Citizens Close Tax Evader Bank

This video by EndTheIllusion shows how about 50 determined citizens successfully shut down a Bank Of America branch in Philadelphia on April 18, 2011, TAX DAY for most American citizens.

Bank of America is one of many very large corporations that make $billions in profits, and then use tax loopholes and off shore tax havens to avoid paying taxes on their profits. In fact according to the Government Accountability Office, 2 out 3 corporations pay no taxes. Then the politicians who are bought by these same corporations and the uber wealthy get themselves even more tax loopholes and tax cuts. All this while our government debates throwing veterans into homelessness, cutting heating aid for the elderly, and benefits for mothers with children.

So this group of determined citizens decided to do something about this moral crisis on our society.

Click here to view this video directly on YouTube.

Sounds of Resistance

2 out of 3 corporations pay no federal taxes. Some of the biggest tax evaders include Exxon, Verizon, Bank of America, Boeing, CitiGroup, among others. These corporate executives sit there with their “patriotic” flags on their lapels, while they scheme how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, cut deals to ship American jobs overseas, and setup tax havens in the Caribbean. Is it any wonder that the rest of the country is mired in this economic misery while they prosper?

We don’t have a budget crisis in Washington. We have a MORAL CRISIS. When Congress can seriously debate forcing veterans into homelessness, cutting early childhood education, Pell grants for our students, heating assistance for the elderly, and cutting food aid to pregnant women and children, while giving tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations, something is very, very wrong.

If these corporations paid their share, we would not need to be cutting these programs. So on Friday April 15, 2011 hundreds of people met at Union Square Park in New York to protest this fact. This event was called the Sounds of Resistance and the target was Bank of America. While this bank received $billions in taxpayer funds, it made $billions in profits, it was busy foreclosing on millions of homeowners, all while working very hard to create over a hundred foreign tax havens to avoid paying taxes on their profits.

This video by EndTheIllusion highlights this event.

Successful parasites do not kill their hosts

In biology there are life forms known as parasites. Parasites are organisms that live off the “life energy” of other host organisms feeding on these hosts to sustain their own existence. These parasites cannot live without the “life energy” they take from the host and are therefore totally dependent on them. A host is an organism that is capable of surviving on its own and therefore represents a food or energy source for the parasite. Generally if the host dies, the parasite will also die making it not in the interest of the parasite to kill its host. Even if the death of the host does not cause the death of the parasite, it will keep them from being able to further exploit the host.

So why are we mentioning biology in reference to economics? It is because there are parallels between economic and biological systems that can help to illuminate what is presently happening on our economy. In our economy we have 2 classes of people, the PRODUCERS and the PARASITES. The producers are people or business entities that create things that can be sold or exported. These people create wealth. These people can be likened to the hosts in biology. They create wealth (life energy) and are capable of surviving on their own. Examples of the jobs or sectors that have these people include manufacturing, mining, software, movies, timber, agriculture and others. Again what these people have in common is that they produce goods or wealth for the economy.

Then we have the parasites in our economy. These are people that cannot survive without the producers. Not all parasites are bad, many do provide useful services such the delivery of goods to markets, and as well as other services needed by the producers, however they still require producers for their sustenance. However there is one class of parasites that include bankers, financial analysts, stock brokers, pit traders and others. These financial people are parasitic because they survive by manipulating the hard earned money of producers and skimming a percentage for themselves, much as a mosquito does to its host. THESE PEOPLE PRODUCE NOTHING AND CREATE NO WEALTH. They cannot survive without the money or “life energy” of producers. If there are no producers, then there is no need for a financial sector since there is nothing to finance. Some of these financial parasites have siphoned billions of dollars in bonuses by creating fraudulent financial statements, packaging trillions of dollars of bad loans into securities, and selling these securities to other parasites. These fraudulent activities gave the nation the illusion of wealth, however we now know the truth and we need to end this illusion and take back our nation. They also lied about these securities and sold them to hosts who were wisely putting money away in retirement accounts for the future or a rainy day. Of course not all parasites have engaged in fraudulent activities, however they still cannot survive without the energy (wealth) they take from the hosts or producers. They cannot exist without producers.

In the end, by placing themselves so close to such large amounts of producer saved money, some of these financial sector parasites have enormously enriched themselves and exhibited greed to the point that it threatens to kill their hosts. The worst part of this is that not only will these parasites walk away unscathed, they will end up even wealthier than before. They will have the means to buy up resources such as homes, property, and other goods at firesale prices as the economic downturn continues. They will hunker down in their mansions and yachts to ride out the economic storm, while the producers will be left to twist in the wind. As if this is not bad enough, these parasites resent having to give even a small part of their bonuses to their neighbors to help their hosts recover from the massive number of foreclosures that lie at the very heart of this economic crisis. Many of these foreclosures were not the result of bad decisions, but the result of circumstances beyond their control such as health problems, loss of jobs, falling home prices, divorce, or other factors.

