In the furious fallout from the revelation that the IRS flagged applications from conservative nonprofits for extra review because of their political activity, some points about the big picture -- and big donors -- have fallen through the cracks. Consider this our Top 6 list of need-to-know facts on social welfare nonprofits, also known as dark money groups because they don’t have to disclose their donors. The groups poured more than $256 million into the 2012 federal elections.1. Social welfare nonprofits are supposed to have social welfare, and not politics, as their “primary” purpose.A century ago, Congress created a tax exemption for social welfare nonprofits. The statute defining the groups says they are supposed to be “operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” But in 1959, the regulators interpreted the “exclusively” part of the statute to mean groups had to be “primarily” engaged in enhancing social welfare. This later opened the door to political spending.So what does “primarily” mean? It’s not clear. The IRS has said it uses a “facts and circumstances” test to say whether a group mostly works to benefit the community or not. In short: If a group walks and talks like a social welfare nonprofit, then it’s a social welfare nonprofit.This deliberate vagueness has led some groups to say that “primarily” simply means they must spend 51 percent of their money on a social welfare idea -- say, on something as vague as “education,” which could also include issue ads criticizing certain politicians. And then, the reasoning goes, a group can spend as much as 49 percent of its expenditures on ads directly advocating the election or ...
Bishop E.W. Jackson, the Republican nominee to be the next Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, does not believe that victims of the Oklahoma tornado should receive any federal aid to help them rebuild their lives. In video from a previous campaign first posted by Right Wing Watch, Jackson claims that federal relief to disaster victims is unconstitutional:JACKSON: I don’t think that the federal government has much of a role at all constitutionally, at all [in disaster relief]. Now, you may make an argument that it does. You might argue that it’s a national security issue you might argue that it weakens us in the event of some sort of national military emergency. So you can make an attenuated argument. But I think that as a constitutional matter the federal government doesn’t have a whole lot to do with that. In my view, these are things that are ultimately supposed to be handled by the states. And, so, we’ve got a big Tenth Amendment problem in our country. . . . We’ve turned the federal government into a kind of god.Watch it Disaster relief is not an attempt to steal power from God. To the contrary, it is the just response of a nation sensitive to the lesson of 1 John 3:17, which reads that “if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”It is also entirely consistent with the Constitution. The Constitution gives the United States broad authority to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Ensuring that all Americans can rebuild their lives in the wake of a major national disaster is a classic example of using federal ...
Finally – it’s over. The goal of Simpson and Bowles has been met, the deficit is shrinking rapidly. And the intellectual underpinning for deficit reduction, based on the study by Rogoff and Reinhart, has been destroyed.Phew! Glad that is behind us. Now, can we actually try to fix the economy?The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report that shows a rapid decline in the deficit, $203 billion has been cut from the deficit making it the smallest since 2008. And they project that by 2015, the deficit will be under $400 billion, less than one-third of the $1.4 trillion deficit Bush left when Obama took office and only 2.1% of the GDP. We agree with political economy writer Doug Henwood’s conclusion: “there’s no way any honest analyst could read them [the CBO report] as anything but the official end to any rational concern about red ink.” Dave Johnson writes that since now we’ve reached the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction goal of 2.3% ratio of deficit to GDP, we can focus on the real problems – the job gap, the wage gap and the trade gap. Unlike the deficit problem, which was always more imagined than real, these are very real problems that DC should address as it restarts its economic planning. Johnson summarizes that the real economic problem we face is, at its roots, due to jobs lost to the trade deficit, writing:“The economy can’t recover until housing recovers. Housing can’t recover until people can afford to buy houses. People can’t afford to buy houses until they can get jobs, and those with jobs can’t afford to buy houses until wages go up. Wages can’t go up until the trade problem is fixed. And the trade problem is killing jobs.”Let’s look at Johnson’s statement more closely. With jobs at the center of the problem, one thing that must be rethought is the sequestration. The CBO estimates sequestration will cost around 750,000 jobs in total, and forecasters think it could reduce economic growth by half a percentage point this year. In fact, the economy is adding very few jobs, floundering with just enough to keep with the growth of the workforce. The federal government has shed 8,000 jobs.Let’s look at housing. There has been a lot of excitement in news reports about housing in the last two weeks because prices are going up, but in reality
