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A Crazy Protest Idea
Posted by: Linda Carbonell on August 13, 2011. 08-13-2011 by Linda S. Carbonell
Wall Street, New York City
I have been justifiably accused of having a wicked sense of justice. Wicked as in, I see possibilities for punishments that fit the crime in unusual ways. If Timothy McVeigh was going to be executed anyway, I posited, why not go back to one of the execution methods employed at Salem in the witch trials? Stake him out on the ground, put a board on his chest and place large rocks on the board, one at a time. My husband was a Federal employee, so I took Oklahoma City very personally. Crushing seemed, to me at least, a fitting execution method for someone whose victims were crushed to death under the rubble of the Murrah building. There are times when my human need for revenge outweighs my finer instincts, and my Gilbert and Sullivan ideas kick in. A little Mikado, please “My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time – to let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.”
Bearing that in mind, I’ve been thinking about those people I know who took their money out of the stock market and put it into Treasury bonds last week. What if that action had more focus? What if people used their money to back up their political beliefs?
My knowledge of stocks, bonds and that stuff is seriously out-of-date. The last time I paid much attention to the stock market people had stock brokers and invested in specific companies, usually those called “blue chips” – ones that built value slowly and steadily over time. The idea of some toddler selling e-trading out of his walker was beyond imagination. So, if this all sounds a bit simple, please forgive me.
Seventy percent of us think the rich and the corporations aren’t paying their fair share. For the most part, we are right. However, the tax code is so complex and how companies are classified in the tax code is so confusing, it’s hard to put real numbers to most of what we vaguely understand to be true. This essay is based on what we do know, in absolute numbers.
One hundred three of the Forbes 400 are hedge fund and money managers. They invest their own and other peoples’ money in stocks, bonds and “financial instruments” and make a profit. Those managers only pay the 15% capital gains tax rate on their earnings, irregardless of whether or not those earnings are based on the profits for their personal investments or the commissions they receive for investing other people’s money. This is one tax loophole that the Republicans are defending to the death. What if people who believe that it is wrong to make $3 billion betting that our mortgages will be foreclosed and only paying 15% tax on that were to withdraw their money from hedge funds? People can put their money in the safest investment in the world, U. S. Treasury bonds. Combined with the banks that created the derivatives market and the financial instruments made up of our mortgages, these are the people who tanked our economy. Why should they still be benefitting from that? About the only person I would exempt from this is Warren Buffet, who at least understands that his secretary pays more of her income in taxes than he does.
Then, there are those mega-banks like Bank of America. Not only were they complicit in the economic meltdown, they benefitted from it when we bailed them out. Do those that have publicly traded stock deserve to have our money? Bank of America paid no taxes at all last year, made $4.4 billion and received a $1.9 billion tax refund. Their part of the bail-out was nearly $1 trillion. Goldman Sachs paid only 1.1% taxes on a profit of $2.3 billion last year. Citigroup paid no taxes on a $4 billion profit. Owning their stock, making your money available to them to sustain their asset level while they refuse to help a government that is desperate to find ways to help their victims is, well, downright un-American.
That leads us to the oil and gas companies. Do you know why the richest countries in the world are so rich? They own their natural resources. The system is bad when that money ends up in the hands of one family like the Qaddafis or the Saudi royal family, but the other side of it is the lowest tax revenues to GDP ratios in the world. In the hands of a democracy, it could be a stellar idea. Mexico and Venezuela still haven’t gotten the kinks out, but they do try. There is something in the European make-up that says it’s bad for countries to own their natural resources. That’s why European countries and the U.S. supported British Petroleum overthrowing the democratically elected government in Iran back in 1953. The United States leases tens of millions of acres of public land and ocean floor to oil and gas companies and collects a paltry royalty for the oil and gas that is extracted. Private companies can leave their leased lands untapped for decades and use them as tax write-offs. They can drill wells and then cap them and use them as tax write offs. There are thousands of these capped wells in the Gulf. And, in addition to all the possible tax breaks, tax credits, deductions, and write-offs, they receive subsidies from the government for exploration.
Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009 and received a $156 million tax rebate from the government.
Chevron made $10 billion in profits in 2009, and received a $19 million rebate last year.
Conoco Phillips, which is only the fifth largest oil company in America, made $16 billion in profit between 2007 and 2009, and received $451 million in tax breaks under the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
Valero Energy, had $68 billion in sales last year and received a $157 million refund check form the IRS. It has also gotten a $134 million oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
If these companies issue publicly traded stock, do they really deserve to be holding your money? What about other companies?
General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States over the past five years. They also received a $4.1 billion tax refund from the IRS.
Carnival Cruises made more than $11 billion in profit in the past five years, and paid only 1.1% in taxes. That’s less than the taxes to earnings percentage paid by a minimum wage, part-time employee just in payroll taxes.
That’s just nine of the biggest tax evaders in America, out of hundreds of thousands of companies.
