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USuncut takes action against Bank of America in Harvard Square
By Anonymous on Sun, 02/27/2011 - 3:42am
"We won't pay for your crisis"
If you have $3 in your wallet, you have more money than Bank of America paid in corporate taxes last year. On Saturday, USuncut took peaceful action against the Bank of America branch in Harvard Square by protesting the unfair tax code and drawing attention to that fact this ginourmous Bank of America happily profits from taxpayer-funded bailouts and banking business but avoids paying almost anything in Federal taxes.
US Uncut is about taking action against unnecessary and unfair cuts to public services across the US. Washington's proposed budget for the coming year sends a clear message: The wrath of budget cuts will fall upon the shoulders of hard-working Americans.
Obama seeks to trim $1.1 trillion from the budget in the next ten years by cutting or eliminating over 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education. For instance, it cuts in half funding to subsidize heating for low-income Americans; limits an expansion of the Pell grant program for students; and decreases Environmental Protection Agency funding by over 12%.
Meanwhile, Republicans are using their new House majority to slash spending even more brutally. The GOP has made it clear that they are bent on raiding funds for Social Security, Medicare, education; determined to kill health care reform; and gut needed investments in infrastructure, climate change and job creation, at a time when America needs it most.
These cuts will come on top of very painful austerity measures made at the state-level across our nation–-worth hundreds of billions - since the recession began.
In short, budget cuts demonstrate that Washington has abandoned ordinary Americans.
But there is an alternative: Make corporate tax avoiders pay. See www.USuncut.org for more info about USuncut.
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Comments
lot of protesting this week
Libya, Unions, Planned Parenthood, Student Jobs, and now this.
Its the warmer weather and
Its the warmer weather and people are sick of staying indoors.
Not to mention
The endless stream of bullshit is really beginning to smell ripe.
Nothing else to do when you
Nothing else to do when you are trust funded moonbat perpetual student. People who work full time and have responsibilities don't have time to protest every day.
BoA lost $3.6 billion dollars in 2010
How are they supposed to pay taxes on money they didn't earn?
Good. BofA should be allowed to fail
I see no benefit to our region from the continued existence of this bank. Let it go under, then break it apart back into the small local pieces from which it was assembled.
Dunno but they found a way to pay bonuses
Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., the nation’s largest lender, will pay investment-banking employees bonuses of about $4.4 billion for last year...
Damn it feels good to be a bankster.
I see they are using Hollywood style accounting.
Bank of America 2009
2009 Pre-tax income $4,400,000,000 (Billion)
2009 Income taxes paid $0
2009 Tax benefits $1,900,000,000 (Billion)
Pass the STOP TAX HAVEN ABUSE Act
If Bank of America paid their tax bill in 2009 alone, we could avoid $1.7 billion in early childhood education cuts, in head start and Title 1 programs.
That article is more than a
That article is more than a year old and since we are talking about the taxes paid in 2010, I don't find it that relevant.
PS. those bonuses were mainly stock options anyway.
Bank of America
The facts remain;
Are you opposed to removing unjust tax loopholes from the corporate tax code?
Equal Policy
That's cool with me as long as we keep that policy for all other industry groups (auto, airline, real estate, etc.) and other special interest groups (unions, farmers, etc.) that we've been bailing out for the past 30 years.
There's a lot of mouths at the trough.
Psst...
General Motors and Ford posted annual profits in 2010, for the first time in years. Despite what your friends at Fox keep telling you, the auto bailout--which has at this point been paid back in full--worked. Sorry to deprive you of a talking point.
The auto bail out WASN'T paid
The auto bail out WASN'T paid back in full. The chairman of GM was forced to resign over that bullshit claim and the ads were pulled when threatened with lawsuits over false advertising. All GM did is pay back some loans from the government with other loans from the government.
Ford never took any bailout money either!
I thought Ford didn't take the money.
Also, at least BoA is paying a lot of local real estate taxes in Massachusetts.
Sorry to deprive you of your talking points
You're partially right. GM and Ford did post profits last year and GM got to that place in the same way BoA and others got there... bailouts.
You're not right that the auto industry bailouts has been paid in full (not that it matters since BoA, Citigroup, and others have actually paid theirs back). First, Ford never received a bailout (good for them) and second GM paid a lot of theirs back with other government loans. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02gret....
The government still owns 26% of GM. Who knows how much we still own of Chrysler. We'll probably never see most of that money back.
We will continue to pay for these bailouts and others for years. See: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/for-treasur...
I don't like them, but I understand why they were done. I'd prefer government wasn't in the bailout business, but if you are going to get the pitchforks out for one type of bailout, you better get them out for all the rest of them too. Unless you are a hypocrite, of course.
Psst... Sorry to correct your ad hominem attack, but I don't have "friends at Fox". I don't even have cable. I prefer to think for myself. You could try yourself sometime.
