WHO PAYS TAXES?

WHO PAYS TAXES? ...

Not America's Richest Companies

Listed below are the top 10 corporate freeloaders(compiled by the U.S. Senate Research Staff).

10. Carnival Cruise Lines over the past five years made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

9. ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks.

8. Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes.

7. Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion.

6. Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS.

5. Boeing got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

4. Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

3. General Electric made $26 billion in profits over the last five years and not only paid no federal income tax, it got a $4.1 billion refund.

2. Bank of America got a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, though it made $4.4 billion in profits.

1. Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009 and paid no federal income taxes. It did receive a $156 million rebate from the IRS.

Long time no see

I've been tweeting, and facbooking like crazy and I've neglected this page for quite some time.  I've found a new toy. . .so I've been playing on Tumblr and I'm sure that its something that I will get tired of, when I get sick of staring at the pictures. 


I've notice nothing but a bunch of picture posts. I feel like I'm in grade school or some shit like that sometimes.  Half the pics are of the most retarded shit. . .which does crack me up. . .and the other half is of something gross that I'd rather not see. . .but oh well. . .who the hell am I do judge. . .back to Tumblr! Lehhgooo!

Rep. Paul Broun gets town hall query: 'Who is going to shoot Obama?'

A constituent at a town hall for Georgia Rep. Paul Broun drew laughter on Tuesday when asked, “Who is going to shoot Obama?” and the Republican didn’t come anywhere near condemning the question in his response.
“The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president,” Broun said, according to the Athens Banner-Herald. “We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president … who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.”

The question came after Broun asked who had driven the farthest to be at the Oglethorpe County event, and let that person ask the first question.

Brown’s press secretary, Jessica Morris, confirmed to the paper that the question was asked. “Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,” she said. Morris did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment Friday morning.
Last month, Broun live-tweeted Obama’s State of the Union address and drew criticism for one in particular. “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution,” he wrote. “You believe in socialism.”
On the day after the speech, Broun told CBS News, “I stick by that tweet.”
“Everything he does is bigger government, more central control from Washington, D.C. That’s not what our founding fathers envisioned the government to be,” he said. “Mr. Obama believes in a big central government, where the federal government controls everything in our lives. That’s socialism. And so I stick by that tweet.”

When are we going to learn? When are we going to have taken more than we can take anymore? When are we going to stop turning the other cheek? When are we going to fight back? 

Well I say enough is enough.  Had this been on the opposite foot, someone would have been imprisoned BEFORE trial! We as Democrats, as Black Americans, as the working class need to take a lesson from Egypt and the citizens of Wisconsin and stand the hell up! This shit is getting utterly ridiculous as White America continues losing its fucking mind!

Guild, other unions protest Mexican attacks on labor

Guild protesters include (r to l) Jay West, Bernie Lunzer and Tim Schick.

Add caption

   Citing Mexican government complicity with big businesses there – especially with mine and metal companies – a group of more than 100 U.S. unionists demonstrated outside the Mexican Embassy in Washington on Feb. 16, demanding justice for Mexican workers.

    Led by Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts and Josh Williams, President of the AFL-CIO’s Metropolitan Washington Council, the U.S. unionists demanded Mexico end its complicity with big business, bring perpetrators of crimes against unionists to justice and allow free and independent unions to operate.

    Mexico’s record also drew protests in other cities worldwide, according to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which co-organized the D.C. demonstration.  The protests mark the 5th anniversary of the Pasta de Conchos coal mine explosion near Urrutia.  That blast killed 65 miners.

    The explosion, the fact that nobody has been brought to justice for it and Mexico’s crackdown on the independent miners-metalworkers and electrical workers unions – unions strongly supported by the Mine Workers and the Steel Workers – brought Roberts into the fray.  Unionists from UMW, the Steelworkers, CWA and The Newspaper Guild, among others, joined him in presenting demands to the embassy.

    “Mines don’t just explode,” said coal mine veteran Roberts, who is also a preacher in what little spare time he has.  “Miners don’t have to die,” he told the crowd while standing on the steps of the Mexican Embassy, just blocks from the White House.

    “If the laws were being enforced, miners could come home to their families every night.  What happened that day (in Urrutia) was industrial homicide,” he declared.

    The group not only had strong words for the Mexican government, but also for the Obama administration.  After praising Obama for taking the side of Egyptian workers in pro-democracy protests that toppled dictatorial President Hosni Mubarak, Roberts urged Obama to “look a little closer,” just across the southern U.S. border.
     
    “We should not stand for the exploitation of these workers in Mexico,” Roberts said, after reading four names of dead workers there – including Santiago Cruz, an organizer of Mexican workers for the AFL-CIO affiliated Farm Labor Organizing Committee.  Cruz was killed in his Monterrey, Mexico, and office.

“We’ll deliver a formal message to the embassy of Mexico,” Williams said, referring to the letter, which he handed to an embassy representative – who replied the Mexicans would try to meet AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka about the issue.  “But this is not a one-time visit.  If we don’t hear something positive, we’ll be back.” 

Say It Wit Me Nah. . . We Need More of this!

So you can laugh all you want.  Hell, I was even laughing, but at the end of the day. . that's one less ignorant teen getting into bullshit. I cannot reiterate how much the world needs this now, more than ever.  I cannot say that I am upset and I certainly hope that the uncle faces nothing that will get him in trouble.  You guys know how the law works these days.  They try to stop you from disciplining these damn kids. Big ups to uncle for stepping in on some senseless shit.  Why the parents didn't, I cannot understand, but at this point at least we know that his uncle loves him and cares enough to put a stop to his ignorance, perhaps even saving this kids life.

