News & Articles

Gosh, you’ve got to feel sorry for Pfizer. The poor drug giant has to pay taxes in our country, so it’s leaving.
When I say “poor” drug giant, I don’t mean Pfizer is broke or in the poor house. No, no, the pill peddler is incredibly rich, hauling in some $50 billion a year on sales of Viagra, Lipitor, Celebrex, and such. However, the powerhouse drug maker feels put upon by what its CEO calls “[America’s] uncompetitive tax rate.” So, poor baby, Pfizer says it must renounce its citizenship in our country, flee to the lower-tax sanctuary of England, and reincorporate as a British firm.
But, before you weep for Pfizer and curse America’s corporate tax rate, note that corporations use a mess of loopholes to avoid paying anywhere near the official rate. In fact, while Pfizer hauled in more than $17 billion in profits from its US sales from 2010 through 2012, it paid zero income taxes to our nation – and actually got a rebate from us taxpayers of $2.2 billion.
Special tax breaks are hardly all that this expatriate ingrate gets from us. How about that fat subsidy called Medicare Part D that its lobbyists wrote and got George W to ram into law? It’s a huge chunk of corporate socialism that forces taxpayers to shell out billions a year to cover whatever rip-off prices Pfizer and other Big Pharma profiteers choose to charge for the medicines that seniors get. Yet, while this corporate greedhead says it no longer wants to be an American, it most certainly does want to keep getting this platinum-coated welfare payment from the American government it supposedly disdains.
Notice, too, that while Pfizer is moving its citizenship, it wants its headquarters and top executives to stay in the good ol’ USA. Excuse me, but if Pfizer executives choose to disown America, then America should disown them.
“Pfizer’s New Tax Remedy,” Austin American Statesman,” May 4, 2014.
“Pfizer Proposes a Marriage and a Move to Britain, Easing Taxes,” The New York Times, April 29, 2014.
“Corporate Tax Dodgers: 10 Companies and Their Tax Loopholes,” www.ips-dc.org, April 15, 2013.

In Oklahoma, “conservative” means serving corporate power

Oklahomans have been socked with a surprise from their own, supposedly “conservative” state officials.
It seems that thousands of Sooners have been putting solar panels on their homes to save on energy costs and reduce fossil-fuel pollution. Switching to solar even allows them to generate excess electricity, which they can transmit back to the grid and earn a credit on their monthly bills. To reward such common sense and socially-beneficial energy innovation, the state’s Republican-controlled government slapped a new “fee” – actually, a tax – on the bills of those who convert from grid takers to grid producers in the future.
This crude slap in the face came with no advance notice, no public hearings, and no legislative debate. “It just appeared out of nowhere,” said one local solar business owner.
But this was not from “nowhere.” It came from a secretive corporate front group called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. In exchange for getting millions of dollars from the Koch brothers, utilities, and other dirty-energy interests, ALEC is peddling a cookie-cutter bill from state-to-state that stops homeowners from switching to solar by taxing the energy they produce. ALEC even adds insult to the injury its Koch-headed backers are doing by calling such homeowners “freeriders on the system.”
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who was in on this despicable sneak attack from the start, had her ego stroked by the Koch-financed front group last year. ALEC presented its “Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award” to Fallin for her “record of advancing … free markets… and individual liberty.”
Now we know what the Koch-ALEC complex means by “free markets” and “liberty.” They mean that corporate energy interests should be free to stifle our individual liberty. Thomas Jefferson would be ashamed to have his name attached to anything that this cabal of corporate and governmental Kleptocrats come up with.
“Oklahoma Will Charge Customers Who Install Their Own Solar Panels,” www.thinkprogress.org, April 16, 2014.