Aside from the breaks, etc., built into our tax code, there is the international element. If a company patents a product in another country, the profits from that patent are taxed in the country that holds it, not in the United States, even when the company is based in the U.S. Other companies simply place their corporate headquarters in post office boxes and virtually empty buildings in tax shelter nations. That’s how Halliburton paid no taxes on the billions it made off of us for doing the exact same job the United Nations had just paid them billions to perform. It’s also how Halliburton paid truck drivers sixty-thousand tax exempt dollars a year in Iraq while our soldiers made less than $30,000 and paid income taxes on it.
The other biggie is the definition of “small business.” It’s not size that matters, it’s ownership. Cargill is a small business because it is owned by one family, all of whom are individually in the Forbes billionaire list. It has 131,000 employees, some of whom are incapable of preventing salmonella getting into ground turkey. Bechtel has 49,000 employees. These are “small businesses” that get the tax breaks we think were written for truly small businesses. Because they are privately held, there is really nothing we can do about them except turn them into collateral damage in any protest of the tax code. Run through the Forbes 400 and you will see the same names multiple times. They own companies like Koch Industries, Mars, S. C. Johnson, Walmart, Cox Enterprises, News Corp and Wynn resorts.
Stock holders, shareholders, receive quarterly statements from the companies that they are invested in. Those reports should show how much these companies pay in taxes. There are some companies that pay a fair share, or even more than a fair share. It’s the ones that don’t that need to be dealt with.
India has a much lower corporate tax rate than we do, but they don’t have the tax structure that allows companies to get away with not paying taxes. Corporations, hedge fund managers and banks want to keep the tax code exactly the way it is….giving them thousands of tax breaks and loopholes that reduce their tax obligations to a smaller percentage than their lowest employee. Thanks to Citizens United, they can pour millions of dollars into campaign coffers to defeat any candidate who even suggests wiping out the existing tax code and replacing it with a simple system of lower rates.
There really is only one way to break through the political bitching and bickering and make our voices heard – their pocketbooks. If people who believe in a fair tax code simply remove their money from those companies that abuse the existing code and put that money into Treasury bonds, it will say more to those companies than our votes do. If we believe that “job creators” ought to be creating jobs with the tax breaks they are getting, instead of making their CEOs richer, we should be withdrawing our money from them. Boycotting their products is virtually impossible, so how about boycotting their stock?
It’s just an idea, and probably a crazy one at that, but there is a little comfort to be found in crazy fantasies…if only….what if…..how about if we….? I would really like to see our protests target the right abusers of our system rather than see truly small businesses hurt if rioting were to break out next summer like we have just seen in England. It’s just an idea.
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You are here: Home » News » Business & Economics » A Crazy Protest Idea
A Crazy Protest Idea
08-13-2011 by Linda S. Carbonell
Wall Street, New York City
I have been justifiably accused of having a wicked sense of justice. Wicked as in, I see possibilities for punishments that fit the crime in unusual ways. If Timothy McVeigh was going to be executed anyway, I posited, why not go back to one of the execution methods employed at Salem in the witch trials? Stake him out on the ground, put a board on his chest and place large rocks on the board, one at a time. My husband was a Federal employee, so I took Oklahoma City very personally. Crushing seemed, to me at least, a fitting execution method for someone whose victims were crushed to death under the rubble of the Murrah building. There are times when my human need for revenge outweighs my finer instincts, and my Gilbert and Sullivan ideas kick in. A little Mikado, please “My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time – to let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.”
Bearing that in mind, I’ve been thinking about those people I know who took their money out of the stock market and put it into Treasury bonds last week. What if that action had more focus? What if people used their money to back up their political beliefs?
My knowledge of stocks, bonds and that stuff is seriously out-of-date. The last time I paid much attention to the stock market people had stock brokers and invested in specific companies, usually those called “blue chips” – ones that built value slowly and steadily over time. The idea of some toddler selling e-trading out of his walker was beyond imagination. So, if this all sounds a bit simple, please forgive me.
Seventy percent of us think the rich and the corporations aren’t paying their fair share. For the most part, we are right. However, the tax code is so complex and how companies are classified in the tax code is so confusing, it’s hard to put real numbers to most of what we vaguely understand to be true. This essay is based on what we do know, in absolute numbers.
One hundred three of the Forbes 400 are hedge fund and money managers. They invest their own and other peoples’ money in stocks, bonds and “financial instruments” and make a profit. Those managers only pay the 15% capital gains tax rate on their earnings, irregardless of whether or not those earnings are based on the profits for their personal investments or the commissions they receive for investing other people’s money. This is one tax loophole that the Republicans are defending to the death. What if people who believe that it is wrong to make $3 billion betting that our mortgages will be foreclosed and only paying 15% tax on that were to withdraw their money from hedge funds? People can put their money in the safest investment in the world, U. S. Treasury bonds. Combined with the banks that created the derivatives market and the financial instruments made up of our mortgages, these are the people who tanked our economy. Why should they still be benefitting from that? About the only person I would exempt from this is Warren Buffet, who at least understands that his secretary pays more of her income in taxes than he does.