“You know how our government only listens to the lobbyists? Well, we’re marching on the lobbyists.”I’ve spent most of this past week marching 150 miles from Philly to DC with unemployed workers and their families, called "Operation Green Jobs." Whenever we come across anyone who asks us why we’re doing it, I use the above question and answer to explain our cause. And ten times out of ten, they’re 100% supportive. When you base your argument on the unifying principle that special interest ownership of our government must be opposed, people of all ideological backgrounds can agree.On Tuesday night, our group stopped just outside of Oxford, PA to rest until morning. I went to a nearby Turkey Hill convenience store to charge my phone and use the bathroom. I ended up talking to the night shift cashier about our march to DC demanding good jobs, action on climate change, and an end to the crushing cuts that are closing schools that children in our group are marching to save. The cashier nodded and said,“Yeah, if Obama keeps up all this gun control stuff, I don’t think this country will last much longer.”Now, I personally believe that we should at least try to make it harder for the mentally unstable to have access to guns, but I chose not to get into that with this guy. Instead I said,“Forget about all that. The banks and the lobbyists own this government, and they use it as a vehicle to take the rest of what little we have left to pad their already fattened pockets. Before we talk about doing anything else, we’ve gotta stop that first. Nah mean?”The guy nodded thoroughly and shook my hand.“I wish you all the best, brother. I wish I could march with you.” We have to learn to set aside our pet issues like gun control and abortion, which are only used by the media and the politicians to keep people divided. When we set those issues aside, we can find common ground and have class solidarity across all ideological borders. And once we have class solidarity and the 99 percent of Americans are united against the plutocrats, then the imperial structure of the United States will crumble like dominoes.The plutocrats have class solidarity. As a solidified, unified class, the plutocrats have been able to buy armies of lobbyists to influence policy, counting on the fact that Congress listens to money first and people second. Evidence of this is seen in the Powell Memo, written in 1971 by a corporate lawyer to the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, outlining how corporations should take over academia, the media, the government, and culture itself. The plutocrats have been able to rapidly redistribute wealth from the many to the few—the 6 Waltons who own Walmart make as much in 3 minutes of DIVIDENDS as one of their hourly minimum-wage employees makes in an entire year, amassing more wealth than 41.5% of the nation. Now, they’re gunning for our retirement money through slick PR campaigns like Wall Street billionaire ...
Did you know that Apple Computer has become a foreign entity? Did you know that it’s more Irish than anything else, at least as far as taxes are concerned? Or that it pays very little in income tax, even though its products wouldn’t exist if it not for U.S. taxes?Apple products were designed in the United States by U.S.-educated individuals and entrepreneurs. (Even Steve Jobs, who famously dropped out of college, said he came up with essential elements of Apple’s product design by auditing courses at Reed College.)The company’s logo is an apple, which may or may not have been inspired by the Beatles-owned company of the same name. But since then the image has become synonymous with two iconic qualities of this country’s Silicon Valley: creativity and entrepreneurial drive. And what’s more American than apple pie?Now that the world has seen its tax payments, maybe Apple should change its logo to a shamrock.(You can tell Apple to pay its fair share of taxes by signing this petition we’re co-sponsoring with Americans for Tax Fairness.)Who put the “Mac” in “MacBook”?Even though only 4 percent of its workforce is based in Ireland, and only a small percentage of its profits are earned in that country, Apple recorded 65 percent of its worldwide profits there. Many other “American” companies are also taking advantage of Ireland’s lax tax laws, including Google, Facebook, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Citigroup.We now know that, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “Apple used technicalities in Irish and U.S. law to pay little or no corporate taxes on $74 billion over the past four years.” Sen. Carl Levin described Apple’s bookkeeping as the product of “alchemy” and “ghost companies,” and that’s certainly true as far as the United States is concerned.A Senate panel concluded that Apple negotiated a deal with the Republic of Ireland whereby it would declare earnings there and pay an ultra-low rate of 2 percent. That arrangement sits atop a corporate tax filing in which, as The New York Times reports, Apple assigns more than $100 billion in profits to overseas subsidiaries.As the Times also reports, Apple created an entity called Apple Operations International and incorporated it in Ireland. But despite the fact that this entity is purportedly based on the Emerald Isle, it “keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California.”Apple Operations International gets all the benefit of being an American company, and collects the lion’s share of profits for one of the most profitable companies in the world. And yet it pays a tax rate of only 2 percent.Man, talk about the “Luck of the Irish”!OSX-patsIt was a big deal when it looked as if a foreign company might take over Yahoo! But Apple’s expatriation happened without a whisper.Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a foreign “principal” is defined as “any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.” And if Apple’s a foreign corporation, shouldn’t its lobbyists be forced to report their activities under the Foreign Agents Act?As a U.S. government website explains“The purpose of (the Act) is to insure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.”That’s worth noting the next time President Obama calls somebody like Tim Cook – or speaks with the CEOs of other non-American companies – to discuss “deficit reduction” with them.After all, our middle-class economic crisis isn’t Ireland’s problem.The Evading of the GreenDeal or no deal, even the Irish Apple may be too slippery for that nation’s tax collector. Adds the Times: “Apple Operations International has not filed a tax return in Ireland, the United States or any other country over the last five years.” To invert the old Beatles song, when it comes to taxes Apple is “not here, not there, not anywhere.”CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook (complain that they can’t “repatriate” their earnings to the United States because our taxes are too high. And yet, remarkably, the Times reported today that much of that money is already here.