We need more parents out there taking control of the shit their kids post online.

Beat his ass!!

2011. . . can you believe it?

You know, growing up in the 80's, the last thing from our mind was, when we turned 30, we would be in the year 20 something. never did it dawn on us that the world would grow past 1999.  And here we are in the year 20 damn 11.

I haven't got much to say in this post other than HAPPY NEW YEAR. I've never been one into the new years resolution, although I actually do have a plan this year to do something different.  Only one can hope that it works out.

So I want to start working out again. Over the past few years I've packed on weight (which is actually a good thing), but I want to be comfortable with that weight. I want it to be the right kind, so I need to get that in check. So for the year 2011, focusing on my health is of the utmost importance.  I mean I am not getting any younger and it will be harder to take the weight off or work it out, so I may as well get it started.  Wish me luck!

What are your New Year's resolutions?

America - He's your President for Goodness Sake!

by William Thomas Posted: Friday, October 1st, 2010

There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a Republican or Democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the people at the helm.


Suddenly President Barack Obama, with the potential to become an exceptional president has become the glaring exception to that unwritten, patriotic rule.


Four days before President Obama’s inauguration, before he officially took charge of the American government, Rush Limbaugh boasted publicly that he hoped the president would fail. Of course, when the president fails the country flounders. Wishing harm upon your country in order to further your own narrow political views is selfish, sinister and a tad treasonous as well.


Subsequently, during his State of the Union address, which is pretty much a pep rally for America, an unknown congressional representative from South Carolina, later identified as Joe Wilson, stopped the show when he called the President of the United States a liar. The president showed great restraint in ignoring this unprecedented insult and carried on with his speech. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so stunned by the slur, she forgot to jump to her feet while clapping wildly, 30 or 40 times after that.


Last spring, President Obama took his wife Michelle to see a play in New York City and republicans attacked him over the cost of security for the excursion. The president can’t take his wife out to dinner and a show without being scrutinized by the political opposition? As history has proven, a president in a theatre without adequate security is a tragically bad idea.


Remember: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”


At some point, the treatment of President Obama went from offensive to ugly and then to downright dangerous.


The health-care debate, which looked more like extreme fighting in a mud pit than a national dialogue, revealed a very vulgar side of America. President Obama’s face appeared on protest signs white-faced and blood-mouthed in a satanic clown image. In other tasteless portrayals, people who disagreed with his position distorted his face to look like Hitler complete with mustache and swastika.


Odd, that burning the flag makes Americans crazy, but depicting the president as a clown and a maniacal fascist is accepted as part of the new rude America.


Maligning the image of the leader of the free world is one thing, putting the president’s life in peril is quite another. More than once, men with guns were videotaped at the health-care rallies where the president spoke. Again, history shows that letting men with guns get within range of a president has not served America well in the past.


And still the “birthers” are out there claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States, although public documentation proves otherwise. Hawaii is definitely part of the United States, but the Panama Canal Zone where his electoral opponent Senator John McCain was born? Nobody’s sure.


Last month, a 44-year-old woman in Buffalo was quite taken by President Obama when she met him in a chicken wing restaurant called Duff’s. Did she say something about a pleasure and an honour to meet the man or utter encouraging words for the difficult job he is doing? No. Quote: “You’re a hottie with a smokin’ little body.”


Lady, that was the President of the United States you were addressing, not one of the Jonas Brothers! He’s your president for goodness sakes, not the guy driving the Zamboni at “Monster Trucks On Ice.” Maybe next it’ll be, “Take Your President To A Topless Bar Day.”


In President Barack Obama, Americans have a charismatic leader with a good and honest heart. Unlike his predecessor, he’s a very intelligent leader. And unlike that president’s predecessor, he’s a highly moral man.


In President Obama, Americans have the real deal, the whole package and a leader that citizens of almost every country around the world look to with great envy. Given the opportunity, Canadians would trade our leader, hell, most of our leaders for Obama in a heartbeat.


What America has in Obama is a head of state with vitality and insight and youth. Think about it, Barack Obama is a young Nelson Mandela. Mandela was the face of change and charity for all of Africa but he was too old to make it happen. The great things Obama might do for America and the world could go on for decades after he’s out of office.


America, you know not what you have.


The man is being challenged unfairly, characterized with vulgarity and treated with the kind of deep disrespect to which no previous president was subjected. It’s like the day after electing the first black man to be president, thereby electrifying the world with hope and joy, Americans sobered up and decided the bad old days were better.


President Obama may fail but it will not be a Richard Nixon default fraught with larceny and lies. President Obama, given a fair chance, will surely succeed but his triumph will never come with a Bill Clinton caveat - “if only he’d got control of that zipper.”


Please. Give the man a fair, fighting chance. This incivility toward the leader who won over Americans and gave hope to billions of people around the world that their lives could be enhanced by his example, just naturally has to stop.


Believe me, when Americans drive by the White House and see a sign on the lawn that reads: “No shirt. No shoes. No service,” they’ll realize this new national rudeness has gone way, way too far.




OCTOBER 2010 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND




-- P Penniston-West, RN, MSN, CCM, QRPNurse Advocate, Medical Case Manager.Cell 786 417 5618