Bush trying to cut taxes again. This time, it's corporate.

[TwilightZone]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802468.html

So, the idiot who has spent more money than any president in history, turned a surplus into a monster deficit, and started a trillion-dollar war wants to cut taxes again.

Unbelievable.

[mdmc]

1. This is why chIMPEACHMENT is off the table

Dems got tax cuts to support!

[rurallib]

2. And the Chinese are in a position to ruin us because of his other

tax cuts and insane war. More tax cuts are just what we need.

[Fovea]

3. Are we enjoying the class war yet?

I believe that this is like trying to steal the last bar of chocolate in the bunkers of Berlin, 1945.

You can sure tell the neocons don't really give a crap about the GOP, never mind the American people. But like a late French Bourbon monarch, they party harder while the peasants suffer more.

We all know how that ended.

[AngryOldDem]

11. It's coming

From LBN:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2946819

In the words of CCR, I see a bad moon risin'.

[spindoctor]

4. Stripmining the nation

Must grab what he can before his time is up. Luckily, we have our democratic representatives to stop such ridiculous plans just like they did with ummm....help me here...

[TwilightZone]

15. Unfortunately, the damage was largely done before we had the opportunity to stop it.

The tax cuts and the "war", along with the related ludicrous amounts of deficit spending, are going to affect the economy for decades.

[zabet]

5. Corporate Welfare pisses me off.

Especially when they move their businesses overseas, taking
the jobs with them, and still get tax breaks because they
have an office basing them in the US.

[TwilightZone]

8. Agreed.

They wholeheartedly support outsourcing, while claiming that they're the ones protecting American workers.

[tecelote]

6. It would be alright to cut corporate taxes to make them more competitive worldwide as long as...

...the taxes were paid by the corporate officers and management. Or, if corporations were made to pay employee's pensions, insurance and everything else that they promised to pay. Instead, it is just one excuse after another to chip away at the country's foundation. It already can not support itself and is now owned by foreigners instead of Americans.

This greed has to stop.

How the hell can anyone be a Republican if they make less than two hundred thousand a year? Below that, even greed does not make sense.

Trickle Down Economics = Corporations piss on America and we're supposed to love the warm feeling it gives us. This is bullshit.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

7. A lot of companies have corporate finance departments...

That invest the company's money in market instruments. The derivatives market has been very, very fashionable. Many of these derivatives are based on tranches of mortgage debt, for verily, this has been a very fashionable instrument. Note: Many financial decisions, at every level of investment, are made on the basis of what is in "fashion", not what is sane and prudent.

Some of these companies get they asses in that hoary and time-honored position of "When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to focus on the fact that your original objective was draining the swamp". One case in point is a very well-known computer build-to-order giant. A couple of years ago, it was in real danger of going into a position, described in many of your finest business schools, as "tits up". They had to being their old CEO and presiding president of the board BACK as CEO. He came in, did what he should have done long before that and fired all the former Pepsico executives who were running the company(There is a saying in the computer industry that the best way to bring a company down is to hire executives from Pepsico) and waded into the books. The story I heard, from a VERY knowledgable insider was that said CEO returnee found, and I quote: "Mountains of funny paper". It seems that these executives had essentially left the company to flounder in its core competencies and had instead turned all their energies to investing company funds in thew highest-risk markets they could find.

Which was hardly one of their core competencies.

I suspect that you can find that this vignette is echoed across businesses around the country. With the mortgage market and hedge fund problems growing at what looks to be daily orders of magnatude, Dear Leader must turn his awesome energies and intellect to bailing his fellow financial morons out, in the only way he, and any neo-conservative knows: "Hey kids! My dad owns a barn! Let's rape the treasury!". I mean, these are our best and brightest, our betters, America's de facto royalty. Why should they sully their shining countenances by rolling up their sleeves and working their way out of the messes they created. That would be so beneath them and they might miss a few tee times. The horror.

And as usual, this all will be followed by a hearty "fuck you" to everyone else.

[TwilightZone]

9. Very true, on all counts.

I happen to live in the home city of said computer builder, and the "funny paper" is indeed a reality.

Halliburton is another good example. The company was in very serious trouble prior to the "war" in Iraq, thanks to years of mismanagement and poor business strategies. The year prior to the war, they lost more than a billion dollars.

Now, of course, they're extremely profitable, yet they had to change nothing internally. They're still impressively incompetent. Incompetence works when the government is throwing tractor-trailer loads of cash your way.

[onethatcares]

10. when corporations get to write the rules that govern themselves

the world has gone amok. Next thing you know, someone will write a regulation prohibiting suing anyone for asbestos related illness.

[TahitiNut]

12. The average effective tax rate on corporate profits is already the LOWEST in 50 years!

At the same time, corporate profits compared to employee compensation have never been higher since before the Great Depression!!

[TwilightZone]

13. But, but, but...we're not competitive!

That is, of course, Bush's excuse. We're not competitive, but companies like Exxon are generating unprecedented profits.

Nice graphs. The last one is particularly striking, especially the period from Bush's inauguration to present. The spike during Clinton's term is not surprising, because of the tech boom (and subsequent crash).

Bush's spike is due to social program gutting, tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, and war spending. No, thanks!

[malaise]

14. I can't bear listening to this man

Screaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!