Thanks it's been fun.
You forgot General Electric
You forgot General Electric and Goldman Sachs from the list. Not only did they get bailouts and tax breaks, now their leadership is literally part of the administration writing the laws for their respective industries. With all the uproar over Haliburton owning the last administration I'm appalled no one in the media has taken issue with the same, if not worse, crony capitalism.
Cutting 2 billion dollars of
Cutting 2 billion dollars of spending a week is "slashing" the budget "brutally"? At that rate the Federal Budget will be running a surplus in 200 years!
Do you realize that domestic spending has increased many times that in the past 2-3 years? Cutting back to 2007 spending levels is going
to kill grandma and put mom & pop out of business? Yeah right!
I don't see how cutting welfare programs hurts "working" Americans either. Seeing how most "working" Americans aren't on welfare, but paying into it.
The quip on Social Security is referring to cutting SSI. You know the part of Social Security rife with fraud which is bankrupting the fund? I don't see how raising the retirement age to coincide with longer longevity is anything other than a sane financial sound move either.
The country has been broke for a long time now. When the Cold War ended there was a chance to pay off the debt with the peace dividend, but congress as usual in post New Deal behavior, decided to go on a spending spree. We've only able to keep the game going by making interest payments on the national credit card through the rapid expansion of the economy. Now that the economy is no longer expanding fast enough that isn't possibly anymore.
It's time to either default, and cause a global meltdown of unimaginable proportions, or go into austerity to pay off the debt.
Citations Please.
Citations Please.
Austerity now is a sure path
Austerity now is a sure path to extending the Great Recession. Don't you read the paper? Goldman Sachs told Congress this week their current year budget cuts would harm the recovery significantly.
What's needed is structural change that ensures long term cost drivers are curbed - defense, tax rates on income greater than 250-500K, health care cost containment - and economic policy that maximizes economic growth and tax revenues.
Goldman Sachs told
Goldman Sachs told Congress
Advice from the same people that needed a bailout....
Balance the budget by ending U.S. imperialism
Stationing US troops all over the world benefits only arms manufacturers and other large corporations, not the American people. It's time to withdraw them from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and everywhere else where they are not wanted or needed.
WOW. Let our allies step up
WOW. Let our allies step up and defend their own land.
The problem is so big gutting
The problem is so big gutting defense alone wouldn't solve it. Leaving ourselves open to foreign economic disruption or outright extortion wouldn't be a good idea either.
Everything needs an across the board cut along with abolishing lots of redundant government agencies and entitlements. Slashing one thing or the other isn't going to fill the hole, EVERYTHING needs to be on the table.
Well . . .
. . . that would be good- but the sad fact of the matter is that the US economy is military dependent. It employs 30 percent of all US engineers, scientific researchers, labs- development. Millions of people in the US are directly rewarded by the existence of the US military imperium. Hell- how many Mass residents are on the DOD gravy train - directly or indirectly? This state benefits greatly from DOD money. Then you have entire towns- counties- even states (West Virginia) whose populations subsist off military spending- that exist because of military bases. And the last best "private sector" Union jobs in this country are for weapons makers.
Cut military spending and the first thing you are going to see- is a rise in unemployment. It has to happen. What's left of the US industrial capacity- is geared towards the military- and that has to change.
And this has been the state of affairs since the Cold War. We have had a de-facto national socialist industrial military policy for 50 years that went into crazy weird overdrive after 9/11. No one talks about it on the financial networks and Paul Krugman doesn't write about it- but it is the elephant in the room.
That we don't talk about a trillion dollar a year black hole in spending in our national elections or our national political dialogue - at all- I mean no one talks about issues like war or military spending on the national level- is not a good indicator that DC/Beltway are even contemplating scaling back on such spending. Its all they know how to do- and what they have been doing for 50 years. They can't change. And you see it in their reactions to what is going on in places like Egypt and Libya today- total disconnect from reality. Not even acknowledging its existence or that there is a problem. This is the "March of Folly" we are witnessing right now.
It's going to end badly- very badly.
You need to separate R&D from
You need to separate R&D from procurement.
R&D benefits many other sectors besides defense. Almost every aspect of modern life has some sort of technology derived from defense research spending in the last 50 years.
Procurement on the other hand has become a bloated grossly inefficient and corrupt cesspool of corporate welfare. The government overpays for almost everything and buys lots of hardware the armed forces don't need nor want.
More Pictures, in slideshow
More pictures, in slideshow.
corporate welfare
Does Bank Of America get corporate welfare like ExxonMobil does? I think ExxonMobil gets $40 Billion a year: Is that fucked-up? They made more money than any company in the history of the world a year back.
Video of the protest
http://youtu.be/7Nxq5F0wdNk
More photos and video here: http://www.usuncut.org/actions/24#gallery