Nice take on the GE corporate tax scandal from Tom Scocca at Slate:
Let’s see…$3.2 billion is $200 million more than the amount that the Obama Administration wanted to slash from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, because the White House was showing that it was serious about restraining spending in tough times. So the poor go without fuel, and G.E. gets $3.2 billion in handouts, and the budget almost balances out. Fiscal discipline!
__
Or, if you don’t want to get mad on behalf of the poor: General Electric collected an average of $18 from every household in America last year, just for being so good at doing its taxes. Every month, your family paid G.E. a buck fifty.
That’s approximately the cost a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke around here. First thing you can do for American job productivity, Jeffrey Immelt, is stop stealing our caffeine-providing beverages of choice!
How can America’s Robber Baron class return your “contributions” to their looted bounty?
JPL
The right will say that since corporations can evade paying taxes, we should not have them pay taxes. WTF..
singfoom
They bring good ideas (on not paying your share) to life?
A General Electric spokesman was heard to reply, “We certainly apologize for your sadness at our lack of paying taxes. We are very sorry that you cannot play the loophole game at our level. “
fasteddie9318
Immelt can keep my $18, but he has to convert it to 1800 pennies and shove each one up his own ass one by one. That seems fair to me.
maya
Well, you know, GE is/was the parent company of that liberal MSNBC, so it stands to reason that Obama will take care of his commie pinko friend, Immelt.
News Corp, on the other hand, pays out an outrageous six percent, effective tax rate worldwide. Don’t be surprised if that’s how it’s spun.
kerFuFFler
I made this comment about Medicare near the bottom of a now extinct thread, but thought it might be good in an open thread:
Yeah, that’s a major problem. The truth is that WAY more is spent on people in all income brackets than what they have put in. People expect the gourmet, all you can eat buffet when they have paid for a tuna sandwich. Check out the graph (scary!) that shows how many HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of DOLLARS are spent PER PERSON in excess of what they have contributed on average. Women in the lowest income bracket get on average a net benefit of $277,000. Even men in the highest bracket get more than a $100,000 net benefit (amount spent minus amount paid in).
Republicans have made noises about changing some aspects of medicare “down the road” (so the old people who vote for them won’t get mad) but a fair readjustment should not just target the next generation with increased taxes and reduced services.
It is uncomfortable to discuss, but people should let their elderly relatives in on the facts. Many of them would be truly appalled at the idea of putting their kids and grandkids hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by insisting that Medicare not be touched. AARP is not interested in informing them, so that leaves it to their kids.
BTW, I’m getting old myself but understand that it may make sense to raise the age limit along with other changes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…..nefits.JPG
BR
I need to repeat the comment I made a couple of days ago on this GE thing: it’s a story designed to gin up anger among us mere mortals while not getting at the real issues at hand.
If they wanted to report this right, it’d be part of a larger story about how all corporations do this, how they get their lobbyists to write tax laws by buying off congress, and that it’s not just one company that we need to be going after, it’s all big corporations.
Finding a scapegoat makes it easy to “solve” the problem by dealing with the one “bad apple” while leaving the systemic problem unresolved.
Oscarbob
Not to worry, I’m sure that Exxon/Mobil’s tax payment more than made up for the small gift to G.E. On a different note, I keep looking for #s to show me how much of a bite the give backs have taken out of Wisc. public workers paychecks as a % of income(on average). Cuz increasing taxes would be bad, but gouging back benefits previously given isn’t a tax, it’s just these moochers being asked to do their share. And just in case we forgot, Driftglass reminds us that this shit has been going on for awhile. http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/03/so-long-ago.html
gypsy howell
@kerFuFFler:
So, what… ice floes?
What are you suggesting?
Hey, how about if the defense industry only took out what they “contribute”?
jpe
@maya: Newscorp pays right around 35% these days.
cleek
they got $450 from every person, in the 08 bailouts.
j low
@kerFuFFler: Before I suggest that you might have pulled your facts from somewhere deep in your ass, do you think you could provide a functional link? And while you are checking you might take a look at this one.
gex
Can they just let me smoke weed legally? They’ll get all my money via snack food expenditures and ultimately health care spending (from the snack food).
