Population 436 part

Population 436 part 7

Conservatives frequently cite the fact that America s corporate tax rate is 35 percent, which is higher than the average of other industrial countries, but that doesn t take into account these kinds of tax evading practices. In fact, 115 companies on the S P 500 pay less than 20 percent in taxes, and that doesn t take into account the 37 companies, such as Citigroup and American International Group AIG, that receive more in credits than they ultimately pay out companies that pay less than five percent in taxes include Boeing and Amazon. In 2010, if you made between 34, 001 and 82, 400, your marginal tax rate was 25 percent. That means you paid more in taxes than a company like Carnival Corporation the entity behind the floating eyesores of Carnival cruises which, over the last five years, has paid only 1 percent of its cumulative 3 billion in profits, according to The New York Times. You even paid more if you were in either of the next two lowest income brackets. For singles earning between 0 and 8, 375, the marginal tax rate is 10 percent a positively patriotic sum considering that income won t keep an individual above the poverty line, and yet would cause any Fortune 500 CEO to experience cardiac arrest. Despite these glaring instances of stolen revenue, the right has been marvelously successful at using astroturfing campaigns to create its Tea Party, a movement that is more likely to focus on illegal immigration than foreign tax havens unsurprisingly, given that large corporations like Koch Industries bankrolled such endeavors. Gibson blames the propaganda from networks like Fox News for brainwashing the lower classes into fighting against their own interests, yet he s optimistic about the future. The US Uncut web site is up and growing, as are its Facebook group and Twitter page. It s time for the people to speak up and do whatever we can, said Gibson. When my Citizen Radio partner and I interviewed Zinn in his home a couple months before he died, we asked him why it s so important for students to have an intimate understanding of history. To me, understanding history is a matter of life and death, he said. If you don t understand history, you re a victim. By that, he meant that if citizens didn t understand their own history of exploitation at the hands of robber barons and tycoons, who fought for deregulation at the expense of their employees in order to accumulate larger profits, they would be doomed to repeat those tragedies. Now here we are in 2011, and an entire movement branded as a populist uprising is screaming about illegal immigrants and Obama s birth certificate while corporations rob the country blind. Luckily, it seems as though enough sane Americans are learning the correct history lessons from their brothers and sisters in struggle. Here s hoping US Uncut never forgets its history. Around the country, cutbacks are being proposed and pushed through with great speed, as a kind of shock therapy to the economy, as Naomi Klein describes in her book Shock Doctrine. But hold on progressive groups, inspired by recent events in Cairo and Madison, are rising to the occasion and calling for a sane, reasoned, and equitable approach to the crisis at hand. On Saturday, February 26, groups around the United States will engage in actions that demonstrate the will of the people to protect essential programs and services from cutbacks and to demand that such services be paid for by the banks and other mega-corporations that currently dodge taxes and dominate economic policy. A newly-emerging organization called US Uncut, modeled on UK Uncut, is planning autonomous but coordinated actions in over 30 locations nation-wide. see / These actions are in response to legislatures in Washington and in various states that are proposing austerity measures such as those imposed on developing nations by the IMF for decades. State and federal tax cuts threaten to shrink middle class benefits, dismantle social safety nets, and undo labor and environmental protections that we have taken for granted. These cuts constitute a massive transfer of our country s wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, pushed through by corporate power. At the same time, tax cuts for the wealthy have been extended, profits and stocks of bailed out banks have been rising, and CEO bonuses are sky high. Bank of America and other banks continue to evade taxes in offshore accounts and off-balance sheet accounting. These financial institutions, which played fast and loose with our money, are helping to shape economic and social policies to prevent regulations that would limit their power. Remember, it s not just out of the blue that we find ourselves in tight economic circumstances. The financial Ponzi scheme, with its layers and layers of highly leveraged, complex securities built upon subprime mortgages, collapsed in 2008, taking the global economy with it. This could only happen because the regulations that population 436 part 7 safeguarded the financial system since the Great Depression were discarded under pressure from financial institutions that wanted freedom to engage in risky speculation as well as government insurance through the FDIC. The wanted both, and they got it. Government free-market ideologues helped this deregulation along at every stage, and are escalating their efforts today. The poisonous eruption of toxic assets came to a head in 200 Trillions of dollars of phantom wealth evaporated, along with much of society s real wealth, population 436 part 7 is still being siphoned up to the top as foreclosures rise and services are cut.