According to Countrywide, based on information from its servicing portfolio — when “cause of foreclosure” is known (80.3%), the breakdown is as follows:

•Curtailment of income: 58.3%
•Illness/Medical: 13.2%
•Divorce: 8.4%
•Investment Prop./Unable to sell: 6.1%
•Low regard for property ownership: 5.5%
•Death: 3.6%
•Payment adjustment: 1.4%
•Other: 3.5%

Of course there is some irresponsibility involved, but as you can see, most of the causes are related to the economic downturn and other factors outside of the control of the home owner. Yet the parasites continue to use the corporate controlled media to feed the myth of the “irresponsible homeowner”. For an example of how some parasites manipulate the media for their own ends, take a look at this video from CNBC and listen to these parasites as they bemoan having to take a small share of their exorbitant compensation and do their share to bring our economy back from the brink they helped to bring it to. Take a look at the speaker in this video and all those around him, what wealth do these parasites produce? Could they survive without the producers? They even have the audacity to believe that they should continue getting their lavish bonuses despite the fact that they have utterly failed the nation and contribute nothing to its wealth.

These financial parasites are not finished with you yet. They believe that they are worth more than a base $500,000 salary and that financial companies would not be able to attract their talents for that paltry figure and would suffer because of this unreasonable earnings ceiling. They are busy devising new ways to separate the hosts from their money and collect more bonuses so that they can have more for themselves. (Like they do not enough already?) They know that very few of them will ever be prosecuted for their crimes and will again attempt to create financial instruments to further enrich themselves since they have nothing to lose. They are busy either supporting or soliciting additional government support where even more producer money is used to subsidize their mistakes. The damage that these parasites have done to the nation and this world cannot be calculated. Foreign investors will certainly be far more reluctant to again invest in securities and other instruments that have been created in the United States. This will hurt our nation for decades to come.

There is a difference between bailouts and stimulus.

•Bailouts of the financial system provide producer earned money to the parasites who created this economic mess.
•Economic stimulus however will have at least some of the benefits going to the producers.

Are you WILLINGLY paying a 3% tax?

Are you WILLINGLY paying a 3% tax?  Are you then paying this money so that it can leave your community, so it can be shipped to tax havens abroad and to pay for the bonuses of bankers and the Wall Street types?

The unfortunate answer is that you probably are. With 609 million credit cards(1) being held by US consumers and with credit cards being used for more than $2.5 trillion(2) in transactions every year  you are probably using credit cards for many of your purchases. Did you know that credit card companies charge their merchants a fee of approximately 3% of every transaction? This is on top of minimum monthly fees, gateway fees, statement fees, and address verification fees. The money from these fees goes to pay bonuses for the top bankers. The amounts of these bonuses actually exceed the profits that these banks make.

So, in the end who really has to pay these fees? Does the merchant absorb them or pass them on to the customers?

In this difficult economy, most merchants operate on very tight margins and they cannot afford to absorb these fees, so they are passed on to their customer. This means that everything you buy has an extra 3% tacked onto the selling price. So, even if you are paying in cash, you are probably still being charged the extra 3% because so many others pay using credit cards. You are essentially paying a 3% BANK TAX for every purchase you make because of this. So no wonder the banks are doing well in this depressed economy: 3% of $2.5 trillion is a lot of money, and this does not count any interest, late fees, annual fees, and other fees that YOU pay to the credit card companies. No wonder some of the largest buildings in our cities are banks. These large banks are not producing anything, they create no wealth (except for themselves). They are parasites on the working people who place themselves in close proximity to large piles of workers’ money and find ways to siphon off as much as possible for themselves in the way of  bonuses and money to be used to “buy” legislation that will provide loopholes in the tax code so they can keep even more money for themselves.

The banks are not the only ones that are siphoning money from your community. The big corporations are also doing the same. When you do your shopping at a large chain store, they do provide jobs that basically minimum wage, while they take the profits and ship it out to the central offices and out of the community. Since 2 out of 3 corporations pay no federal taxes, this means that YOU are paying for their police protection, fire protection,  and for the wars that profit them. Much of this money is also sent out of the country to avoid paying their fair share in taxes which impoverishes not only your community, but your nation as well.

So what can you do to stop your money from leaving your community and enriching the elites?

FIRST: Consider this, do you get upset when you go to a gas station and they charge you more for a credit card purchase as opposed to a cash purchase? Do you get upset with a merchant if they charge you extra if you pay by credit rather than with cash? These vendors are actually doing you a favor and passing the savings on to you for paying in cash instead of pocketing the extra money. Seek out these vendors and give them your business. Thank them for allowing you to save money by passing the cash savings to you. If your merchant does not give you a cash “discount”, ask them why not. Tell them you will purchase elsewhere if they do not.

