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Yes that's right. You can dodge taxes in the US and often times NOTHING happens. In fact, 30% of federal employees aren't bothering to pay their federal taxes, Corporations owe $18 Billion and now only make up 7.4% of those who pay federal taxes., So now, the IRS has time to go after EBAY? Geez, why not go for the low hanging fruit and get the people and companies who truly OWE THE MONEY to the tune of $20 billion or better? What a bunch of #$%^&*.

So you assume that any trial that begins in 2002 is about a crime that happened atleast 2 and a half years ago? Let's look at the facts, shall we?

SEC charges against Adlphia were in regards to accounting fraud commited between 1999 and 2001.

SEC charges against AOL were in regards to accounting practices after their merger with Time-Warner: from 2000 to 2002.

Bristol-Myers Squibb - states in the article--very clearly--that they inflated their 2001 revenue by $1.5 billion.

CMS Energy's round-trip trades occured between the 3rd quarters of 2000 and 2001.

Duke Energy's round-trip trades occured in 2001 and 2002.

Dynegy committed round-trip trades in 2001 and included them in their 2002 first quarter revenue.

El Paso Energy's round-trip trades occured in 2001.

Halliburton - lol, do I even need to explain this one? I don't think the Bush administration will be clamping down on this one any time soon.

Homestore.com - inflated revenue in 2001.

Kmart's SEC investigation was about actions taken in 2001.

Merck's false revenues were declared from 1999-2001.

Mirant was convicted of energy gouging from 2000-2001.

Peregrine Systems reported false revenue from 2000 to 2002.

Qwest fraudulently concealed the fact that, based on a series of accounting errors, it improperly recognized $112 million of revenue between 2000 and 2002 from its Wireless division.

Reliant Energy committed energy gouging in 2000 and 2001.

WorldCom fraud was masterminded starting in 2000 but took place up till July 2002 when the company filed for bankrupcy.

Stop talking out of your ass. This page also details the amount of money each of these fraud committing corporations contributed to the Democratic or Republican parties during the 2002 election cycle. It's pretty obvious which party is in favor with the white collar criminals.

I don't know if this had previously been discussed but I've been thinking that something like this would be a good idea. We constantly see the effect Slashdot has on webservers. I would imagine a PAC consisting of even a portion of slashdotters could do great things. Especially if we worked together with other groups such as Citizen Works, the EFF, and the ACLU.

Sorry, Frenchmen are the 21st most productive people in the world.

Bermuda and Cayman Islands are number 3 and 4... hmm, I wonder why.

--Rob

It might not be that much but this document states that the US Treasury Department states that between $70 and $155 billion is lost to the companies that are located in the tax havens in the Caribbean. That is still a large chunk of change.

Here's another cynical view: Perhaps Seagate can afford to increase their warranties to five years because they are tax-dodgers. According to this link at www.citizenworks.org -- http://www.citizenworks.org/corp/tax/taxdodgerslis t.php -- Seagate reincorporated itself out of California and into the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying United States taxes.

Not that reincorporating has anything to do with the quality of their drives; it has more to do with them being good corporate citizens.

When you cheat the government and your fellow citizens, you might find that you have some extra cash laying around. Too bad I can't reincorporate into the Cayman Islands.

Interesting, thanks. I didn't get through the entire paper, but their first reference is quite concise:
For the Last Time: Options are an Expense, by Zvi Bodie, Robert S. Kaplan, and Robert C. Merton. [Harvard Business Review, March, 2003]

So which backward, illiterate, redneck Bush supporter modded this up?

Enron donations (link.):

Total given to House Republicans: $366,625
Total given to House Democrats: $281,840

Total given to Senate Republicans: $418,480
Total given to Senate Democrats: $118,853

Choke on it.

Enron didn't give equally to both Republican and Democrats (from the information I could find) but it is a lot closer than I previously though.

From http://www.citizenworks.org/enrondonations/summary .php.

In the seven election cycles from 1989-2002, Enron Corporation, through its PAC and through its employees, has given some $648,465 to current members of the House of Representatives ($282,949of it in the '00 and '02 cycles). Of this, 57% was given to Republicans and 43% to Democrats. Since the Enron collapse, $153,150 of this money has been returned, either through direct refunds of contributions or through donations to ex-employee charities. This comes to almost 24% of money returned - 19% of Republican money and 29% of Democrat money.

Of the 435 Representatives in the House, 201 received money from Enron - 123 Republicans and 78Democrats. Of these, 76 have returned at least some of this money - 38 Republicans and 38 Democrats. According to these figures, then, almost 38% of Representatives who have received Enron money have given some of it back. Split by party, 31% of Republicans who received money gave it back, while nearly49% of Democrats who received money gave it back.

In the other legislative chamber, Enron gave $539,833 from 1989-2002 to current Senators. The vast majority of this - 78% - was given to Republicans. We have not completed the process of data collection with regards to the Senate, but the data so far indicate that most Democrats in the Senate have returned at least some of the money they received from Enron, while Republicans lag behind by a significant margin.