ETA: Cuz at least then I might not care that much about this crap.
PurpleGirl
@kerFuFFler: So, I can assume you currently have a job and are secure in that job, so secure that you won’t be fired once you reach 55 or so and that you can indeed continue working until you’re 70 or older. Hmmm… ‘Cause I lost my job when I was 57 and now I’m 59 and can’t find a job and have no idea when or if I’ll ever work again.
Cris
Gee, it doesn’t sound so bad when you break it down like that. I blow more than that on farting iPhone apps.
Martin
Yeah, but for a buck fifty I can’t buy a T-bone, so it doesn’t count.
Silver
@Martin:
A young buck can though, once he gets his hands on your tax dollars…
gex
Hey now, I need that buck-fiddy for health insurance. I already went without a teevee.
Southern Beale
I wouldn’t mind if my practically brand new GE Monogram wall oven were worth a crap but here I’ve had a repairman at four times on the damn thing and I’m looking at another ruined dinner tonight because the damn thing won’t hold its temperature.
Actually, I’d STILL mind the tax thing … But you get my drift …
Litlebritdifrnt
Andrea Mitchell is such an idiot, she is appearing on Hardball right now and Chucky (sitting in for Tweety) said “what has he not done with regard to Libya” and Andrea said “he has not addressed the American People” what? He has given three or four speeches presumably televised, is he supposed to go on tee-vee and start with “listen here American People I am addressing you right now, turn off American Idol and listen to me”. WTF? Lawd I despair at the talking heads right now.
ruemara
y’all mentioned pajama jeans once in this damn blog and the damn p-jeans ads have been here for days. cussed scripts.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
As noted elsewhere, President Obama is a wise Democratic politician who learned early on that “sometimes you can’t get the whole hog, so you take the empty promise of the teeth pickings from a ham sandwich that somebody else ate.”
.
.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@gex:
by the time they leagalize weed, weed won’t help anymore, i have skipped that part and am pushing for the legalization of fuckitall, its like galt, in a pill, for the rest of us.
PurpleGirl
Andrea Mitchell is 65 this year… isn’t it time for her to retire? She could open her job up for some younger person to get one. That would be a societal good.
ETA: Seen on another blog, President Obama is giving a live speech at 7:30 EST.
Dennis SGMM
@kerFuFFler:
You do realize that you’re making pretty much the same argument that some Republican governors are making against unionized state employees, right? “Them folks are gettin’ something that you’re not getting! Take it away from them!”
What the hell, the old folks are gonna’ die anyway so who cares if it’s sooner rather than later?
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’m sure it’s not by accident that tonight’s speech is supposed to conclude before Dancing With the Stars begins.
BTW and OT – I’ve been meaning to ask you how you watch your rugby while here in the US. I noticed your post about the Six Nations when England won it and wondered how you were watching it. I know BBC America was showing many matches, not always the England ones, though. The French channel, TV5 Monde, showed the French ones, but the other ones were only available online as far as I know (and crappy at that). Is there another source? Do you have a reliable IP proxy deal that would allow you to watch the BBC site itself? Any suggestions? Still mourning the demise of Setanta and wondering how to watch the Rugby World Cup in Sept/Oct.
mr. whipple
Jeebus. Turned on Hardballs to catch the speech. 10 minutes of talking heads makes me wanna shoot myself. Idiots.
BD of MN
@Southern Beale:
As a DIY’er, years ago I came across The Samurai Appliance Repairman who has helped me with repairs and such. I went there looking for guidance on a dishwasher purchase, his first line on the guide to all appliance purchases is “never buy anything from GE”…
Violet
@BD of MN:
Those guys are great. They helped me fix my washing machine.
Dennis SGMM
@mr. whipple:
I’ll read the transcript. Nothing is worth turning on network TV and being subjected to the wise observations of the talking heads.