SECOND: Pay with cash whenever possible. This denies the big banks the money for all of these fees and keeps it in your pocket and in your community. Tell your family, your neighbors, your friends to do the same thing. If we could collectively cut our credit card spending in half, this alone would save us $37 billion that would be kept in our pockets and in our communities. This would be an essentially “free stimulus” for our communities, rather than having the banks siphon this cash from our communities.

THIRD: Purchase as much as possible from smaller local merchants, rather than large corporations, huge chain stores, large franchises, and large banks. Buy from your local hardware store rather than going to Home Depot. Buy from your local clothing store rather at Walmart. Drink a local beer rather than Budweiser. Buy your food from your local farmer when possible. Buy your flower bulbs from the grandmother next door rather from mailorder. These banks and corporations take their profits and also ship it out of our communities where they use the money for “productive” things like executive bonuses. Your local bank, your local restaurant, your local hardware store will keep that money in your community rather than shipping it out. This helps to stimulate the local economy and has a ripple effect as the money circulates locally. The job you save may be your own.

FOURTH: Become aware of which corporations are the large contributors to political campaigns and lobbyists. These corporations use this money to lobby our elected leaders to add to the 71,000 page tax code to insert tax breaks that benefit them, leaving the rest of us to pay the services they receive, such as roads, police, fire, military protection. If they are not paying for these services, YOU ARE! Roads and military protection do not come cheap! This shirking of their duty, results in even more money leaving our communities which impoverishes them even more. The Wall St speculators and bankers are thriving in this environment, while Main Street suffers. Avoid buying from these large entities, and instead buy from the local merchants who are not buying our politicians and are paying their fair share of taxes.

FIFTH: Check out what the organization US Uncut is doing. These people are aware of the scale of theft that is taking place and how the result is draconian program cuts to ostensibly cut the deficit, but in reality is really of transfer of money from those who need it the most to those who need it the least in the form of tax cuts for the wealthiest. Our nation is actually debating cutting early childhood education, forcing veterans into homelessness, and cutting food aid to pregnant women and children, while giving tax breaks to billionaires, the banks, the speculators, and the big corporations. This is just plain wrong!

With so many of our fellow citizens unemployed, underemployed, or just worried about keeping the job they have, we need to take these simple steps to start protecting our communities and ourselves from the greed of these financial elites and to VOTE WITH OUR WALLETS!

(1)”The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice”, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, (January 2010)

(2)American Bankers Association, (March 2009)

Are we solving the ROOT CAUSE of our economic problems?

Are we solving the ROOT CAUSE of our economic problems?

Picture yourself in the following scenario: you are visiting your doctor complaining of abdominal pains, the doctor gives you a prescription for a strong pain killer. Certainly the pain medicine will help you feel better, but does it really solve the problem that caused the pains in the first place? Could this be the result of appendicitis or some other serious condition? You would rightly question the doctor’s judgment. The doctor is treating the SYMPTOMS of the problem, not the ROOT CAUSE.

Yet collectively we are doing exactly the same thing on a national and even international level. Consider the following scenarios:

• During the health care debate, we witnessed the spectacle of Mitch McConnell (Republican Senator from Kentucky), worrying about the effect that the emerging health care bill would have on health insurance companies. This was coming from a Senator who represents a state with the 5th highest level of poverty in the nation. Why is he so worried about the insurance companies? Would the majority of his constituents have called his office asking him to protect the insurance company profits?



• When it was discovered that telecommunications companies were illegally spying on citizens of the United States, Jay Rockefeller (Democratic Senator from West Virginia) voted to give these same companies “retroactive immunity” to protect them from the lawsuits that were working their way through the legal system. If no crime was committed, why did they need to receive retroactive immunity? If a crime was committed, why did they receive retroactive immunity? Would the majority of his constituents have called his office and asked him to authorize corporate spying on Americans with no judicial overview?

Of course, these are not the only elected representatives who did this and the examples just cited are only 2 of literally thousands of such efforts by members of both political parties on behalf of the well connected insiders. These efforts worked directly against the interests of the vast majority of their constituents. So, why would these seemingly intelligent people work so blatantly against the interests of the people who they are supposed to represent?

The answer is that all of these people received significant amounts of campaign money from the very corporations who would benefit from their efforts. It turns out that Senator Mitch McConnell received $932,207 from the insurance industry and $2,758,468 from medical professionals over his career. Senator Jay Rockefeller received $42,000 from the telecommunications industry in 2006 while the lawsuits and the bills for immunity were working their way through the legislative process. (Mitch McConnell also strongly supported retroactive immunity for the telecoms and received siginificant sums from them).

