Who is They?
Well just the usual suspects -- those Corporate Crony Capitalist "persons".
Here is the executive summary of a new report by Public Campaign:
New Report: Lobbyists or Fair Share in Taxes?
by Adam Smith on Wed, 12/07/2011
Key Findings
* The thirty big corporations analyzed in this report paid more to lobby Congress than they paid in federal income taxes for the three years between 2008 and 2010, despite being profitable.
* Despite making combined profits totally $164 billion in that three -- year period, the 30 companies combined received tax rebates totaling nearly $11 billion.
* Altogether, these companies spent nearly half a billion dollars ($476 million) over three years to lobby Congress -- that’s about $400,000 each day, including weekends.
[...]
* These corporations have also spent lavishly on compensation for their top executives ($706 million altogether in 2010).
No wonder Congress is broken -- it's paid very well, to be.
Here's the more of the startling data, found in this just released report ... which kind of proves what stand-up Citizens, these "corporate persons" -- are really NOT.
Taxes are still just for "the little people", it seems ...
How Corporations Pay More for Lobbyists Than in Taxes (pdf)
A report by Public Campaign -- December 2011
This report builds on a recent report on corporate tax dodging by Citizens for Tax Justice by examining lobbying expenditure data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Here's a few graphics I threw together to make this Lobbyist vs Taxes "business expense" jump off the page (data from Table 1, above).
Note: the bottom few bars are "truncated" to keep these 3 charts on a similar relative scale.
Note 2: Those are Negative Corporate Taxes Paid (ie. Tax Refunds for all except one of the Top 30 Corps; FedEx actually paid positive taxes -- about $37 million worth, for 3 years.)
Here's the raw data from Table 1, that took a few tricks to extract -- in case you want to try your hand at your own charts (it's Tab-delimited):
In fact, the 30 big corporations paid more to lobby Congress than they paid in federal income taxes for the three years between 2008 and 2010, despite being profitable.
Company U.S. Profits Taxes Paid Lobbying
Company U.S. Profits Taxes (ie Refunds) Paid Lobbying
General Electric $10,460 ($4,737) $84.35
PG&E Corp. $4,855 ($1,027) $78.99
Verizon Communications $32,518 ($951) $52.34
Wells Fargo $49,370 ($681) $11.04
American Electric Power $5,899 ($545) $28.85
Pepco Holdings $882 ($508) $3.76
Computer Sciences $1,666 ($305) $4.39
CenterPoint Energy $1,931 ($284) $2.65
NiSource $1,385 ($227) $1.83
Duke Energy $5,475 ($216) $17.47
Boeing $9,735 ($178) $52.29
NextEra Energy $6,403 ($139) $9.99
Consolidated Edison $4,263 ($127) $1.79
Paccar $365 ($112) $0.76
Integrys Energy Group $818 ($92) $0.71
Wisconsin Energy $1,725 ($85) $2.45
DuPont $2,124 ($72) $13.75
Baxter International $926 ($66) $10.45
Tenet Healthcare $415 ($48) $3.43
Ryder System $627 ($46) $0.96
El Paso $4,105 ($41) $2.94
Honeywell International $4,903 ($34) $18.30
CMS Energy $1,292 ($29) $3.48
Con-way $286 ($26) $2.29
Navistar International $896 ($18) $6.31
DTE Energy $2,551 ($17) $4.37
Interpublic Group $571 ($15) $1.30
Mattel $1,020 ($9) $0.84
Corning $1,977 ($4) $2.81
FedEx $4,247 $37 $50.81
in Millions
With "Corporate Friends" like that, looking to make America a "better place" -- only for them to make even more profits ...
Who needs enemies?
It seems these Corporate Puppeteers, already have that role covered ... in our broken system, where America's future is far too often for sale, simply to the highest bidder.