Some uninformed creep called Elizabeth Warren a "socialist whore" the other day. Aside from proving the absolute power the right wing has over words and ideas in today's political discourse, and the fact that we need to push back against every lie with every chance we get, it also gives us a chance to look at those who really are the Socialist Whores in today's society.
It's those with money to hire the lobbyists who can game the system so it favors the rich, no matter the state of the economy, no matter who's in the White House, and no matter how poor the poor are doing.
The true Socialist Whores that live off the wealth of the 99% are the 1% who sit in the Boardrooms of Corporations around the world:
Citizens for Tax Justice undertook a study of the 280 largest companies in the United States to see what they actually paid (or didn't pay) in taxes. From their press release:
“These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $224 billion in tax subsidies,” said Robert McIntyre, Director at Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author. “This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”
30 Companies average less than zero tax bill in the last three Years, 78 had at least one no-tax year.
Financial services received the largest share of all federal tax subsidies over the last three years. More than half the tax subsidies for companies in the study went to four industries: financial services, utilities, telecommunications, and oil, gas & pipelines.
U.S. corporations with significant foreign profits paid tax rates to foreign countries that were almost a third higher than they paid to the IRS on their domestic profits.
That $224 billion number is really significant. If we were to extrapolate that into a ten-year number to compare with CBO analyses of various revenue proposals, it would be an expenditure of about $750 billion over a ten-year period. Imagine that. We wouldn't have to worry about Medicare cuts or deep cuts to discretionary spending if those tax preferences were rolled back.
There's the money that can fill the hole in our budget being looked at by yet another Congressional Super Committee. The answer is so simple as to be absurd. Yet the Rich, the anti-tax zealots, and Republicans in general have distorted the system so that we may never unravel its biases towards those who have been gaming it for decades.
Those who sit in the Boardrooms of the Corporations are the Socialist Whores around here. Corporations are raiding the public's pockets day after day. You can see it on their balance sheets, you can see it in the streets, but the argument is still lost by those who most feel its affects and are called socialists themselves.
(H/T Crooks and Liars)