Immediately when the movie begins, Rep. Ron Paul, the governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker, and Rep. Peter Roskam are all quoted saying, “We’re broke.”
Next, they begin talking about how school employees are waiting to be laid off, budget cuts against courtrooms resulting in lay offs, and how up to 80 police officers may be fired by the end of June (the year is unclear, but the state being mentioned is Rhode Island).
Now, within the first five minutes, I learned something I didn’t know: Big businesses don’t pay taxes, such as, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Citigroup. The total percentage of U.S. Federal Income Tax has been cut in half since 1961.
Before we get started into the politics of this documentary, I’ll give you a quick summary of the film. The title is ‘We’re Not Broke,’ stating that we do have the money, it’s just going into all the wrong places. This movie is going to shed light on what the government is doing with our tax dollars, and how we can protect ourselves.
According to this film, around 70 billion dollars a year are lost due to the US Treasury just from offshore tax shelters. This is a very strong accusation, and I did some research to find out if it is true, and in fact it isn’t…it’s much, much worse. Apple, Nike, Citigroup and a few hundred other Fortune 500 companies have created a whopping 7,827 offshore shell companies to stash nearly $2 trillion in places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Citizens for Tax Justice, both of which are advocacy groups pushing for tax reform. The amount of cash offshore has doubled since 2008.
Companies are doing this because of “transfer pricing,” which means, if you had a large sum of money, and kept it in the US, we would tax you, but if the money is off shore where there are very little to no taxes, then you get to keep all of your money, because the American government can’t tax it.
How did this happen? Well, it all started with the Vietnam war. It’s nothing new to say Lyndon B. Johnson was way over his head, and was ultimately panicking about the situation. He understand we were sending too much money to fund the war over seas, so Johnson imposed what is called ‘capitol control.’ If you wanted to put money in an off shore account, you had to buy a permit.
Well, the corporate community was not happy with this, and ending up compromising with Johnson that they wouldn’t have to pay taxes as long as the money was offshore and never came back to the US. Not really sure how this was a compromise, but ok.
Because of this, there was a very high rate of offshore banking. 50 countries now designate themselves as ‘tax havens.’
Now, here’s where I’m a little conflicted. This documentary follows US Uncut, which is protester’s group that started to reinforce tax payments for big companies. That sounds great right? Well, before seeing this movie, I had heard of US Uncut, and I have liked them on Facebook for a while. I’m not sure why I still have, to be honest, they’re kind of jerks. First of all, they are extreme supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, so much that they ban people from their website who say All Lives Matter. They also refuse to listen to facts.
Exhibit A:
Tyrone Harris was 18 years old when he was shot by the police on the anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown. First of all, if those people hadn’t started their violent, pathetic, savage protest in the first place and hadn’t been causing trouble, none of this would’ve happened, but that’s besides the point. It happened.
Before this even began, 1) Tyrone Harris was a protester 2) Tyrone, in street language, said he made his money by robbing people and 3) Tyrone had been arrested on felony charges in November 2014, for stealing a car, stealing a gun and resisting. So he had already had a checkered past showing that he is violent. But to the protester’s credit, there’s no way the police officer could’ve known that, so I’ll give you that one.
Even with the video showing Harris holding a weapon and firing at officers, people are still saying he didn’t shoot first.
Evidence seems to mean nothing to these people, because even cold hard facts are seen as propaganda for a pro police society. Um. Have you looked at society today? Do we really seem pro police at this point?
Anyway, this is my issue with US Uncut, but I don’t think that takes away from they are doing in this documentary, that I truly do believe in.
Corporate tax abuse is out of control now. In 1913, the US tax code was around 100 pages, and today, it is 72,000 pages long, creating loopholes and contradictions that benefit these big businesses, and, scary enough, the code grows bigger every year.
The cost of the Afghan war, from 2001 to 2011, has cost us 443.5 billion dollars, and we haven’t accomplished a darn thing. The cost of the Irag War, from 2002 to 2011, has cost us 805.5 billion dollars, and we still haven’t accomplished a darn thing. Since 2001, 2.4 billion dollars have been lost in federal revenue to the Bush tax cuts.
What I find interesting about those statistics is the starting date, 2001. Bush capitalized on our fear after 9/11, and basically stole our money to fight an unwinnable war to win his candidacy.
Here are some of the programs that have cut to help with the budget: Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (390 million cut), State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (415 million cut), Community Health Care Centers (600 million cut), Defense Department Environmental Cleanup (638 million cut), Federal Emergency Management Agency (954 million cut), Clean and Drinking Water Funds (997 million cut), etc.
The documentary went on to explain how small business owners are forced to pay taxes, and the fact that big businesses don’t have to is an injustice on the ‘99%.’
Please watch “We Aren’t Broke” and/or visit their website: http://werenotbrokemovie.com/ From there, you can take action, or just educate yourself about what the government is doing to families like yours and mine.
Have an amazing day 🙂
ourvoicetheirvoice 