Although Mitt Romney spent just a few moments on the SoapBox at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday, he said enough to deserve two commentaries ? previously, Romney?s pledge to refrain from raising Social Security taxes to 44%, trade agreements, unemployment levels and tax loopholes were analyzed.
Now, let?s hit two other comments that Mr. Romney made.
Mr. Romney said ?You know there was a time in this country that we didn?t celebrate attacking people based on their success. And we didn?t go after people because they were successful? and questioning the fairness of a system that allows nearly half of U.S. workers not to pay any income tax ? ?We want to make sure people do pay their fair share but half the people in this country pay no income taxes.?
Later adding, ?Corporations are people, my friend.?
It might seem like an odd comment equating Corporations and people, but considering Mr. Romney?s fundraising ? it?s understandable how he would come to that assessment.
Restore Our Future PAC raised $12.2 million during the first six months of 2011. Restore Our Future is a Super PAC which will independently advocate on behalf of Romney and his mission of economic recovery and job creation throughout the 2012 election. Restore Our Future?s board is comprised of Carl Forti of the Black Rock Group, Charlie Spies of Clark Hill, PLC, and Larry McCarthy of McCarthy Hennings Media, Inc.
So where did the money come from ? W Spann LLC was incorporated in Delaware on March 15 and then made a $1 million contribution to Restore Our Future on April 28, according to records with the Federal Election Commission. W Spann then folded on July 11. Ed Conrad, a former executive at Bain Capital, which was established by Mr. Romney, has acknowledged that he gave the contribution.
Politico has reported on Edward Conrad?s previous donations ?
?The maximum donation a person can give a presidential candidate under federal law is $2,400. Yet Edward Conard, a Mitt Romney supporter, has already donated $90,000 to the former Massachusetts governor?s campaign apparatus.?
?Conard, a retired executive from Romney?s investment house, Bain Capital, was even more generous on May 20 when he invested $67,500 in the Romney political operation. He gave $3,500 to the South Carolina committee, $27,000 to both the Alabama and Iowa branches and $10,000 to the New Hampshire PAC.?
Restore Our Future also received checks of $1 million apiece from Eli Publishing Inc., and F8 LLC.
The companies share an address in downtown Provo and the super-PAC received the money from both on the same day. The local news station reported on the contribution :
The giant sums of money is surprising enough, but Eli Publishing and F8 LLC don?t seem to do any business. They incorporated with the state, but they have no presence on the internet and when Fox 13 went to their address, we found only an accounting firm whose employees weren?t aware of the companies? activities.
Incorporation documents filed with the state show Eli Publishing was founded by Steve Lund, co-founder and former CEO of Nuskin. Lund told Fox 13 he?s not trying to hide the donation. He made it through a corporation he created to publish a book years ago because donating through a corporation has accounting advantages. Lund says the size of his donation shows the extent of his concern for the direction of the country.
F8 LLC was founded by another lawyer with ties to Nuskin, Jeremy Blickenstaff. Blickenstaff did not respond to an interview request made through the accounting firm where he indicated his business was located.
The Restore Our Future PAC also received $500,000 from Marriott International Inc. CEO J.W. Marriot Jr. and Marriot?s brother, Richard, the chairman of Host Hotels and Resorts.
NOTE : The Boston Globe reported gifts to Romney from Donna G. Marriott ? the wife of Marriott chairman J.W. Marriott Jr. ? and J.W.?s brother, Richard E. They wrote checks totaling $215,000 to Romney?s state political committees, according to public records reviewed by the Globe.
The CEO of New York hedge fund Moore Capital Management, Louis Moore Bacon, also gave $500,000 to the Restore Our Future PAC.
It would seem that the line between ?Corporations? and ?people? are being blurred ? suggesting that some ?Corporations? are really ?straw companies?.
?The use of ?straw companies? to funnel money anonymously into Restore Our Future does not appear to have been limited to a single company, but seems to be a pattern that places additional urgency on the need for the FEC and DOJ to vigorously investigate these companies and to enforce the laws on the books before this problem becomes even more widespread,?? said Paul S. Ryan, FEC program director at the Campaign Legal Center.
?The fact that Restore Our Future has been the recipient of all three mysterious $1 million contributions warrants exploration of the PAC?s knowledge of or involvement in this ?straw company? donation scheme,?? Ryan said.
Federal law prohibits giving money in another person or entity?s name to political candidates or committees, and violators could face civil and criminal penalties for knowingly participating in such a scheme ? either as the original contributor, the person or entity acting as a go-between, or the campaign or committee receiving the money.
OK, so for argument sake, let?s accept Mr. Romney?s premise that Corporations are people ? remember the assertion that 50% of people that do not pay income taxes ? what about Corporations ?
According to the Government Accountability Office, 57% of U.S. companies doing business in the U.S. paid no federal income taxes for at least one year from 1998 to 2005.
Further, 83 of the largest 100 U.S. companies have overseas tax havens. In 2007, Citigroup had 427 subsidiaries in foreign tax havens, Morgan Stanley had 273, New Corps had 152, Bank of America had 115, and Procter & Gamble 83. Incidentally, there is one single address in the Cayman Islands that is home to 19,000 corporations as their home address.
I do not know of any group of 19,000 ?people? that can call one address their home.
Also, for the fiscal year 2010, the U.S. government collected $2.2 trillion in revenues ? but less than 7% came from Corporations.
This number is low because tax loopholes provide Corporations opportunities to lower their taxable income and defer paying taxes year after year. This is one of the areas of tax reform that the government never addresses because corporations pay a lot of money to lobbyists and tax attorneys to create these tax loopholes.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has compiled his Top Ten list of the worst corporate income tax avoiders :
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8 ) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2006 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
What Mr. Romney fails to acknowledge is that all workers pay taxes based on every wage dollar ? while Corporations pay only on profits ? and have the ability to control how they invest their monies to manage those profits.
Mr. Romney may be correct ? ?Corporations are people, my friend? ? and those Corporations are enjoying a good life ? much better than the American people.
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