asshat of the week: G.E.

G.E. So Good At Evading Corporate Taxes That IRS Owes G.E. $3.2 Billion:

the New York Times showed an incredibly rare bit of spine today by publishing a dull numbers story that is possibly the most enraging thing you’ll ever read:

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None.

Wow. NO taxes. At all.
If I decide to skip my taxes this year (which is a real possibility if I cannot find the time to do them) guess who's knocking on my door two years later?

(And I know this because I accidentally did this while in grad school. They came after a grad student!)

And this should be repeated every time someone decides to blame teachers, unions, pensions and poor single moms for the craptacular state of this world:

This is going to get repetitive, we’re afraid, but every aspect of the “financial crisis” in the United States is due to corporations not paying taxes and the very richest .01% individuals not paying taxes. That’s it, that’s the whole thing — your crumbling schools, your sinkhole highways, your abandoned state parks, the laid-off city maintenance worker who leaps to his death in Costa Mesa after half the town’s workforce is replaced by hourly contractors and the mayor hires a $12,000-a-month P.R. manager, everything.

It may seem a little over-determined and bombastic but, boy, is it kinda accurate.