Corp Tax Dodger Exposed by US Uncut

David Cote, chairman and chief executive of Honeywell, speaks during The Economist's Buttonwood Gathering in New York October 24, 2012. (photo: Reuters)

Running the Tax Dodgers Out of Town

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

12 February 13

f Donald Trump started going on tour marketing a campaign to "fix the housing crisis" that involved evicting tenants of section 8 housing to incorporate into his own real estate empire, he would rightly be laughed off of the stage and ridiculed relentlessly for his greedy, predatory behavior against the most vulnerable. The same thing happened to Honeywell CEO David Cote this week.

Cote is one of the leading voices of the "Fix the Debt" campaign, which argues that the federal deficit needs to be addressed before anything else, and that deficit reduction should primarily come from Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. Fix the Debt has already been exposed as a front group for the world's richest war profiteers to protect their billion-dollar Pentagon contracts, and the world's worst corporate tax dodgers to protect their egregious loopholes and gimmicks in the US tax code.

Honeywell is a leading tax dodger and war profiteer, having secured $1.5 billionin defense contracts in 2012, and paying a minus .7% federal income tax rate between 2008 and 2010. Honeywell is sitting on an impressive $39.8 billion in assets and is the 33rd largest recipient of tax dollars out of the top 100 military contractors. So it's pretty ballsy for a CEO of a corporation that got money back from Uncle Sam instead of paying taxes, to insist that retirees and the disabled pay down the national debt before he loses any of his billions.

Cote took his message to Manchester, New Hampshire, on Monday, February 11th, and was shut down by grannies and veterans. Just minutes into Cote's speech, activists with the Flip the Debt campaign and US Uncut New Hampshire began loudly informing the audience about Honeywell's obscenely low tax rate and handing out information to other attendees, while disabled workers and elderly retirees ceremoniously handed Cote their Social Security checks. One attendee was heard saying, "I only get $1200 a month to live on, but you need another yacht."

The tide is turning against tax dodgers. Bernie Sanders has been vocal about ending offshore tax havens, citing Verizon's $705 million refund from the IRS despite making $11 billion in profits during 2010. Bill Clinton recently used his ex-president bully pulpit to call on corporations to repatriate their trillions in offshored profits. And while his Republican colleagues are balking at the coming March sequester austerity package they themselves created in the debt ceiling farce of 2011, Rep. Dave Camp is warming up to the idea of taxing derivatives (he wants to use the revenue gained to reduce top tax rates, but it's a start).

As we universally reject austerity, we have to simultaneously champion progressive alternative solutions to the budgetary problems we face. One solution is theBalancing Act, championed by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) of the progressive caucus. His plan would offset the 10-year, $948 billion, in across-the-board cuts that the sequester requires with closing loopholes and deductions exploited mainly by corporations and the super rich. Ellison's plan would close the carried interest loophole used by Mitt Romney, the corporate jet loophole, offshore loopholes, as well as ending fossil fuel subsidies and other numerous gifts in the tax code for those who have more than enough to pay the difference.

Awareness of the unfair tax code that relieves burden from those who have the most and shifting it to those who can barely scrape by has spread all over America, and Congress will soon have no choice but to acknowledge it. And in the midst of this new awakening, laughable greed-inspired campaigns like Fix the Debt are fading into the realm of irrelevance and obscurity.

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Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can contact Carl at carl@rsnorg.org, and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.