Then, there are those mega-banks like Bank of America. Not only were they complicit in the economic meltdown, they benefitted from it when we bailed them out. Do those that have publicly traded stock deserve to have our money? Bank of America paid no taxes at all last year, made $4.4 billion and received a $1.9 billion tax refund. Their part of the bail-out was nearly $1 trillion. Goldman Sachs paid only 1.1% taxes on a profit of $2.3 billion last year. Citigroup paid no taxes on a $4 billion profit. Owning their stock, making your money available to them to sustain their asset level while they refuse to help a government that is desperate to find ways to help their victims is, well, downright un-American.
That leads us to the oil and gas companies. Do you know why the richest countries in the world are so rich? They own their natural resources. The system is bad when that money ends up in the hands of one family like the Qaddafis or the Saudi royal family, but the other side of it is the lowest tax revenues to GDP ratios in the world. In the hands of a democracy, it could be a stellar idea. Mexico and Venezuela still haven’t gotten the kinks out, but they do try. There is something in the European make-up that says it’s bad for countries to own their natural resources. That’s why European countries and the U.S. supported British Petroleum overthrowing the democratically elected government in Iran back in 1953. The United States leases tens of millions of acres of public land and ocean floor to oil and gas companies and collects a paltry royalty for the oil and gas that is extracted. Private companies can leave their leased lands untapped for decades and use them as tax write-offs. They can drill wells and then cap them and use them as tax write offs. There are thousands of these capped wells in the Gulf. And, in addition to all the possible tax breaks, tax credits, deductions, and write-offs, they receive subsidies from the government for exploration.
Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009 and received a $156 million tax rebate from the government.
Chevron made $10 billion in profits in 2009, and received a $19 million rebate last year.
Conoco Phillips, which is only the fifth largest oil company in America, made $16 billion in profit between 2007 and 2009, and received $451 million in tax breaks under the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
Valero Energy, had $68 billion in sales last year and received a $157 million refund check form the IRS. It has also gotten a $134 million oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
If these companies issue publicly traded stock, do they really deserve to be holding your money? What about other companies?
General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States over the past five years. They also received a $4.1 billion tax refund from the IRS.
Carnival Cruises made more than $11 billion in profit in the past five years, and paid only 1.1% in taxes. That’s less than the taxes to earnings percentage paid by a minimum wage, part-time employee just in payroll taxes.
That’s just nine of the biggest tax evaders in America, out of hundreds of thousands of companies.
Aside from the breaks, etc., built into our tax code, there is the international element. If a company patents a product in another country, the profits from that patent are taxed in the country that holds it, not in the United States, even when the company is based in the U.S. Other companies simply place their corporate headquarters in post office boxes and virtually empty buildings in tax shelter nations. That’s how Halliburton paid no taxes on the billions it made off of us for doing the exact same job the United Nations had just paid them billions to perform. It’s also how Halliburton paid truck drivers sixty-thousand tax exempt dollars a year in Iraq while our soldiers made less than $30,000 and paid income taxes on it.
The other biggie is the definition of “small business.” It’s not size that matters, it’s ownership. Cargill is a small business because it is owned by one family, all of whom are individually in the Forbes billionaire list. It has 131,000 employees, some of whom are incapable of preventing salmonella getting into ground turkey. Bechtel has 49,000 employees. These are “small businesses” that get the tax breaks we think were written for truly small businesses. Because they are privately held, there is really nothing we can do about them except turn them into collateral damage in any protest of the tax code. Run through the Forbes 400 and you will see the same names multiple times. They own companies like Koch Industries, Mars, S. C. Johnson, Walmart, Cox Enterprises, News Corp and Wynn resorts.
Stock holders, shareholders, receive quarterly statements from the companies that they are invested in. Those reports should show how much these companies pay in taxes. There are some companies that pay a fair share, or even more than a fair share. It’s the ones that don’t that need to be dealt with.
India has a much lower corporate tax rate than we do, but they don’t have the tax structure that allows companies to get away with not paying taxes. Corporations, hedge fund managers and banks want to keep the tax code exactly the way it is….giving them thousands of tax breaks and loopholes that reduce their tax obligations to a smaller percentage than their lowest employee. Thanks to Citizens United, they can pour millions of dollars into campaign coffers to defeat any candidate who even suggests wiping out the existing tax code and replacing it with a simple system of lower rates.
There really is only one way to break through the political bitching and bickering and make our voices heard – their pocketbooks. If people who believe in a fair tax code simply remove their money from those companies that abuse the existing code and put that money into Treasury bonds, it will say more to those companies than our votes do. If we believe that “job creators” ought to be creating jobs with the tax breaks they are getting, instead of making their CEOs richer, we should be withdrawing our money from them. Boycotting their products is virtually impossible, so how about boycotting their stock?
It’s just an idea, and probably a crazy one at that, but there is a little comfort to be found in crazy fantasies…if only….what if…..how about if we….? I would really like to see our protests target the right abusers of our system rather than see truly small businesses hurt if rioting were to break out next summer like we have just seen in England. It’s just an idea.
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