It is NOT the President or Congress ...
I'll let that sink in for a while ...
Our country is run by the biggest 5 industries in the world: Banking, Fossil Fuel, Agriculture-Business, Chemistry, and Pharmaceuticals!
The wealthiest people in the world are wealthy not because they worked their asses off for what they have but because they LEVERAGED their original incomes on the labor of others. It's called "INVESTING". Now, according to the Tax Policy Center, about 48% of all Americans who file taxes will not pay or will receive rebates because they are poor, have dependents are elderly or any combination of the three. However, there are tax breaks for people not in those categories People who have education loans to pay, get a break, some types of dividends are also nontaxable. Now Dividends are money earned by loaning your money to someone else, usually in the form of government bearer bonds.
So, for all the people belly aching about how the rich get away with "murder" where their taxes are concerned, ah no, that's not really true. The proof is in the facts, easily 49% of the country DOESN'T PAY TAXES AT ALL so the other 51% has to make up for it. About half of them pay LESS tax than the 1% who are filthy disgusting rich with no deductions to win back any of it.
BUT ... let's talk about business and corporate taxes now. Businesses and corporations doing business in the United States pay taxes too. Actually they pay more taxes than any individual ever will. And that makes sense as they take up most of the resources. HOWEVER, what about the big 5? Let's take a look.
According to the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, GigaOm analyst Adam Lesser, buried in a 2011 report from the International Energy Agency says that the fossil fuel industry receives subsidies via "at least 250 mechanisms."[1] (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Federal_coal_subsidies). No wonder no one, even the IRS actually KNOWS how much the fossil fuel industry gets from us!
What about the biggest THIEF in all the world; Banking.? Well, Per Washingtonsblog, the subsidies include:
- #360 billion in Federal Reserve subsidies;
- $120 billion in federal deposit insurance;
- $100 billion in government-guaranteed loans;
- “At least $100 billion in monopolistic advantages in the secondary market for home mortgages.”
- More than $100 billion in fees in the over-the-counter (OTC) derivative market.
The total? More than $780 billion a year.(http://americablog.com/2013/03/big-banks-subsidy-780bn-warren.html) Think this had anything to do with Richard Nixon taking us off the "gold standard" back on April 15, 1971? If your answer is "no" you're an idiot!
I really don't want to get on my soap-box about the AG-Industry. Suffice it to say Monsanto and their cronies want to kill most of us with their poison seeds, but BESIDES the fact that Obama just signed a "Stay out of Jail-Free" card for them, lets look at the subsidies to the Ag-Industry, and remember less than 1% of any of this money goes to what is the backbone of American history; the Family Owned and Operated Farm. According to an article at Environmental Working Group published on "ask.com":
- $277.3 billion in subsidies 1995-2011.
- $172.3 billion in commodity subsidies.
- $46.6 billion in crop insurance subsidies.
- $37.0 billion in conservation subsidies.
- $21.4 billion in disaster subsidies.
- 62 percent of farms in United States did not collect subsidy payments - according to USDA.
- Ten percent collected 75 percent of all subsidies.
- Amounting to $172.2 billion over 17 years.
- Top 10%: $31,400 average per year between 1995 and 2011.
- Bottom 80%: $594 average per year between 1995 and 2011.
I want you to look closely at the 172.3 BILLION dollars to subsidize "commodity". That means for the people who handle the food AFTER it is grown, their involvement was subsidized more than TWICE AS MUCH as anything to do with GROWING the food. Why in Hell does a warehouse for raw grain need a subsidy? Or Hershey, Smith Foods, Nestles, Kellog, Pillsbury, National Foods, ConAgra Foods, B&G Foods, (http://www.ranker.com/list/food-manufacturing-companies/reference?format=GRID&sortby=rank&sortdir=desc )
"Life is Better Through Chemistry" was the slogan of one of our largest chemical companies, but I don't exactly remember who it was. I THINK it was DuPont ... who gave us "Agent Orange" and THE most deadly poison known to man; dioxin. According to "Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly # 463, published in October 12, 1995, Dow Chemical invented a way to bust salt apart to give free oxygen and sodium, then they figured out how to bond the oxygen to hydrocarbons which when burned create dioxins, a substance that does not exist in nature.(http://www.ejnet.org/rachel/rehw463.htm ). So, let's see what our lovely government gives the chemical industry: I found it very difficult to find any specific numbers for any specific company that "specializes" in chemicals but that's because the government "funds" programs aimed at types of activities within industry not the industry itself. According to a report created by Stephen Slivinski (available here: http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/corporate-welfare-state-how-federal-government-subsidizes-us-businesses ) the federal government created a grant for "research and development" that was INTENDED to boost public sector investment in research and development but the truth, according to Mr. Slivinski is that those businesses who apply for the grant DO NOT also apply for public sector research funds, they translate their other incomes into other parts of their businesses instead of increasing their R&D budgets! And this is NORMAL OPERATING PROCEDURE!!!
Our government provides ABSOLUTELY NO OVERSIGHT on their spending! There is no government in the WORLD qualified to make technological predictions accurately in a free market world.
And finally we have government support of the drug industry. Do you realize that the biggest DEALER in the "drug wars" is the US GOVERNMENT? I'm not talking about back room deals to supply the Columbian drug lords with funds or guns so we can take out the Taliban, I'm talking about the billions and billions of dollars the US Government pays in grants and subsidies to the Pharmaceutical industry. The 'scare' tactics both the government and the industry use to make us dependent on their poisons. Do you realize more than half of all drugs on the market today are solely for the purpose of counteracting the side effects of other drugs? It's true. Let's see:
According to http://www.citizen.org/publications/publicationredirect.cfm?ID=7065, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the lobby organization of the drug industry has been running a scare tactic on Capitol Hill for years that is based on pure fabrication. They report that their R&D budgets run in the area of 50 BILLION dollars a year for both successful and failure attempts. The Truth is it's closer to 10 Billion because much of that R&D funding actually comes from FEDERAL GRANTS and also a lot of it comes from the private sector. Add to this the idiotic situation that the testing of a new drug is NOT done by the FDA but by the company that requests the stamp of approval. All the FDA does is "review" the findings. The tests are NOT done by independent laboratories, NOT by the FDA itself but BY THE COMPANY ASKING FOR THE APPROVAL. Can you add two and two and come up with four? Then tell me what's wrong with this picture?
So, who is really paying the price tag for the Big 5 industries to kill you and your family, or enslave them to the credit treadmill? YOU ARE!
[1] "Today in Green IT: The fossil fuel subsidy game" GigaOm, January 3, 2012.
