
THE TREACHEROUS TRIO’S FRAUDULENT “FIX THE DEBT CAMPAIGN” The so-called “Fix the Debt Campaign” is a scam created by the treacherous trio to try and manipulate the public into believing that austerity is the only answer to solving America’s financial issues. In reality, having billionaires and corporations pay their fair share of taxes would alleviate much of America’s financial woes.
The campaign is operating as an ‘Astroturf super group’ but it is actually a CEO-backed propaganda campaign funded by billionaires which uses its outsized pocketbook and influence to peddle long-discredited policy prescriptions for America’s ailing economy. A joint investigative project between the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and The Nation magazine reveals that the “Fix the Debt Campaign” is “one of the most hypocritical corporate PR campaigns” created in Washington in decades.
The group is comprised of the same liars and cheats responsible for creating the financial mess the country is in who spend their days trying to make everyone believe that “deficit reduction” and “entitlement reform” are needed to “fix” the federal budget and kick start the economy to provide new jobs and growth. In reality, the best way to kick start the economy is to put everyone of the fraudsters responsible for defrauding America regularly the past several years in prison where they belong.
According to the investigation – in addition to being constantly wrong about everything – the members of the group share great wealth and power. In order to successfully push their lies, the group has to fabricate crises that really don’t exist and has been doing so since 2010 when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives. “Fix the Debt Campaign” claims they want to “put America on a better fiscal and economic path” but the group’s sole purpose is to push an “austerity agenda” which puts the interests of the frauds funding it ahead of America’s elderly, Lower- and Middle Class workers, and America’s most vulnerable in society.
SHADY NETWORKS OF “INDEPENDENT” GROUPS MANIPULATE US POLITICS The group specializes in hiding their self-serving motives by using deceptive language such as “shared sacrifice.” Like every other fraudulent front group serving the interests of those who own most of Washington, the group has developed state-level chapters, an army of lobbyists, and established corporate partnerships to push their fomented propaganda campaign through the media outlets they own to push their fallaciously flawed ideology.
With the ongoing political theater in Washington over the impending spending cuts, the fraudulent “Fix the Debt Campaign” is using the latest fabricated financial crisis to push cuts to key social programs while trying to defend and justify outlandish tax cuts and rates for the wealthy. Unsurprisingly, the fraudsters that comprise the “Fix the Debt Campaign” will try and exploit the upcoming sequester debate and the fallacious debt ceiling debate to advance their own agendas of not paying taxes while pushing austerity on the rest of us. For more on the fraudulent “Fix the Debt Campaign,” see the report from the CMD here and The Nation here. For detailed information on key aspects of the fraudulent group’s activities, see here.
The fraudulent "Fix the Debt Campaign" is financed by the very same corporations and billionaires that have looted America regularly for the past several decades with the intention of turning America into a plutocracy. Much of America's austerity charades stem from the fact that many a corrupt billionaire hide behind a shadowy network of "independent" groups like the "Fix the Debt Campaign" who manipulate U.S. politics on their behalf.
One in three Americans lives at the poverty level and have problems struggling to cover the basic necessities of life. Almost four years after economists tell us the "recovery" began, almost half of all U.S. households don't have enough savings to stay above the poverty line for three months or more should they lose their jobs. A third of all U.S. households lives paycheck to paycheck and has no savings at all. Over the past 30 years CEO pay has sky-rocketed while the workers who made said CEOs rich have seen their wages cut, unions have been destroyed by corrupt politicians and large corporations have offshored millions of manufacturing jobs -- on top of offshoring their bank accounts to avoid paying taxes. Despite the lies from the conservative movement, poverty in America is very real.
THE ABSURDITY OF AMERICA’S AUSTERITY CHARADES To get a better understanding about the absurdity of America's austerity charades, you need to look at what nobody in Washington talks about. In spite of all the theatrics about impending financial doom and gloom over America's debt, the truth is that the debt everyone is freaking out about doesn't exist. Granted, the U.S. owes nearly $12 trillion to foreign and private creditors -- many of which were responsible for defrauding the U.S. out of its retirement pensions -- but that debt poses no threat to the country's fiscal health since the ongoing growth of the economy would drop that debt.
The debt that Washington, America’s pusillanimous press corps, and the fraudsters keep bloviating about is debt we haven't incurred yet. It is not certain debt. It is simply a projection of debt by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Trying to predict how to balance the federal budget, not to mention the U.S. economy, is impossible. The fallacies about the U.S. debt being spread by Washington's austerity charades are deceitful. There is no need to privatize and cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Instead of obsessing over fallacious financial crises, we should be focusing on creating jobs and holding the fraudsters accountable for their crimes.
President Obama could end the sequester threats and put an end to the GOPs fiscal follies if he really wanted to. By fixating on non-existent problems, Washington is intentionally putting corporations above the people they allegedly represent. Basing policies on fraudulent fallacies has consequences and will lead to a deeper recession. Refusing to make corporations pay their fair share and giving them total impunity for all the fraud they have perpetrated is immoral, especially when they feed us lie after lie about the economy and use fear-mongering to spread deception while protecting corporations and billionaires.
The dirty little secrets of Washington's austerity charades are in plain sight and now we need more transparency into who the fraudulent groups pushing it are working for. The public needs to know who is funding these fraudulent groups and how much they are paying to spread their lies and why. It’s time to change the fact that Congress no longer exists to serve the U.S. public because it has been hijacked by anonymous donors, big money, corporations as people, lobbyists and special interest groups, and it’s time for corporations and the wealthy elite to pay what’s due.