Does anyone really think that a regular citizen has the same access to their elected representatives as those corporations who contribute thousands and millions to these campaigns? If you showed up at your elected representative’s office at the same time as a lobbyist, who would get to meet with the elected official first? When it comes time to allocate access, priority will always be given to those with the money. In 2008, the telecommunication industry contributed over $9.4 million–from January 2007 to June 2009, and the insurance industry contributed $46,720,000 in 2008 to politicians in both political parties. In the aftermath of our financial meltdown, we certainly need significant financial regulatory reform, but realistically we cannot possibly hope to have effective financial reform when in 2008 the banking industry contributed $37,242,212, hedge funds contributed $16,993,557, and so on and so on. You have a situation where we have elected representatives sitting on the committees that have jurisdiction over specific industries or issues where these same representatives are receiving huge contributions from those very same companies they are supposed to be regulating.

Like drug addicts, our politicians have become totally dependent and addicted to these large campaign contributions for their political survival. It is an illusion that we have a government of the people and by the people. Instead, we have devolved into a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. We are moving further and further towards centralizing power and wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people with inside connections. Our elected representatives are not truly our decision makers, but have become mere figureheads on the stage providing a fig leaf of cover to perpetuate the illusion that this government represents the interests of the people. The situation has become so bad that Senator Dick Durbin, Senator from Illinois remarked: "And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."  How else could we have seen the most massive transfer of wealth in human history from the poor and working classes to the same people, banks, and corporations whose bad decisions brought the world economy to its knees?

Think back to the doctor who only prescribed a solution to the SYMPTOM of the problem. In this economic situation, the ROOT CAUSE of the problem is money in politics and any attempt to “fix” the problem without addressing the ROOT CAUSE, is doomed to failure because any “fix” will only address the SYMPTOMS of the problem. Until we have public financing of all political campaigns, without any private or corporate funding we will always have these problems. There are those who might say, that we do not need any more spending since this would add to the deficit and cost more money to the treasury. However, consider how much the “influenced decisions” have cost the nation so far. How many bills were recently passed that were obviously designed to favor a single special interest? Just ponder this very incomplete list:

• The nation passed deregulation bills such as:
• The Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which tore down the firewall banning the banks from gambling with depositors funds. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked to have these protections removed?
• The Commodity Futures Modernization Act which explicitly banned regulation of derivatives, allowing banks like JP Morgan Chase to become the largest derivative holder in the WORLD at $87,362 BILLION! There is not enough money on this planet to bail this out if these gambling debts go bad. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked to allow these “financial weapons of mass destruction” to remain totally unregulated and opaque to regulators?  
• The gutting of America’s manufacturing sector because of one sided trade agreements and tax policies that allow companies to defer and often never pay taxes on foreign-earned profits. So foreign profits of U.S. companies end up taxed at a lower rate than their U.S. income, creating an incentive to invest in foreign factories. The jobs left the country along with the factories. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked to have these perverse incentives implemented to move the foundation of economic base to foreign countries?
• The nation committed over $12,200 BILLION dollars to bailout, backstop, and guarantee the banks and financials.  (I like to use $1000’s of billions, rather than $trillions since it is easier to grasp the unbelievable scale of these numbers.) Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked them to use their tax dollars to reward the same corporations and people who created the economic mess?
• How can we have had over a year pass since the economic meltdown, and yet no meaningful regulation of the financial industry has been passed?  Do you really think that a majority of constituents are calling their representative’s office and asking them to refrain from regulating the banks and financials?
• The “too big to fail” banks have been not only been bailed out, but encouraged to become even bigger. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked them to allow these big banks to buy up the smaller ones at pennies on the dollar and to provide taxpayer guarantees on any loses they might incur?
• Almost 2/3 of Americans opposed the TARP bailouts, yet the bailouts passed anyways. We KNOW that a majority of constituents did NOT call their representative’s office and ask them to use their tax dollars to reward the same corporations and people who created the economic mess.



• A bankruptcy bill passed in 2005 that forced people to pay credit card and private student loan debt before unpaid child support. The politicians had the audacity to call this the Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked them to protect the big banks’ already obscene profits?
• In several states there were efforts to ban labeling milk as free from artificial growth hormone rBST also known as rbGH (synthetic or recombinant bovine growth hormone). I find it hard to believe that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and told them that they did not want to know if there were any artificial growth hormones in the milk their children drank. The good news here is that many of these efforts were defeated as the result of grassroots efforts by organizations such Physicians for Social Responsibility.

