This is why there's a need for OWS, or at least something like it:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/1
Excerpt:
CTJ looked at 280 companies, all of them members of the Fortune 500, and found that “while the federal corporate tax code ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in our study paid only about half that amount.” And those who paid even half the statutory corporate tax rate paid far more than many of their competitors.
In fact, in the last three years, 78 corporations had at least one year where they paid no federal income tax at all, while 30 corporations paid not a dime over the entire three years. Those 30 corporations paid nothing, even though they made $160 billion in profits over that period:
– Seventy-eight of the 280 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2010…In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $156 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $55 billion in income taxes as the 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they reported negative taxes (often receiving outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury), totaling $21.8 billion. These companies’ “negative tax rates” mean that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.
– Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included: Pepco Holdings (–57.6% tax rate), General Electric (–45.3%), DuPont (–3.4%), Verizon (–2.9%), Boeing (–1.8%), Wells Fargo (–1.4%) and Honeywell (–0.7%).
That is part of why people are pissed off at big corporations. Here is another part of why:
http://ladysashi.livejournal.com/41
Excerpt:
REP: "I can tell you that it's been over 30 days since you gave consent, and so the terms of service stand. I can't talk technical legal issues with you, however. You're going to have to talk to our Legal Services Division."
ME: "Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What consent? I never consented to a one-year membership. I merely downloaded some content for a game. That's not a consent to join your little Mickey Mouse Club."
REP: "When you downloaded the content for the game, you clicked the ACCEPT TERMS. In that terms of service is your consent for membership and auto-renewal on the service within a year. You had to have informed us last year, within 30 days of your purchase of the downloadable content, that you didn't want the auto-renewal or membership. You failed to do that, thus giving your consent. The best I can do for you today is to turn off the auto-renewal so you won't be billed next year when this membership ends."
ME: "You know what? Just give me the number to the Legal Services Division."
Pause.
REP: "There isn't a number available for them. I only have an address."
& trumping all else:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art
Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – 2 days ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
What the article doesn't bother saying is how catastrophic things get, or how quickly, under those worst-case scenarios that we are outpacing.