Citizens United Reporter

In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.On and on it goes. Wall Street banks and large companies love America when they need corporate welfare. But when it comes to paying American taxes or American wages, they want nothing to do with this country. That has got to change.

Is the financial system of Europe on the verge of a meltdown?  I have always maintained that the next wave of the economic crisis would begin in Europe, and

Among economists who study the surge in pay at the top of the income pyramid, it is pretty much a truth universally acknowledged that taxes should rise at the summit, too.

The Federal Reserve — which has a dual mandate to ensure price stability and maximum employment — recently adopted an explicit target for the labor market, saying it will not end its efforts to boost the economy until unemployment is around 6.5...

In 1981, US President Ronald Reagan came to office famously declaring that, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Thirty-two years and four presidents later, Barack Obama’s recent inaugural address, with its ringing endorsement of a larger role for government in addressing America’s – and the world’s – most urgent challenges, looks like it may bring down the curtain on that era.

Summary:  The long series of posts about the evolution of The New America has examined our gullibility, our eagerness to believe what we're told, and how that affects our politics. Today marks a ch...

According to the latest research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, electricity from wind power can now be supplied more cheaply in Australia than power from either coal or natural gas — and solar and other forms of renewable energy aren’t far...

With the daily silica-laced blizzard from five million pounds of toxic explosives in the background, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth and Rep. Louise Slaughter reintroduced the biggest no-brainer bill of the year for Congress—the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act (ACHE).

On Tuesday, House Progressives offered the first and only deficit reduction plan to come out of Congress so far in 2013 that would create jobs and avoid the budget sequester.

It would:

Maintain the $1.7 trillion in spending cuts created by the 2011 Budget Control Act's spending caps;Maintain the more than $700 billion in revenues generated by the tax cliff deal at the end of the last Congress;Replace the nearly $1 trillion sequester with new revenue generated by closing loopholes and deductions; andCut defense spending by nearly $300 billion, which would then be spent on creating jobs by investing in our infrastructure.

Way back when President Barack Obama was reelected in November, his celebratory speech included this shout-out to the hundreds of thousands of voters who'd had to wait in long lines at the polls.

The Republic  is at war against an adaptive foe that seeks its destruction. Not al Qaeda, which might no longer exist in meaning form, but internal foes seeking its overthrow. That they’re moving incrementally, small steps slowly growing larger with each success, only masks the boldness of their goals. It’s the quiet coup. Here we look at the latest chapter in the war, the most recent rip torn in the Constitution.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin, 1775

Its time to update the genius of America's Founding Fathers to fit our present circumstances. If we can't manage to be equal to their spirit, the democracy they so carefully crafted is bound to falter.