Monsanto Giant Monopolizes Corn, Soy and US Courts

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New CFS Report Exposes Devastating Impact of Monsanto Practices on U.S. Farmers Today, one week before the Supreme Court hears arguments in Bowman v. Monsanto Co., the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and Save our Seeds (SOS) launched our new report, Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers. The report investigates how the current seed patent regime has led to a radical shift to consolidation and control of global seed supply and how these patents have abetted corporations, such as Monsanto, to sue U.S. farmers for alleged seed patent infringement. Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers also examines broader socio-economic consequences of the present patent system including links to loss of seed innovation, rising seed prices, reduction of independent scientific inquiry, and environmental issues. Among the report’s discoveries are several alarming statistics: As of January 2013, Monsanto, alleging seed patent infringement, had filed 144 lawsuits involving 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 different states. Today, three corporations control 53 percent of the global commercial seed market Seed consolidation has led to market control resulting in dramatic increases in the price of seeds. From 1995-2011, the average cost to plant one acre of soybeans has risen 325 percent; for cotton prices spiked 516 percent and corn seed prices are up by 259 percent. Additionally, Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers reports a precipitous drop in seed diversity that has been cultivated for millennia. As the report notes:  86% of corn, 88% of cotton, and 93% of soybeans farmed in the U.S. are now genetically-engineered (GE) varieties, making the option of farming non-GE crops increasingly difficult. While agrichemical corporations also claim that their patented seeds are leading to environmental improvements, the report notes that upward of 26 percent more chemicals per acre were used on GE crops than on non-GE crops, according to USDA data. At the launch of the report via teleconference today, experts from the Center for Food Safety and Save our Seeds were joined by Mr. Vernon Hugh Bowman, the 75-year-old Indiana soybean farmer who, next week, will come up against Monsanto in the Supreme Court Case.  When asked about the numerous comparisons being drawn between his case and the story of David and Goliath, Mr. Bowman responded, “I really don’t consider it as David and Goliath. I don’t think of it in those terms. I think of it in terms of right and wrong.” In December of 2012, the Center for Food Safety and Save Our Seeds submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Mr. Bowman, which supports the right of farmers to re-plant saved seed. Arguments in the case are scheduled for February 19th. Download the report here: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Seed-Giants_final.pdf

JOBS, JOBS, Education, No Cuts to SS, Medicare

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)

Mr. President: Invest in America's Future

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

12 February 13

art of the President's State of the Union message and of his second term agenda apparently will focus on public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic R&D.

That's good news. But how do we fund these investments when discretionary spending is being cut to the bone in order to reduce the budget deficit?

Answer: By treating public investments differently from current spending.

No rational family would borrow to pay for a vacation but not borrow to send a kid to college. No rational business would borrow to finance current salaries but not to pay for critical new machinery.

Yet that's, in effect, what the federal government does now. The federal budget doesn't distinguish between borrowing for current expenditures that keep things going, and future investments that build future productivity. All borrowing is treated the same.

A rational federal budget would treat them differently. It would allow additional borrowing for public investments whenever the expected return on those investments is higher than the cost of the borrowing. And it wouldn't borrow a dime if the return on the investment is less than the borrowing costs.

Granted, such public returns can be hard to measure. But well-developed tools exist for doing so.

Consider infrastructure. Too many roads are potholed, bridges unsafe, public transport systems outdated, pipelines bursting, and schools literally falling apart. Studiesshow a public return on infrastructure investment to average $1.92 for every public dollar invested.

Obviously these investments must be done well and carefully. No bridges to nowhere. But our infrastructure is crumbling. Our future standard of living depends on it being repaired and upgraded.

To take another example, studies show the return on early childhood education to be between 10 and 16 percent, with 80 percent of the benefits going to the general public. At-risk children with access to intensive pre-education are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, and have full and productive lives.

But only a handful of our children have access to it. If we treated such investments as they should be treated, we'd make substantial investments in early childhood education.

Public investments in basic research and development are also dropping, both in absolute terms and as a percent of GDP - even though the returns have been substantial.

The idea that gave birth to Internet search engines came from the National Science Foundation. The lithium-ion battery that powers iPhones and electric cars was developed by federally-sponsored materials science research.

Some say we don't need to worry about public investments because private investments will fill any shortfall.

That's simply wrong.

Capital markets are now global. Money sloshes across borders in search of the highest return anywhere.

That means, increasingly, private investments follow public investment.

The only way to ensure private investors will continue to invest America, and support the high living standards we want, is for Americans to be highly productive. This requires public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic R&D to keep us productive and make us even more productive in the future.

The federal budget doesn't reveal any of this, and the current debate over budget deficits further obscures it.

We need a public investment budget - separate from the current expenditure budget - that clarifies what we're investing in, and allows us to keep borrowing for such investments whenever the return justifies it.

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Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.