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When you ride ALONE you ride with bin Laden | 1, 2, 3
AWOL
 N THE MONTHS FOLLOWING 9/11, many were labeled traitors by our government: "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, "American Al Qaeda" Jose Padilla, and "Senator" Tom Daschle. It was easy to point an accusing finger at the very apparent traitors, those who had taken up arms against this country or, worse yet, dared to question the administration.
But just off most of our radars and just off our shores lurk our not-so-apparent traitors, the U.S. companies who have set up shop in the Bahamas and elsewhere to avoid taxation. It's called "tax motivated expatriation" -- a nice corporate phrase for "freeloading" -- and it's a tax code loophole that allows U.S. companies to enjoy all the benefits provided by their government without the nuisance of having to pay for them. Like stealing, but without the masks.
Of course, these "American" companies don't actually have to move to the Bahamas, which just shows you how dumb they are: the money gets to live in the Caribbean, they stay in Newark. They just have to set up a P.O. box on the island -- essentially a phone and a monkey, with some kind of mailbox to collect their dirty, bloody money.
Of course, these "American" companies don't actually have to move to the Bahamas, which just shows you how dumb they are: the money gets to live in the Caribbean, they stay in Newark.
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And I do mean bloody. I' d bet that money, or the desire to keep it, has killed more American soldiers than the Iraqi army ever will. Folks of a certain age will remember a play, All My Sons, and I remember the movie on TV; with Edgar G. Robinson as the wartime airplane manufacturer who scrimps on the making of certain bolts that then cause planes to crash and pilots to die, among them his son. But, of course, too late he realizes they were all his sons.
That might have been a good movie to see for some of the folks running Eagle-Pilcher, the maker of the batteries for our smart bombs, since employees have come forward to accuse the company of allegedly rigging computers to show live responses from dead batteries, faking test reports, and gluing up cracks in battery casings to save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which would have been great business savvy -- "How does Vice President Martin sound?" -- if the faulty batteries hadn't made the smart bombs dumb and caused the friendly fire deaths of several U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
But the corporate mindset in America isn't really that different from the mayor in Jaws. Yes, there's a shark out there, but don't tell people! Then the worst possible thing will happen, and we'll lose business!
It's practically our national credo: "What's good for business is good for America!" Well, no. Fraud can be good for business; sweatshops are good for business; children work cheeeap! The tax cheats in the Caribbean who are AWOL (Assholes With Official Leave) love to give you that malarkey about how, without the taxes, they can cut the cost of the product they're making. Yes, and slavery's a real cost-cutter, too. The Civil War was the original "it's the economy, stupid."
Besides, the money isn't really getting trickled down anyway. The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker salary in 1980 was 42. In 2000, that gap had grown more than tenfold, and a CEO made 531 times what the average worker does.
Rich people did very, very well in the last two decades -- Reagan and Clinton were a golden one-two economic punch for the wealthy. But now it's time to give back and not forget that that kind of wealth was only made possible because it was accrued in a country that, with all its flaws, is the envy of the world precisely because we have functioning government agencies, like the IRS, that allow people to conduct commerce. Without the S.E.C. and the Federal Reserve, not to mention the FBI and a kick-ass army, the conditions for amassing wealth simply wouldn't exist. But some people always want to argue the bill. Even in wartime.
The IRS estimates that this offshore tax dodge siphons $70 billion each year from our U.S. Treasury, which is approximately our entire tab spent on the Terrorism War the first year.
The connection we have to make here is this: Politicians respond to pressure. If they don't think the people are outraged about something, it slips off their agenda. There are fundraisers to attend, lobbyists to entertain, and mistresses to screw. We have to let them know in Washington what makes us mad at home, and this kind of nonsense certainly should. Any idiot can win votes coming out against taxes -- we all hate taxes, we all hate the IRS. But many nations would love to have an effective way of collecting legitimately needed tax revenue -- and, unfortunately, with highway robberies like this, we're becoming one of them.
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