37 Giant Corporations Paid 0 in Taxes Last Year — Who Are the Cheats? | | AlterNet

37 Giant Corporations Paid 0 in Taxes Last Year — Who Are the Cheats? | | AlterNet.

 

37 Giant Corporations Paid 0 in Taxes Last Year — Who Are the Cheats?

By Andrew Leonard, Salon
Posted on November 3, 2011, Printed on November 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152958/37_giant_corporations_paid_0_in_taxes_last_year_–_who_are_the_cheats

In 2010, Verizon reported an annual profit of nearly $12 billion. The statutory federal corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, so theoretically, Verizon should have owed the IRS around $4.2 billlion. Instead, according to figures compiled by the Center for Tax Justice, the company actually boasted a negative tax liability of $703 million. Verizon ended up making even more money after it calculated its taxes.

Verizon is hardly alone, and isn’t even close to being the worst offender. Perhaps most famously, General Electric raked in $10.5 billion in profit in 2010, yet ended up reporting $4.7 billion worth of negative taxes. The worst offender in 2010, as measured by its overall negative tax rate, was Pepco, the electricity utility that serves Washington, D.C. Pepco reported profits of $882 million in 2010, and negative taxes of $508 million — a negative tax rate of 57.6 percent.

Altogether, according to “Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10,” a blockbuster new report  put together by the Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that will have you reaching for your hypertension medicine before you finish reading the third page, 37 of the United States’ biggest corporations paid zero taxes in 2010. The list is a blue-chip roll-call.

Please, read more here:

 

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. © 2011 Salon All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152958/

The War Against the Poor(est)

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The War Against the Poor

Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality

By Frances Fox Piven November 07, 2011 „Tom Dispatch“ – –

We’ve been at war for decades now — not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed — until now. The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country. By making Wall Street its symbolic target, and branding itself as a movement of the 99%, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem. Only a short time ago, the “morals” issue in politics meant the propriety of sexual preferences, reproductive behavior, or the personal behavior of presidents. Economic policy, including tax cuts for the rich, subsidies and government protection for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and financial deregulation, was shrouded in clouds of propaganda or simply considered too complex for ordinary Americans to grasp… please, read more there: Tom Dispatch & Information Clearing House

PR: Frances Fox Piven

Photograph shows Charles Dow who co-founded Dow-Jones & Company with Edward Jones & Charles Bergstresser  (Public Domain, Wikipedia)

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Wrongly jailed Harvey man released after almost 20 years

Wrongly jailed Harvey man released after almost 20 years.

Convictions of James Harden and two others for 1991 murder vacated after DNA evidence exonerates

November 05, 2011|By Andy Grimm, Chicago Tribune reporter /all Rights there

CHESTER, Ill. — After serving nearly two decades in prison for a murder they did not commit, brothers James Harden and Jonathan Barr shared their final hours behind bars together Friday.

A day after a Cook County judge vacated the convictions of the Harvey brothers and co-defendant Robert Taylor for the 1991 murder of a Dixmoor teen, Harden walked out of Menard Correctional Center shortly after 1 p.m. carrying a box of his prison belongings, flanked by his attorneys, a family friend and two former high school classmates. Barr likely will be released Saturday … Please, read more there! Thank You.

These are news I love to tell You! Finally they get free! Hurra!

In Occupy Boston Tent City, The Unheard Find a Voice | Common Dreams

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by The Boston Globe/Common Dreams

In Occupy Boston Tent City, The Unheard Find a Voice

by Mark Arsenault

The theme of Occupy Boston, the tent-city protest in Dewey Square, is hard to pin down. It is like a rolling snowball that collects victims of the Great Recession and those who otherwise feel ignored or disenfranchised.

Joe Gallivan, who is homeless and unemployed, walked past the tents in Dewey Square set up for the Occupy Boston protest. (Bill Greene/Globe Staff) Some of the protesters want to abolish the Federal Reserve. Others demand more housing for veterans. A few admit to being there because it is fun to be part of something big.

The unifying theme, if there is one, is the sense that the voice of the little guy has gone unheard for too long“

„It’s not just a bunch of pot-smoking hippies here,’’ said Hilary Richard, 21, a café barista from Beverly. “These are people who want to make a difference.’’

To be sure, the pot-smoking hippie contingent is represented. Yet so are middle-aged, Izod-wearing Republicans who long for political conciliation in Washington.

Please, read more there….

The End of Poverty?

 The End of Poverty?:   Information Clearing House News.

Our Economy by the Numbers: Poverty Edition : Information Clearing House News

  Our Sputtering Economy by the Numbers: Poverty Edition  :   Information Clearing House News.

// */ // ]]> // */]]> Our Sputtering Economy by the Numbers: Poverty Edition By Braden GoyetteSeptember 20, 2011 “ ProPublica“ —  Last month, we detailed the dismal state of the nation’s economy. Now that the Census Bureau has released new poverty figures, we wanted to give you another snapshot of how Americans are faring more than two years after the recession.Americans below the poverty line in 2010: 46.2 million   Official U.S. poverty rate in 2007, before the recession: 12.5 percentPoverty rate in 2009: 14.3 percentPoverty rate in 2010: 15.1 percent Last time the poverty level was this high: 1993 Poverty line in 2010: $22,314 for a family of four, or $11,139 for an individual Rough amount the poor are living on per week: $200 or less Poverty rate in American suburbs: 11.8 percent, the highest since 1967 Percentage of the population making less than half the poverty line in 2010: 6.7 percent Percentage of the population making less than half the poverty line in 2007, before the recession: 5.2 percent Poverty rate for white Americans in 2010: 13 percent Poverty rate for African-Americans in 2010: 27.4 percent Real median household income in 2010: $49,445 Decline in median household income since 2009: 2.3 percent Decline in median household income since before the recession: 6.4 percent The last time median household incomes have been this low: 1996 Real median household income in 1999, in 2010 dollars: $53,252 Median income for full-time male workers in 2010: $47,715 Median income for full-time male workers in 1973, in 2010 dollars: $49,065 Official unemployment rate in August 2011: 9.1 percent Total unemployed people in August: 14 million People who were employed part time for economic reasons in August 2011: 8.8 million People not counted in the labor force who wanted work: 2.6 million Net jobs created in August 2011: 0 Long-term unemployed people as of August 2011: 6 million Unemployed workers per job opening as of July 2011: 4.34 (3.2 million openings and 13.9 million unemployed people) Uninsured Americans in 2010: 49.9 million Percentage of Americans without health insurance in 2010: 16.3 percent Percentage of Americans without health insurance in 2007, before the recession: 15.3 percent Percentage of children who were uninsured in 2010: 9.8 percent Percentage of children in poverty who were uninsured in 2010: 15.4 percent Percentage of American households that had enough to eat throughout the year in 2007: 88.9 percent Percentage of American households that had enough to eat throughout the year in 2010: 85.5 percent