• Efforts to label genetically modified foods have been blocked from passage. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and said that they preferred to be uninformed as to whether the food their families eat have been genetically modified?

• The people on the economic team in the current administration such as Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, John Dugan, Gary Gensler, to name just a few, not only missed predicting this economic collapse, but were complicit in enabling the deregulation that made it possible. I doubt that the majority of people who called the White House asked that these Wall Street insiders be part of the decision making team.

• The Federal Reserve has provided over $2,000 BILLION in free money to the “big” banks by allowing them to “borrow” money at 0%. These banks then “deposit” this money with the Federal Reserve as a “savings account” for which they collect interest, while paying no interest on the “loan”. I would think that a majority of people would like to have sweet deal such as this for themselves.

• There is very limited transparency as to how the alphabet soup of bailout program funds that were distributed. This invites fraud and corruption. We have a situation where the financial corporations do not even fear the government because they know that their paid off politicians will not call them on this. Even Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional TARP Oversight Panel cannot get the information she needs and is frustrated by the lack of transparency. Do you really think that a majority of constituents called their representative’s office and asked them to give these big financial institutions a break and allow them to ignore even congressional inquiries?

How did any of the above help most Americans? Would the majority of any elected politicians’ constituents have supported any of the above decisions? Of course not! It was money that influenced these decisions that benefited a small inside group without regard for the vast majority of the workers in this country who actually produce the wealth of the nation. By not having public financing of campaigns, the nation is paying a huge price with the legislation that is being influenced by the private money. To illustrate this point, the big financial companies contributed over $2,300,000 to both presidential candidates during the 2008 campaign. These companies hedged their “bets” by contributing to both candidates, so they would “win” no matter who won the election. When you consider the $thousands of billions committed to these financials, that $2 million was truly a great return on their “investment”.

The cost of running publicly financed or at least significantly reformed fund raising in campaigns is miniscule compared to these numbers. The need to build walls between lawmakers and those private interests looking to buy votes is obvious and unfortunately too many of the currently elected politicians are against this because as long as this system is perpetuated, incumbents are at an advantage. This money in politics is the ROOT CAUSE of all of the bad decisions listed above and many, many, more.

There currently limits on the amounts of “hard money” that can be contributed directly to a campaign, however “soft money” can be contributed without limits to organizations that do not directly support specific candidates. An example of soft money is: an ad that says Tom Smith supported cutting Medicare benefits and accepted contributions from some special interest, call Tom Smith and tell him what you think of this. Political Action Committees (PACS) are where unions and corporations provide contributions, but they are limited to $5,000 for a single candidate.

A WARNING

There are dark storm clouds on the horizon. There was recently a case before the United States Supreme Court, The Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where the current federal prohibition against corporate campaign contributions was struck down. We are now witnessing a situation where the level of corruption and influence will go from the current very bad, to even worse. This marks a pivotal turning point in this nation’s history where corporate spending on campaigns will notch up exponentially. It will inevitably result in even more bad legislation influenced by the huge increase in corporate campaign spending, and sideline most citizens even more from the political process. Using first amendment arguments, the Supreme Court could actually give corporations equal protection to that of individuals. Where in the constitution did our founding fathers give corporations the same 1st amendment rights as individuals?

So what can you do?

1. Call your representatives and DEMAND public financing of all political campaigns with strict limits on private funding. Let them know you are a voting constituent and will be watching their actions closely.
2. Support organizations such as Common Cause, Public Citizen, followthemoney.org, opensecrets.org, youstreet.org, to name just a few.  These organizations are fighting to bring transparency and responsiveness to our government and need your support.
3. Protest the bailouts, lobbying, as well as the bonuses, by moving your money from the big banks to a small community bank. Can you imagine the effect this would have on congress and the big banks when literally $billions would be withdrawn from their system. Vote with your pocketbook!
4. Send AIG a message about their lobbying and bonuses by cancelling any policies you have with them and insuring with another more responsible company. Be aware that they have changed their name to 21st Century auto insurance to mask the tarnished image that the AIG name has. It is the same company! Vote with your pocketbook!
5. Minimize the use your of credit cards. Every time you charge something, the issuing bank makes money from BOTH you and the merchants. With the widespread use of credit cards, the average 2-3% charge to the merchants by the credit card companies amounts to a BANK TAX on all purchases since the merchants have to pass this cost on to the consumer. This BANK TAX is a huge source of income for the big banks. Remember the merchant that charges you less for cash is actually doing you a favor by passing the BANK TAX savings on to you. Patronize merchants who offer this discount. Ask those who do not offer the discount to provide it. Vote with your pocketbook!

