Poor poor Amazon...

Facts are Distrubing

Sometimes, when we are not really on alert, we hear lies so much we begin to believe in an almost alternative reality. Conservatives have, through the constant bombardment of Fox News and talk radio, saturated political discourse with a stream of lies and mis-representations for years. Carl Rove and others have made public relations' manipulation into an art form.

It is totally acceptable for the conservative mindset to lie, or to exaggerate for effect. "The ends justify the means", or "just win baby" are the guiding principles to attain the conservative agenda.

The excuse for this is that the "liberal media" is so distorting reality that lying is a "reasonable response" to compete politically.

The problem is that the conservative cause has so much money and power behind it from corporations that are seeking to steer Congress their way, that there is a definite imbalance of power and influence in the right's direction. Money buys influence and power...ordinary people do not have the money; Roger Murdock does!

MSNBC is a good example. Its ratings are dwarfed by Fox News, who has attained the status of a major network. Fox, in a recent dust up with Jon Stewart, attacked on the basis of "fair and balanced" that means lying and distorting to "offset the liberal bias of the media". Of course, there is no "liberal bias" of the media, because Roger Murdock owns most of the media. Corporations that own the "major networks" (ABC) are owned by conservative bastions of power, the Disney family for example. There is not "media bias"; in fact just the opposite.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the field of tax rates and the truth. I read a recent article that included 10 charts showing the comparative tax rates, corporate taxes and general tax burden of the top "wealthy countries" in the world.

A mainstay of conservative philosophy is that the liberals over the years since the New Deal have added thousands of useless programs that have required a tax burden that is discouraging the growth of business and jobs. Conservatives have pounded away at that both locally and nationally.

In California for example, dozens of initiatives have passed (starting with Prop 13) that have cut taxes, fees and every source of state revenue. Any new revenue "tax", even simply re-instating a rate to prior levels, is attacked as a "job killer", because it is a given that the liberal majority in the state is "unfriendly to business".

This position ignores that California is fifteenth in the nation in tax burden, and lower by other measures. Since California is the most populous state you would think it would at least be in the top five. Californians are NOT overtaxed!

The newest dustup is Amazon. Amazon has become an internet giant in retail sales, driving many local business under. California recently passed a law requiring Amazon to collect state sales tax. Remember, Amazon does millions of dollars of business in Californa. The Kindle, its revolutionary e-reader was invented in California and has its headquarters in California. And, Amazon won't be paying the sales tax, the consumer pays the tax, it will be required to collect the tax; just like all other retailers in California.

This is too much for Amazon. There is somehow a requirement to keep their unfair advantage over California businesses because they claim they don't have a physical presence in California. The Supreme Court decided years ago that states could tax business that had a "bricks and mortar" presence in the state. Affiliates to Amazon were used by the state as proof that physical presences (along with the Kindle headquarters).

So what does Amazon do? It attacks its affiliates and pulls its support from all of them, basically pulling out of Californa. This by a company that has made millions off the silicon valley innovations and inventions that form the core of its very business.

And what do conservatives do? They applaud of course. Nevermind the thousands of California businesses that have been driven out by Amazon's predatory and monopolistic practices, aided by not having to collect sales tax. Nevermind the truth. Big business ALWAYS wins!

Oh, those charts on United States tax burden I forgot to finish; predictably every one of them showed the United States in the last five or six in tax burden, corporate tax burden, inheritance tax (the U.S. was last since last year the number was zero). By every measure and standard the United States is NOT over taxed; not even close.

So, as the conservatives rail against government spending and the deficit, remember that deficit is a direct product of one of the lowest tax revenue producing system in the world.

This by a nation that has the largest defense budget in the world and is currently involved in three military operations overseas that cost billions each year.

The deficit is NOT a spending problem, as Fox and its watercarriers love to say, it is a revenue problem.

California's deficit is NOT a spending problem. State spending has dropped the past five years and is at twenty year lows today.

But the lies continue. And today, the President announced he is willing to talk about Medicare and Social Security cuts. If those occur, remember good old Amazon, refusing to collect taxes that by any standard of fairness it should collect.

We continue to reward corporate bad behavior and unethical nonsense so they won't "get mad at us". And corporate America continues to sit on record profits, pay their CEOs small fortunes, and cut jobs, send work overseas, and dodge paying taxes at every turn.

And we let them do it!