Have the Republicans announced that Michelle Bachmann is going to give their response to the speech yet?
OzoneR
I need clarification…did GE not PAY taxes or did they not OWE anything in taxes. I’m hearing both and if it’s the latter, then there really is no issue here.
OzoneR
@Litlebritdifrnt:
what was that everyone says about the bully pulpit?
Bob Loblaw
@OzoneR:
You don’t think it’s mildly problematic that one of the ten largest companies in the world pays a net negative tax rate?
By the way, this Libya speech sucks. The flow is off.
OzoneR
@Bob Loblaw:
Did they pay taxes and just not owe anything more? Cause if that’s the case, then no, they have good accounting. I hope they pay them well. I have a good accountant too, haven’t had to pay in 5 years. Got a $1800 refund last year.
i think it’s problematic that they pay little in taxes to begin with.
Suzan
We aren’t going to get Americans pissed off enough about this as long as our retirement is in the stock market. Go GE! Was this the plan all along? Get everyone to put their life savings/retirement acct in the market, do away with social security = we all end up worshiping GE/profits. I feel like the snake eating my tail end.
Bob Loblaw
@OzoneR:
Did your good accountant write the applicable tax code? Because GE’s basically did. That’s the point.
JPL
@Bob Loblaw: Someone told him to sound tough and he doesn’t do tough good.. His voice is raising and falling at the wrong times. All I want to know is what will Newt say.
mr. whipple
@JPL:
I think he’s doing very, very well.
Dennis SGMM
GE is also the same wonderful company that lobbied Congress into funding a backup engine for the F-35 despite the fact that neither the Bush nor the Obama administration, or DoD, wanted the thing. So far we’ve only wasted $1.3Bn on the thing although it’s estimated that we’ll throw another $3-$4Bn at it before the program is over.
Butler
@JPL: I think we just heard what Newt’s talking point is going to be: Obama refuses to make the military mission “Regime Change”, which is the wrong move because it makes us look weak or something (according to Newt, that is).
That’s my prediction anyway.
Maude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
The MSM didn’t cover the Latin America trip hardly at all and I wonder if the press knew Obama was out of the country.
Andrea must not have been paying attention.
OzoneR
@Bob Loblaw:
Well funny you should say because he was a staffer on Ways and Means when he was younger.
But what do you meant by GE writing the tax code? Because they give big campaign donations to politicians?
Butler
Yes, and because their tax staff is made up of ex-government types who worked for all the tax code committees as well as the treasury department and IRS.
fasteddie9318
@JPL:
He’ll say that he would’ve said basically the same thing, but less Kenyany and while banging a couple of broads on the side. For America.
JPL
I wish he would say freedom isn’t free… IMO..that would be a fu to several conservatives.
Dennis SGMM
@OzoneR:
LINK
OzoneR
@Butler:
well I’m not sure how you change that. You can’t prevent government employees from seeking jobs in the private sector.
OzoneR
@Dennis SGMM: Thanks. I remember that donation.
It’s funny though, that $30 million is a major reason why Rangel was able to get reelected. He made the case that only he could get donations like that from big corporations. People in Harlem talked about that.
jpe
@OzoneR: They just don’t owe anything. (maybe. The figures people are using to prove that are GAAP tax expense numbers, not income tax numbers, so while we can’t be sure they didn’t have income tax liability it’s a reasonable guess)
OzoneR
@jpe:
Then there’s no crime here. I think we need to keep on message without saying something that could be easily refuted and make us look like liars, but we, unlike the tea party, WILL get called out and discredited over it.
There’s corporate influence in government, we know what, but that’s not THE problem, it’s a symptom of a larger problem. Corporates have influence because they have money and money wins elections. Why does money win elections? Because they buy ads. Why are ads important? Because voters believe whatever the ads tell them to.
THERE is your problem.
If you even want to get enough power to even try to change it, you need a lot of money, which means you need to be in favor with the rich.
FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, all your progressive heroes of the past (who weren’t so heroic, but I digress) didn’t have this issue.
Breth
To hear 60 Minutes tell it, it’s all the fault of almost criminally high corporate ax rates in the US.
Of course they couldn’t see fit to look into how the Mayor of Zug Switzerland thought having companies like Transocean there paying taxes while he had to provide little or no infrastructure changes to accommodate their minimal staff…
AhabTRuler
@Breth:
Oh, no, not yet, but here’s hoping!
lol
Ah yes, the heating program “cut” canard rears its ugly head again.
Why should the Professional Left live in objective reality when there’s a political axe to grind against Obama?
kerFuFFler
For anyone interested, the link I tried to provide is as follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fig._169_-_Net_lifetime_Medicare_benefits.JPG
So no, I did not pull the numbers out of my ass,j low. Sorry the link did not come out last time.
And no, I am not suggesting we put old people on ice flows. I simply believe that the crisis in Medicare funding must be addressed by a combination of curbing benefits, increasing taxes and possibly phasing in a later eligibility age since we live so much longer now. Something for everyone to hate; a good compromise, in other words.
Every time an expensive new procedure , medication or device comes along that can prolong life must society always opt for that rather than letting people choose to spend more of their livelihood on living (taking the kids on a fun vacation, going to concerts, visiting friends) rather than ventilators and long term coma care? A balance needs to be struck, and currently the slippery slope is completely tilted towards the position that everything must be done medically for everyone in every situation. If we applied the same “how can you talk about ‘money’?” when a life is at stake logic to cars, then the cars that resulted would be so expensive that no one could afford them. It is a fiction to say there can be no $ limit put on a life. We do it everyday in a thousand ways.
If people are unwilling to contemplate saying “no” to some medical expenses because they are so exorbitant, then they need to expect to start paying in about $170,000 (OK, this number is a vague interpolation from the graph I linked to. the real number will be higher.) more in taxes over their working life to afford all the care they want.
kerFuFFler
@j low:
Hi, I responded to you in #53 as well, but I forgot to mention that the site your referred me to was about social security, not Medicare. Social security is MUCH healthier fiscally than Medicare. Medicare is a HUGE problem. And people are being pussies not confronting the issues.
replicnt6
@OzoneR:
Uh, if you got an $1800 refund, I’m pretty sure you paid taxes. You’re not quite clear on how this tax thing works, are you? See, we have to pay a certain amount of taxes every year on our income. We’re paying all year, either having it withheld from our paycheck or paying estimated taxes. After the year is over, we file a return to figure out just exactly how much we really owed. If we paid more than we owed, we get a refund. If we owed more than we paid, we have to pay, possibly with a penalty.
GE didn’t pay any taxes. This doesn’t mean that at the end of the year, they came up even on their 1040 because they’d had enough withheld in their bi-weekly paychecks to cover what they owed for the year. This means they paid nothing. They have a 0% effective tax rate. I don’t think your accountant is good enough to get you a 0% tax rate. But if he is, by all means, give us all his name.
OzoneR
@replicnt6:
Again, this is not clear. You say they didn’t pay any taxes, others are saying they did and just didn’t owe anything.
Which is it?
Church Lady
@BD of MN: Absolutely. And remove Whirlpool from you list too. They suck just as much. Next appliance I buy will probably be something from Europe, just in the vain hope that it lasts longer than the warranty and requires less than two repair visits in the first three years.
Steeplejack
@OzoneR:
G.E. did not pay any taxes. Do you have a source or link for someone “saying they did and just didn’t owe anything”? Other than you, that is.
OzoneR
@Steeplejack:
I’m looking for proof either way. I don’t know which is true. jpe above said they didn’t owe anything, you’re saying they didn’t pay. I’m just looking for clarification.
Steeplejack
@OzoneR:
Too bad your concern didn’t motivate you to spend five seconds on Google, which would give you the original New York Times story:
Is that good enough for you?