Originally published on Feburary 23, 2013.
Between 2008 and 1011 26 major corporations paid NO FEDERAL CORPORATE INCOME TAX. Last year, Facebook made $1 billion in profits and receive $429 in tax rebates. Meanwhile, I know of a small business owner who, after 5 years, made a grand total of $8,000 in profit. Because their 401K had to be tapped the previous year to take care of other taxes, the total amount that was paid in 2011 income taxes was $24,000! Now, please, tell me why this is fair, equatable, and right, because it is not. Far from it, it is just plain downright dirty. It is the single biggest reason The Pink Flamingo decided to vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. It is the single biggest reason I will never vote for another Republican again, ever, unless they change.
Voices from the Heartland:
:…Contemplate for a moment that the Citizens United ruling made corporations people so they could put large sums into campaigns or to put it bluntly allowed them to buy off politicians so their low tax rates could be maintained or in some cases paying zero taxes. Fortunately for all of us Romney did not get elected as he was part of that group who paid low taxes and would bet in some years almost no taxes. With Romney losing we dodged a bullet, but we are still facing big problems to get tax reform and close loopholes since the GOP gerrymandering made sure Republicans kept the House in 2012. …”
Why was Facebook allowed to get away with receiving $451 million in refunds while small business owners, who aren’t fortunate enough to be billionaires, get stuck with the bill?
“…Corporate taxes in the U.S., contrary to the constant protestations of conservatives, are at a 40 year low, with many of the most profitable companies paying nothing at all. CTJ noted that “had these 30 companies paid the full 35 percent corporate tax rate over the 2008-11 period, they would have paid $78.3 billion more in federal income taxes.” And this is not a problem that only afflicts the U.S., as the UK found out last week that online retailer Amazon made billions in sales in 2011, while paying nothing in corporate taxes….”
The GOP is all for taxes, when it will hurt the We the Little People. Their big donors want internet sales taxes, so they probably going to get them. It’s a way of raising revenue from people already paying far more than our fair percentage share of taxes, compared to the mega wealthy.
Unfortunately, taxes are a necessary evil. I don’t like it, but there are realities in real life. Taxes, to support the government and infrastructure are some of them. The Pink Flamingo is constantly and consistently disgusted with the minions of the far right who somehow are incapable of comprehending that someone paying 14% is not the same as someone paying 35%. What if… we were to add 14% + 35% = 49%. Then divide 49% by 2 = 24.5%. Now THAT is a decent rate. It’s still too high, but it’s better than nothing, which is what many of the ultra wealthy happen to pay.
“…Which explains why Corporate America paid an average tax rate of just 12% in 2011 – the lowest rate in 40 years. It explains why 400 billionaires in America now own more wealth than 150 million other Americans combined. And it explains why fewer impoverished Americans are getting less federal assistance than at any time in the last half-century.
Ayn Rand envisioned a world without governments – a world where the super-rich are free to do as they wish.
We tried that during the so-called Gilded Age of the late 19th Century – before Ayn Rand was alive. If she’d watched the ruthlessness of the Robber Barons like she did the Bolsheviks, she may have reached different conclusions.
She may have realized that American Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower were right when they made sure that wealth was more evenly distributed and the Billionaire Class was held in check.
Or she may have come to understand that corporations and billionaires owe their wealth to the state and not the other way around. Without favorable patent and copyright laws, a court system, an educated workforce, and an infrastructure to move goods about the country, then no one would be able to get rich in America. We’d be like the Libertarian paradise of Somalia….”
Why are major corporations getting away with not supporting this country, while the small business person is being destroyed under the weight of punitive taxation? Right now big business is avoiding paying something like $128 in taxes by keeping funds off shore due to loop-holes that destroy the small business. Facebook gets to carry forward three billion dollars in advanced deductions.
Avoiding taxes is the real great American pastime.
