TAXES: MICHAEL MOORE TELLING IT HOW IT IS

Michael Moore: Dead on about the real tax cheats

When it comes to taxation, we all get royally screwed.

I received the following bulk email from Michael Moore and it sums up my feelings on the issue perfectly (at least under our current faux capitalist system). AND it has an excellent call to action.

I'll let the email, printed verbatim below, speak for itself. Great job, Michael!

Take care,
Adrian


This Tax Day, Make THEM Pay ...a letter about April 18th from Michael Moore

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Friends,

Do you wonder (like I do) what the tax accountants and executives are doing over at GE this weekend? Frantically rushing to fill out their IRS returns like the rest of us?

Hardly. They're taking the weekend off to throw themselves a big party and have a hearty laugh at all of us. It must really crack them up to see us like suckers scurrying around to make sure we report everything to Uncle Sam -- and even send him a check, if necessary.

The joke's on us, folks. GE and tons of other corporations will have a tax bill for 2010 of ZERO. GE had $14.2 billion in profits in 2010. Yet they will contribute NOTHING to the federal government while every last dime is soaked from us.

In the latest budget deal, our politicians could have tackled the deficit by stopping the flow of these ill-gotten billions to corporations. Instead they cut billions from "wasteful" programs that do "wasteful" things, like create new jobs, drive economic growth, and help the needy and our nation's children. It's Democracy in reverse and it sickens me.

GE spends $20 million a year to lobby Congress to throw themselves this party. But do you know what speaks louder than $20 million? 20 million votes! 20 million people, and more, standing together and taking to the streets. That starts now, with you.

This coming Monday, April 18th is Tax Day -- and that's the day when "we the people" will demand our country back from these corporations in events all across the country. You can find the nearest event to you here.

MoveOn members -- along with union, community, and environmental allies -- will gather outside the headquarters and local offices of the biggest corporate tax dodgers to deliver tax bills from the American people. And we'll demand that our leaders make these corporate deadbeats pay.

We're doing this because we don't buy into the Big Lie: that greedy teachers caused the crash on Wall Street! That the selfish firefighters sent millions of jobs overseas! That pregnant woman, infants, and children are sending us into deficit!

No, it was the big corporations that did this. It was the CEOs and the top 1% of the country. THEY brought on the mortgage crisis. THEY made off with trillions of dollars from our economy. THEY are systematically destroying the middle class. And THEY have bought and sold the very people elected to represent us!

On Monday, we will have something to say to Exxon, Chevron, and the big banks that crashed our economy and got billions in bailouts, like Citigroup and Bank of America, who pay little or no federal income tax. In fact, the IRS will likely give them a tax REBATE. If that doesn't boggle your mind then nothing will.

The Tax Day events are about sending this message: We are coming after you, we are stopping you and we are going to return the money, jobs, and homes you stole from the people. This is your tipping point, Corporate America. And I, for one, am glad it's going to happen this Monday.

If you've never been to an event like this before, this is the time. And don't go alone, because none of us can win this fight by ourselves. Plus, it's more fun and exciting to go along with friends and family to be part of real democracy in action -- not the store-bought kind Big Business gets on Capitol Hill.

I really hope you can make it. This is our chance, my friends. Take the time on Monday to make your voice heard. I can guarantee you I will. Please join me.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

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ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

My plan with this blog was to use my personal experiences, up to a point, to springboard to larger issues.

Well, it's starting to get too much like a personal diary. So let me clue you in on what transpired when I went to work today, and then next time write Part 2 of my blog on Gallipoli/war.

Today's events are indeed instructive, otherwise I certainly wouldn't bother recording them here.

When I logged onto my computer this morning there was an invitation to a 2pm meeting with the executive who told me yesterday that I would be terminated if I didn't sign that certain piece of paper (see yesterday's blog entry), and the main guy from HR. This was the meeting where the ultimatums about the blog and the piece of paper would be laid out again, I'd say no, be immediately fired, and drive home.

Only I didn't get fired.

And the HR guy wanted to make that clear. He repeated it several times. Of course I know what I heard the day before but, just like something out of Orwell, those words were now expunged from history and I was never in any way fired and a pox on the house of anyone who says I was. Okay, cool.

I also didn't have to sign the piece of paper with the plans for my vocational rehabilitation. Weird.

In fact, the HR guy wasn't even prepared to say I couldn't blog about Harrah's or that there'd be any trouble in the future if I did. Each "incident" will be looked at in isolation, he told me. Alrighty.

The most interesting moment was when the HR fella told me that Harrah's primary concern was that my blog might "hurt my co-workers." This, of course, was nonsense intended to cause me feelings of guilt and I called him on it. I explained that my blog is all about helping people like my co-workers, not hurting them. But he knew that and so does his "superiors."

If Harrah's is so concerned with my co-workers, it might want to consider giving their sick leave back. (Harrah's cut out sick leave for us in early 2009.) Or seeing to it that we aren't worked excessively. Or being more honest with us. And on and on.

The only "co-workers" that my blog has called out are the ones who are lackeys of the brass and, in being such, actually help with the hurting. So, while they're essentially pawns themselves, they are complicit in the systemic exploitation of those "under" them and deserve criticism. They're motives are generally selfish and have been noted as such by those they've affected.

There was more dialogue to this meeting, of course. (Though the exec never uttered a word but made copious notes because that would surely shake me up.) And at the end I made a little speech and toddled off.

But I shouldn't make too light of it because, as I said, there is something significant here.

What I believe this illustrates is... the little guy doesn't necessarily always lose. Now that's a pretty important message considering how overwhelmed/intimidated we generally feel by our "superiors" at work, the IRS, the preposterously expensive legal system, Homeland Security, etc etc.

My sense of what took place is that somebody at Harrah's did the math and realized that firing me over a small-time blog that doesn't get a lot of notice, might well give the small-time blog considerable notice. They may have guessed that I'd be crazy enough to go to the ACLU, file suit, wave the First Amendment and work the media like a demon. If this was their guess, they guessed right. I may not be rich or beautiful but I fight as hard as anybody.

So it was easier to just damp it all down and make it semi go away.

It reminds me of something I learned once when I went to an activist camp back East. The instructor asked how you beat a giant. Nobody knew. She said: "You stand on their toe and gradually apply more and more pressure until they'd prefer to get rid of you than put up with it any longer." In a sense, I think that's what I did.

If nothing else, it gave me renewed hope. A bit of a boost. I don't really despise the honchos at Harrah's. They're people too. But they're people either unseeing or uncaring. My concern is for the masses who struggle and deserve a better life and a better work situation. I have no personal vendetta -- it's a commitment of conscience.

Okay, that's enough stuff starring me. I'm breaking for a few days, then I'll be back with LEST WE FORGET, PART 2.

Take care,
Adrian Zupp