Remember, that any “reforms” that do not address money in politics are only nibbling at the edges by treating the SYMPTOMS of the problem like the doctor giving you pain killers,  rather than getting at the ROOT CAUSE of the problem. If enough people follow through with the steps outlined above, we will have the beginnings of a true populist revolt against our current corrupt system that is fueled and sustained by private money. It is time the citizens took control of this fight similar to the way the passengers on the Detroit Christmas flight did. Our government will not do it for us.

Rudy Avizius
http://www.endtheillusion.org

Redirected anger

I heard this recently at a rally and it pretty much explains how the financial and corporate elites have successfully divided what is left of the middle class in this nation and have redirected the anger away from them, but instead have us turning on each other:

3 people come to a table with 12 cookies on it, a wealthy financial elite, a Tea Party member, and a union member.

The wealthy guy immediately takes 11 of the 12 cookies. He then looks at the Tea Party guy and says “watch out for that union guy or he will take a bigger piece of that cookie than you”

We care about our elderly citizens, see they are dining on seafood!

That pretty much sums up what the corporate controlled media message is being put out there. It is a classic case of divide and conquer.

None of the Wall Street elite have ever been prosecuted for the economic meltdown.
None of the bankers who committed the fraud have ever been prosecuted.
None of the hedge funds or insurance company executives have ever been prosecuted.

Why is this? Because they have bought the puppet politicians and they own the government. That makes it OK to have been part of the greatest heist of wealth in human history and then to have the taxpayers pay for it when their “bets” turned bad. It is OK to rip off America’s working people for $billions and serve no time in jail.

The only guy who was prosecuted was Bernie Madoff. His big mistake was that he ripped off the wealthy!

And that is why Madoff is in jail.

Wrong Question!

The people are asking why the state bus mechanic has benefits.

WRONG QUESTION!
They should be asking why they do not. The wealthiest pay an effective tax rate of only 17%, which is less than their secretaries, nannies, chauffeurs, and gardeners pay.
2 out of 3 corporations pay no tax at all. Exxon pays no tax! GE received a tax rebate of $1 BILLION! Bank of America pays no tax!

WHY?
Because the puppet politicians whom they bought, have created a 7,000 page tax code full of loopholes that favor these same wealthy elites.

If these financial elites and the corporations paid their fair share (currently 35%), then the states would not have any budget deficits, the federal deficit would be significantly reduced.

So we need to change the MESSAGE from what programs do we need to cut to pay for the deficits, to how can we make the uber rich pay their fair share.

Student Debt Burden Solution Part 3

In the first video, we showed you the huge wealth gap between the richest and the average working person. We also showed you how the richest individuals have an EFFECTIVE TAX RATE far below that of a person making only $34,000 per year and how this is creating deficits at both the state and federal levels.

In the second video, we showed you how most US corporations are not paying any US taxes at all, while receiving local services such as police, fire, road maintenance, and federal services such as State Dept. and US military protection. Since the corporations are not paying for these extremely expensive services, this means YOU ARE paying for them! They are taking from those who need it the most, and giving to those who need it the least!

One of the responses to this artificially induced deficit is to blame the public worker, the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the pensioners instead of taxing the rich and corporations according to their APPARENT TAX RATE. The corporate media has tried to whip up a frenzy of animosity towards public workers saying they still have decent benefits and the taxpayer has to pay for them. This is a classic divide and conquer where the elites turn the workers on each other as a diversion while they continue to amass huge fortunes and continue to buy the politicians through campaign contributions to write even more tax breaks into the already huge 71,000 page tax code. Instead of the people asking why the state bus driver still has benefits, they should be asking why they do not. Do not forget that it was NOT the elementary teachers and public hospital nurses, and police that caused this economic mess and the subsequent decline in tax revenues. The crisis was caused by massive bank fraud, Wall Street over leveraging, and speculator derivative trading. So why are the victims of this economic mess being blamed and asked to pay for the mistakes of the wealthy elites?

In Great Britain, one reaction to this attack on the working middle class has been the formation of a populist movement that shows there is an alternative to making the poor and middle classes shoulder the costs to pay for the mistakes by the wealthy elites. This movement has changed the conversation in government from cutting services to the middle class and poor, to one where the people are demanding an end to corporate welfare and making the elites pay their full share of taxes. This is happening despite the fact that conservatives are in power in Britain and have tried to impose draconian cuts. The same forces at work in Egypt where people were takinhg their country back from the corrupt elites are now at work in the UK.

In Britain as in the United States, people were also wondering why there was no outpouring of anger at how the rich were getting richer and richer while the rest of the country were enduring extreme cuts in government spending. Well, a group of a dozen citizens sitting at a pub decided to do something about it.

