No Representation Without Taxation

Last year G.E. earned $5.1 billion in profits from U.S. operations alone and yet didn’t pay one penny in U.S. taxes. David Kocieniewski of the NY Times reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.” President Obama has selected G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, as the leader of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Our President has rewarded the C.E.O. of our nation’s largest company which pays no federal taxes with a position which will economic develop policy. The single greatest problem we face in the United States is that big business has far too much influence with our federal and state legislators and our President has seen fit to give them even more.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said of the influence of big money: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

President Obama has failed to see the damage that the influence of big money is damaging our democracy. The people of this country must rally to the cry of “No representation without taxation!”