Enron was also the largest donator to George Bush in his run for the presidency.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1336960. stm.

Biggest industry donators to Bush campaign: Enron $1.8m

Corporations have all the same constitutional rights and responsibilities under the law as individuals. Of course, while it's easy for a corporation to benefit from the rights (e.g. freedom of speech) there is no one person to bear the responsibility (e.g. punishment for murder). This follows an 1886 Supreme Court ruling, so this isn't news. More info here.

You're delusional. Fact is that any employer would just take that theoretical difference and pocket it, leaving you with the same salary as before, only without unemployment insurance or workman's comp to cover you when the shit hits the fan. You'd be left buying your own insurance on the same salary, facing the choice between losing a significant chunk of your income or doing without insurance for inevitable hard times. In fact, I could see companies viewing employees who buy workman's comp. or unemployment insurance as disloyal, since they wouldn't trust their employer to take care of them.

The government may be inefficient, and it may be corrupt, but in the end it pays out reliably and consistently. That's more than any for-profit venture would do if given the chance to take over the potential market for either insurance.

Even if you only make $36k a year- the average salary- you're paying half your income in taxes- and that's just direct. The things you buy, would be %30 or more cheaper if there wasn't a federal income tax, etc. (And the value of the services you get from the government? Less than %10 of what you pay in taxes-- thats how much you're being ripped off.)

AS they say, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

The outrage one should feel is that while the average American citizen gets only a 10% return on the near 50% of our income we pay into the system, the wealthiest members of our society see massive returns on the relatively tiny share of their money that they pay into the system. Corporate welfare kickbacks, polluter's tax credits, offshore shelters, and all the other tricks in the book used to stimulate the economy through trickle-down voodoo economics mean that those lowest on the social totem pole see the lowest return on their buck, while the CEO's of the world see a heavy return on their taxes.

Whichever way you look at it this is the end of the line for corporate deregulation. Regulation is now going to be considered pensioner friendly and stockholder friendly.

Well, at least until the current round of presidential speechifying and toothless legislating subsides Wall Street's fears, and corporate America's hand returns to the cookie jar.

In and of themselves, public scandals tend not to result in meaningful and structural change. To move beyond political grandstanding and weak legislation (and the bills being looked at currently are very weak -- see CitizenWorks for more info) requires a significant, independent-minded citizen's movement. A corporate accountability movement of this type could begin with demanding reforms in governance and accounting practices (like forcing corporations to expense stock options, a measure rejected by congressional Democrats), and move on to demanding serious and structural changes, such as taking corporate money out of politics (which will require public financing of elections, and breaking up the corporate strangehold over the news media.

But expecting a significant trend to reverse deregulation to suddenly spring up amongst politicians who continue to take their orders from major corporate donors is, unfortunately, too optimistic.

At the very least we will see the sweatheart deals arranged by Enron and the Gramms to exclude energy derivatives from oversight being swept away.

Don't count on it. As far as I remember, the current legislation doesn't repeal Gramm's Enron bill.

But at the deeper level I think that politicians are not going to be able to score easy votes by dennouncing regulation.

No, few voters are going to get hot and bothered about changes in corporate accounting regulations. However, most of them know, pretty intuitively, that they're getting screwed by big business. Frankly, most of the world understands that the current economic order doesn't operate for their benefit (particularly folks in the two-thirds world who don't just lose money on Enron stock, but get displaced by Enron-financed dams).

And no, that's not Marxist babbling -- take a look at some polling numbers: 67% think most corporate executives are dishonest, 57% think white collar crime happens very often, and the percentage who name big business as the largest threat to America's future is at an all-time high (38%).

However, the public doesn't trust politicians to solve these (or most) problems, probably a leading cause of why fewer and fewer of them bother to vote. And nobody's going to trust grand-standing Democrats like Lieberman (who spends most of his time on his knees before the insurance industry) to take a firm stance against over-reaching corporate power.

IMHO, the only way we're going to see a viable political movement for corporate accountability is with a strong, progressive, independent third party. At the moment, both in the U.S. and around the world, that's the Green Party. Provided we continue moving beyond feel-good environmentalism, the Greens can be a grassroots and effective voice for change, by bringing up these issues when people are paying some attention to them (during the election season) and offering bold solutions, rather than more of the same focus-grouped bullshit. The Green Party in the U.S. is now organized in almost every state, and has a platform full of creative ways to advance real, grassroots democracy.

In closing (and for the purposes of extending my pomposity a bit further), I'd like to remind folks that corporate abuse of power affects everyone, in millions of ways -- whether you're a white-collar type whose 401(k) is suddenly worthless, a software developer who's forced to deal with ludicrous patents, or a worker whose job just got shipped to Mexico. And it will take all of us to effect the changes so desperately needed.

(P.S. Another great resource on corporate power is the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy.)