These people discovered that one of the largest cell phone companies in the UK, Vodaphone owed an outstanding bill of over $9,700,000,000 using a lame tax code technicality to avoid paying the bill. Yes that is $9.7 BILLION! With over 200,000 people in London being forced out of their homes because of government cuts, how many people could have beeen kept in their homes with this money? How many student grants would this money have provided? How many cuts could have been prevented? So they called themselves UK Uncut, setup a Twitter account and announced a time and place where people could meet. This is somewhat similar to the “flash mobs” we have been reading about recently. However, these “flash mobs” have a very specific social purpose in mind. They were to meet ahead of time and then on a specific cue, they would simply sit down in front of the store to prevent people from getting in. People who were going to be customers in the store actually joined in when they were explained that because Vodaphone was not paying its taxes, how it would affect them directly.

The first protest did not receive much media attention, but the protests grew and it was not difficult to get people to join in once the issue was framed that they were paying their fair share of taxes and that Vodaphone was not. The protests then expanded to other large corporations. By relating to other people specifically what it was that they were losing because of the tax avoidance, it was easier to get more and more people involved. This direct relating to local concerns is one of the keys to the success of this movement.

Once the media stopped taking the corporate view, the conversation in the government shifted from what program cuts were needed to how to get these rich elites to pay their fair share of taxes. It is not difficult to see how this will help college students from becoming victims of even more cuts to education. In fact a similar organization called US Uncut, has been started in the United States and has already held events across the nation.

So, what can you do to make this happen in the United States?

1. Read this compelling story detailing the rise of the movement in the UK.
http://www.thenation.com/article/158282/how-build-progressive-tea-party?page=full

2. Visit the US Uncut website.
http://www.usuncut.org/

3. Read the call out on the US Uncut website and either join an event or start one of your own.
http://www.usuncut.org/blog/what-to-do

So, are you going to continue to accept the government lies that these cuts are necessary to balance the budget, making YOU pay for the greed and fraud perpetrated the wealthy elites, while they continue to receive huge tax cuts?

Or, are you going to become involved in this movement and take control of your future?

Student Debt Burden Solution Part 2

Student Debt Burden Solution Part 2 from Illusionist on Vimeo.

In the last video we presented information on how the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us has been growing wider and wider, and how the financial elites were not only NOT suffering but were actually thriving in this economic environment, while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet and endure draconian cuts in the social safety net programs and aid to education. All while the financial elites showered themselves with huge tax cuts. Well, unfortunately the situation is even worse than the first video presented.

If you look at the current tax rates, it appears that the millionaires and billionaires have to pay a tax rate of 35%, but this figure is very misleading. It assumes a level playing field for all taxpayers, however, that is not really the case.

If you take a look at the number of pages in our tax code, you will see that the size has been growing rapidly until the current tax code is an astounding 71,684 pages in length. So how is it that the tax code has become so large? The answer is very simple, the wealthy elites contribute to the political class and therefore they ultimately control the government and have the clout to have these bought politicians write loopholes into the tax code that enable them to take huge deductions on their taxes. So you end up with a situation where you have an illusionary apparent tax rate, but you also have a real world effective tax rate once all of the deductions are taken. Our 71,000 page tax code is totally riddled with these loopholes. The KEY TERM here is the Effective Tax Rate.

According to Forbes Magazine, the highest-earning taxpayers in the U.S. paid an income tax rate of only 17%–the lowest rate paid by the richest elites during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics. So their Effective tax rate is lower than someone who only makes $34,000 a year! They pay a smaller share in taxes than their secretaries, gardeners, nannies, and chauffeurs!

Now while wealthy individuals pay an extremely low effective tax rate, we have a similar situation with the corporations. The largest corporations in the US are supposed to pay a tax rate of 35%. While the corporations bemoan this rate, the reality is that due to the loopholes in the 71, 000 page tax code, depending on what specific industry you are in, the effective rate can actually go into negative territory. For example: Thanks to its deductions and adjustments, GE reported an actual U.S. federal income tax rate of negative 10.5%. It got to add a “tax benefit” of $1.1 billion back into its reported earnings. The actual amount in corporate taxes that the government collects (“the effective tax rate”) is lower than those of Germany, Canada, Japan and China, among others.

Exxon-Mobil paid no taxes. Despite benefiting from this corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. The corporate owned media parrots these complaints convincing the average person that corporate taxes hurt everyone. Whay was the saying that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister said: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.

So there we have most corporations in the US not paying any tax at all, while they suck local services such as police and fire protections, road maintenance so they move they products or services, as well as international protection by the US State Department and the US Military. These services do not come cheaply and since they are not paying for them, WE ARE!
These corporate executives sit there with their “patriotic” flags on their lapels, while they scheme how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, cut deals to ship American jobs overseas, and setup tax havens in the Caribbean. Is it any wonder that the rest of the country is mired in this economic misery while they prosper?