“Multinationals based in the United States,” writes the Times, “now hold more than $1.6 trillion in cash classified as ‘permanently invested overseas.’” Permanently overseas? Apple’s $100 billion in offshore profits is managed in Reno, tracked by accountants in Austin, and stored in New York banks.That’s called having your apple and eating it, too.unGratefulU.S. tax dollars funded the creation of the Internet and the many of the design breakthroughs that drive Apple’s tax products. American taxpayers underwrite the agencies that protect Apple’s U.S. assets. They educated most of its workers in Reno, Austin, and New York. They’re paying for the police departments and other agencies that protect Apple’s offices and keep the people inside them safe and healthy.Too bad Apple Inc. isn’t pulling its weight for all these expenses. You are. Individual taxpayers paid more than $1 trillion in federal income tax in 2011, while corporations paid only $181 billion. Remember those figures the next time they tell you we can’t afford to provide the government services that have helped Americans for generations.We’re footing the bill for their almost unimaginable success – and the imbalance is getting worse.Lone Star State of MindAfter Apple made the politically-motivated decision to manufacture one of its product lines (only one) in the United States, it chose Texas as the location. That tells us even more about Apple’s patriotism and loyalty, since Texas is an anti-union state (they call it “Right to Work,” when “Right to Be Underpaid” is more like it) with lax regulatory enforcement.What’s more, at least one reliable report says there’s a decent chance that the Texas factory will be owned and operated by FoxConn.That’s right: Apple’s Texas plant could be owned and operated by the Chinese company that was so lax in its safety procedures – with Steve Jobs’ knowledge and approval – that workers there died horribly in fires.Will manufacturing one of its product lines in the U.S. make Apple an American company again? Hardly. Toyota manufactures nine models here: the Avalon, the Camry, the Camry Hybrid, the Corolla, the Sequoia, the Sienna, the Solara, the Tacoma and the Tundra.That’s one down, eight to go, before Apple catches up with its inarguably Japanese counterpart.An Apple Repair We Can AffordSenators were eager to express their enthusiasm for Apple’s products yesterday, and why not? They’re beautifully designed. I use a couple myself. But Apple’s a for-profit entity. It’s no more generous to its customers than it is to the taxpaying public at large, without whom it couldn’t exist.If you’ve ever tried to repair an iPhone you know exactly what I mean. The Wall Street Journal says that “Apple earns almost as much from its customers’ butterfingers as it does through corporate tax loopholes.”Tim Cook is almost certainly telling the truth when he says that Apple complies with all appropriate tax laws. (We’re not so sure he’s right when he says that Apple complies with the “spirit” of those laws, but since that’s intangible and unquantifiable we won’t quibble.)The law itself is the problem. That’s why we find ourselves in agreement with Sen. John McCain, who said, “We don’t have to wait and have a grand bargain. It’s a cop-out. We all know there are loopholes that are outrageous.”Closing those loopholes is one Apple repair we can’t afford not to make.Under Another FlagWe’re not trying to red-bait or vilify Apple or any other multinational company when we say they’re no longer American corporations. We don’t mean they’re “un-American” in the subversive, treacherous, Sen. Joe McCarthy sense. It’s just time to recognize reality: They fly under no flag but their own.Don’t blame executives like Cook, either. Their fiduciary duty compels them to place profits over people – or patriotism. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit: They’re not bad, their charters are just drawn that way.We should treat Apple and other formerly American multinationals as neutral entities with whom we can cooperate at times for our mutual benefit. We should encourage them to invest in the United States and hire American workers, as we do with other non-American corporations.What we shouldn’t do is treat them as U.S. corporations. The very concept is probably obsolete in the multinational arena.iBorrowIn a final irony, Apple – which is hoarding $145 billion in cash – borrowed $17 billion last month. Why would a company with that much money on hand choose to go billions of dollars into debt?One reason for the indebtedness is that it’s yet another legal way to avoid paying taxes. But here’s what really gets the Irony Meter trembling: As the New York Times Dealbook blog notes, Apple issued this debt because it was able to obtain “interest rates that hovered near the low-cost debt of the United States Treasury.”Investors are essentially paying the United States government to borrow their money, because the U.S. Treasury is still one of the safest places to park your money on the planet. Apple’s rates, as you can see from the above, are nearly as good. When debt is this cheap, it’s fiscally irresponsible – literally – not to borrow.And what was the President calling Tim Cook about? Ways to avoid borrowing more money. That’s how off-kilter our economic debate has become. At these rates the United States government should be smart enough to do what Apple is doing: Borrowing money to fortify its future.Bringing Apple Back HomeOur government will have more of the money it deserves someday, too, if Apple becomes an American corporation again.We can’t wait for Tim Cook to do that. In fact, it would be fiscally irresponsible for Cook or any other executive to voluntarily give up more of his company’s income than is legally required. It’s up to our leaders, not corporate executives, to fix this problem.Let’s hope that yesterday’s Senate hearing means that the process has finally begun.
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