No one in their right mind wants to pay taxes. What The Pink Flamingo simply cannot comprehend is when and where the GOP changed. Once upon a time, the GOP was all about the small business person, that honorable individual who was shackled in a labor of love in small town America. They were the backbone of this nation. They created the jobs and still do create the vast majority of them. They were the trend-setters, standing shoulder to shoulder, to make this nation what it is. They lived in a Norman Rockwell painting in a Frank Capra movie, fighting the big guy, coming out ahead, in triumph. They retired, gracefully, to a warmer climate, sometimes selling out, or passing the business on to their children. Their retirement was comfortable. They had what they needed.
Somewhere along the line, when Citizen’s United became the law of the land, small town America with it’s mom and pop business, the small business person, was no longer important. In order to keep the artificially low, socialistic policies where only a small percentage of the ultra wealthy survived and profited – greatly, the small business person has been sacrificed.
There are those in the far right who truly believe bigger is better, that out of control, vulture capitalism is truly the method of choice for growing richer, while destroying everyone else around you. The problem is they are lying to themselves. This was NEVER EVER EVER the way of the GOP. It was about tax equity, where everyone was to pay the same low percentage, with just a few deductions and no loop-holes.
This changed. Now, if you discuss this sort of thing, instead of being a Republican in the vein of Jack Kemp of Steve Forbes, you are now a socialist, a Marxist, or someone who hates the Constitution. We are told to shut up, and be silent. We don’t love this nation, the way the vultures who worship Ayn Rand do. The very idea that someone would be so stupid to make such a claim is how far the GOP has fallen.
The Pink Flamingo is becoming a little sick and tired of being bullied and threatened by Randians who think that their way is the only way that one can demonstrate their love for this nation. They are abject and utter fools. The way to demonstrate your love for this nation is to realize that there are different and viable ideas. You don’t go around threatening people when you are completely ignorant of the way of the world.
If we do not eliminate the loopholes that are unfairly creating an oligarchy in this nation, the United States, as we once knew it, is doomed. The great irony is that it will not be destroyed from within by socialism, Marxism, or communism, but by unbridled capitalism.
There is a difference between extreme capitalism (which is what they have in China) and democracy. The difference is economic freedom. It is becoming an extremely endangered ideal, destroyed by the very individuals who claim to worship it the most.
One thing our so-called Founding Fathers fought for was something of an even playing field with economics. There were no great fortunes in this country during the American Revolution. Economics as we know them today did not exist. People were ‘rich’, but not many. People were poor. Most people, though, lived somewhere in the middle. The dream for their children to have a better life did not even begin until the Missionary Generation was born, starting in the 1840. These were the men and women who truly shaped the world of today. They were fairly well educated (far superior to the average Republican serving in the House and Senate today). They were risk takers, adventurers, and the very individuals who shaped the Wild West. They believed in gun control, paying one’s taxes, and helping those who were less fortunate.
Today’s libertarian would feel vastly out of place in the Wild West of Wyatt Earp, where a man’s private life was his own, gays were accepted, and people knew the facts of life. It was a time where, if there was a smallpox scare, a town purchased the vaccine and it was distributed to everyone FREE OF CHARGE! You see, these were men and women who had a brain, and knew how to use them. There was never a question about being unable to afford the vaccine. It was given out FREE as a public health service, by the very communities that banned the wearing of firearms within the city limits. These were communities that created income and property taxes.
Ayn Rand and her economic ‘ideas’ are the worst thing that could ever happen to this nation. Her evil, selfish philosophy has begun to erode the very bedrock of our society. Until the right grows up and realizes that they are destroying the very country they pretend to love, we are in danger of being destroyed – from within.
The refusal to require the ultra wealthy to pay the same percentage as the small business person, to maintain this new socialism that gives them a brutally unfair advantage is going to ruin the GOP. Let’s just hope the politicians who continue to support the repulsive policies are kicked out of office before they truly bring this nation to its knees.
Right now, I don’t have much hope for this country. It’s not because of the left, but because of the right.