So there you have it, the wealthy elites are not paying their fair share, the corporations are not paying their fair share, and the rest of us are struggling.

So why am I mentioning this? Because those loopholes will cost the U.S. government $628.6 billion over the next five years, according to a 2010 report from the Tax Foundation.

If all of those loopholes were closed, we could provide every one of the 11-1/2 million college students in the nation with a $54,600 grant.

Or we could provide every one of the 43 million people on food stamps with a check for $14,600.

Think about this, we are taking money away from those who need it the most, so that we can give to the corporate and financial elites of this country, the very people who need it the least.

In the last video, we mentioned that we would show you what YOU can so about this and how this already being successfully done in Britain. However, this video was needed to supplement the first one to better illustrate and drive home the astounding depth of the wealth inequality. In our next video we will show the success story in Britain and explain how students here can start to organize and achieve the same success.

Click here for Part 3 of this article

Student Debt Burden Solution Part 1

Student Debt Burden from Illusionist on Vimeo.

Students are deeper in debt today than ever before and two out of three college students graduate with significant debt burdens . While most colleges are struggling to keep costs under control, the cost of a college education is rising faster than the cost of medical care and as much as three times as fast as consumer prices in general.

Click here to view the 2nd video in this series.

Students borrow because they see little choice. They see college education as a key to success. However In the case of student loans, there is no walking away. Unlike most other forms of debt, student loans carry almost no consumer protections and little ability to refinance. By law, they can’t be wiped out in bankruptcy. These draconian laws would make a mobster envious.
These huge debt burdens threaten the vitality of our nation as they leave our future productive workers mired in debt and are certainly not good public policy. So is there any way the nation could help our future workers to become well educated and become productive members in our society?

Consider the following facts:
According to a congressional analysis which was published in the Washington Post , the recently enacted plan to extend the tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year — and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation’s millionaires.

An analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that pay and benefits at the top 25 publicly traded banks and security firms on Wall Street hit a record of $135.5 billion.

Let’s just take a look at some of the compensation that some of these people are receiving:

These people are making more than people who win the lottery jackpot and they make millions every year, year after year. These people on the average make more in one day than average worker makes in a year. And some of these same bankers received government bailout money while now they are making millions every year in compensation and bonuses.

It seems the government has trillions of dollars, that would be thousands of billions of dollars to bail out the bankers and Wall Street, but want to make cuts that help students and schools.

<The government has trillions to bail out the bankers and Wall Street, but they are talking about cutting 100’s of billions which would include aid to education placing additional burdens on students.

Now these people we saw earlier are not even close to being the richest in the nation. In fact there are people that are making significantly more than they are. In fact the amounts of money that these people make are staggering:
John Paulson, the manager of Paulson & Company made a estimated 2.3 billion in personal earnings in 2009.

James Simons, the manager of Renaissance Technologies, made an estimated $2.5 billion in personal earnings in 2009.

George Soros, manager of Soros Fund Management, made an estimated $3.3 billion in personal earnings in 2009

And the top earner was David Tepper, manager of Appaloosa Management. He made $4 billion dollars in one single year in 2009.

Now consider this:
David Tepper makes $456,000 per hour for every hour of every day in the year. Hmm, I wonder if he worries what the minimum hourly wage is?

If David Tepper goes to a 2 hour movie, he will pay about $15, but he will make $912,000 in that time.

If David Tepper plays a round of golf at the country club, he will pay around $500, but will make over $2 million that afternoon.

David Tepper can purchase a $100 million yacht with under 2 weeks worth of earnings.

David Tepper can purchase an oceanfront mansion worth $100 million for under 2 weeks worth of earnings.

These people cannot spend money as fast as they make it!

So why are we pointing all this out?

Because once all of the tax cuts are finally phased in, a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers.

A remarkable study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) reveals that Americans have no idea that the wealth distribution (defined for them in terms of “net worth”) is as concentrated as it is. Just take a look at the wealth distribution in the United States. A staggering 87% of the wealth is held by the top 10% in the nation.

So do these people really need these tax cuts when our students and their families are groaning under the weight of student loans, home foreclosures, unemployment, and other results of the economic crisis? Why are we taking good from the people who need it the most, and giving it tp the people that need it the least?

Consider this: if the recent tax cuts for the rich were repealed and the rich paid their fair share, we could have enough revenue to give every single one of the 11-1/2 million college students in the US a Pell grant for $3,130 and that would be repeated for every year they attended college.

Certainly these wealthy elites can afford to pay their fair share. Now wouldn’t helping our future productive workers be a better way to invest in our nation’s future than giving the elites more money?

In a future video, we will explore how we can make this happen. It is already happening in Great Britain.

Click here to view the 2nd video in this series.