Cheerfully Brought to You By The Letters W, T, and F
Two things that happened in March:
Thing one: Three Caterpillar corporate offices were raided by federal agents from the US Attorney’s office and the IRS.
Caterpillar has been dogged by accusations that it slashed its domestic tax bill by shifting corporate profits from the United States to a subsidiary in Switzerland. A 2014 congressional investigation concluded that a scheme to move cash between the company’s American and foreign subsidiaries cut its tax bill in the United States by $2.4 billion over 13 years.
Thing two: While owing us $2.4 billion, Caterpillar gave $200,000 in contributions to members of Congress.
You might want to go see if your congressman got any money from them so you can ask him to please give it back so Caterpillar can pay their taxes like you do.
I am willing to bet my best pair of pink boots that nobody goes to jail over this. However, if you robbed a bank and then bribed the cops to look the other way, you’d never, ever get out of jail.
Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.
I continue to be amazed not that politicians are for sale, but that they’re for sale so cheaply.
1What!!!
2IOKIYAR was never more true
3the last I checked, “sham transactions”, engaged in solely for the purpose of reducing one’s tax liability, are not considered “ordinary and necessary” business activities, unless your business is organized crime. of course, that could well describe many fortune 500 companies today.
4In 2002, I was in charge of the 400,000 acre Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona. We evacuated the town of Showlow and closed the airport to all traffic. I got a call from then Representative Jeff Flake wanting to fly in to get a briefing on the fire. We cleared him to fly into the airport for a briefing. He arrived in a Empire Machinery (Caterpillar company) plane with two men with him. I briefed him while the two men snuck off to the Empire Machinery store in the evacuated town to check on the building. Mr. Flake was obviously uninterested in my fire situation briefing and as soon as the other two men got back to the airport, he left. I felt used and have not voted for the S.O.B. since. I always figured he was in Empire Machinery’s pocket. This article pretty much confirms it. We deserve the type of politics we pay for.
5200,000$ seems kind’a cheap to me. What do you s’pose they did with all the rest of it?
6Investing $200,000 and getting $2.4 billion sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
I think of garbage like this when some GOP says that poor people don’t do the things that would make them financially secure.
7The total of $200 grand was supposed to not draw attention to itself. Really. I’m not kidding. Just imagine spreading that much $$ among congress critters at the rate of two grand each. Thats how its done. Usually, two grand is the limit and very often the two grand is split between four fund raisers. As for Caterpillar and its cousins, legal or otherwise, I bet they have nightmares over all the asian produced heavy construction equipment I see in my neighborhood alone for many years now. We were warned about this in grad school and for me that was 20 years ago!
8Scum, they are scum. By “they” I mean Congress and Caterpillar.
Where do I check to see if my own personal Minnesota scum, Jason Lewis, got Caterpillar filthy lucre?
9@Debbo There is a link in the article
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