The Kevin Trudeau Show: 6-9-12
Today, the director of Farmageddon, Kristin Canty, stops by to give you the inside story on what really happened during the Rawesome Foods raid and why her documentary is so important for every American to see! Plus, Thomas James of HempUSA.org stops by to discuss the amazing health benefits you could receive just by consuming hemp products on a regular basis.
Self Help:
Detoxify Your Body
Weight Loss Cure
Protect Yourself & Your Family
Health:
How Safe Are the Drugs in Your Medicine Cabinet?
Diet Sabotage: Nearly 1 In 5 Calorie Counts Wrong
Cargill Recalls Potentially Tainted Turkey
Study Shows That Hospitals Are More Dangerous Than Flying
Why ’100% Orange Juice’ Is Still Artificial
Prince Charles Branded a ‘Snake Oil Salesman’
Government:
Congress To Form The Debt “Super Committee”
Wealth:
Food Stamp Use Rises to Record 45.8 Million
Dow Plunges 500 Points
Global Stocks Tumble After U.S. Selloff
How to Survive the Stock Market’s Wild Ride
10 Signs The Double-Dip Recession Has Begun
Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Stand with KT!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!
Pay Now or Pay Later…
June 8, 2012 by admin
Filed under Kevin's Blog
This is an example of why people in America are fat, disgusting pigs, and why so many of you have diabetes. It’s all because of processed food and fast food. Everyone gets high cholesterol and is dying of diabetes and has heart disease and is depressed.
Years ago, it was different because we were working in the fields. We were moving our body all day long. But now you wake up in the morning, hop in your car, drive to work, sit at a desk all day long. Then after work you get in the car, drive home, sit down in front of the TV and then you go to bed. Most people don’t move their body at all, there’s no physical movement.
So if you look at the average person who does nothing all day, how many calories should they be consuming a day? Any clue? Any idea? Well, I’ll give you the news, you should be consuming around 2000 calories a day, otherwise you’re going to gain weight.
Yours in health,
KT
Don’t Believe The Lie: Organic Farming CAN Feed The World
March 5, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
March 5th, 2012
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
One of the arguments often used to defend genetically-modified (GM) crops purports that biotechnology is necessary to feed the world, as non-GM and organic farming methods by themselves are incapable of producing enough food for everyone. But the truth of the matter is that organic farming by itself is fully capable of feeding the world — we just need to make a few changes to the way we grow and raise our food, which includes putting an end to the factory farming methods that are destroying our health and the planet.
In a report entitled Feeding the Future, the Soil Association, a U.K.-based organic farming advocacy group, makes the case that organic and other agro-ecological farming systems are not only the solution to the world’s hunger problems, but when implemented, these holistic methods of growing food actually facilitate bringing the world’s poorest out of poverty.
On the flip side, GM farming systems perpetuate and even create poverty because they lock farmers into an endless cycle of dependence on corporations for both the next season’s batch of self-destructing seeds, and the toxic chemical cocktails required to grow them. GM agriculture, in other words, is toxic to the world’s economies, toxic to human health, and toxic to the environment.
As was shown in a recent Rodale Institute study, which was the culmination of more than 30 years worth of research, organic farming systems actually produce higher yields than GM and non-GM conventional farming systems. Organic farming is also fully self-renewing and sustainable, as composting, manure, and other organic fertilizing methods naturally enrich soil and eliminate the need for toxic pesticides and herbicides (http://www.naturalnews.com/033925_organic_farming_crop_yields.html).
A much as 40 percent of the world’s grains are fed to factory farm animals
Besides the GMO issue, factory farming systems in general, including confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are needlessly depleting much of the world’s supply of grains. According to the Soil Association, as much as 40 percent of all the world’s cereals are fed to livestock, and this could rise to 50 percent by 2050 if current trends continue.
Ruminating animals like cows and sheep were meant to eat grasses on pasture, not GM soy, corn, and the many other grains that are routinely fed to them on factory farms. Besides making the animals sick, as they were not designed to eat them, these grain mixtures require an intense amount of resources to grow and produce.
By letting animals graze naturally on pasture grasses, which humans cannot eat anyway, these grains could instead be used to feed humans. And grass-fed animals produce far healthier meat than grain-fed animals anyway, which means that human health across the globe would improve dramatically just from making the switch (http://www.naturalnews.com/027199_meat_fat_cattle.html).
One third of the world’s food ends up in the trash heap as waste
Particularly in the developed world, humans waste an incredible amount of food. The Soil Association says that roughly one third of all food produced for human consumption ends up getting wasted. So if more people simply made a conscious effort to conserve food, or at least come up with simple ways to share unused food with those in need, hunger in many areas of the world would subside dramatically (http://www.naturalnews.com/033885_food_waste_America.html).
The group also mentions a type of food rationing system as another option, but such a tyrannical approach would be wholly unnecessary if the other methods were implemented, and if more people began growing their own organic food at home.
For The Full Report Go To Natural News
AntiSec (Anonymous) Engages in Social Justice Hacking of Monsanto
March 5, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
March 5th, 2012
Natural News
By: Mike Adams
The hacker community has risen to the challenge of targeting the single most evil corporation in the world — a corporation responsible for countless crimes against humanity and the attempted overthrow of global agriculture. That firm, of course, is Monsanto, which was voted the “Most Evil Corporation in the World” by NaturalNews readers in January of 2011 (http://www.naturalnews.com/030967_Monsanto_evil.html).
AntiSec, which is reportedly affiliated with Anonymous, hacked into Monsanto’s servers, acquired an outdated database of user comments and emails, then dumped it on the web (see link below). While the acquired material was not itself meaningful (and it didn’t reveal any smoking guns), the real news here is that AntiSec has turned its attention on Monsanto and recognizes how incredibly evil that corporation really is.
Hackers have more ethics than government operatives
What’s apparent in all this is that the AntiSec hacker group has ethics. Yes, you heard that right: This group has ethics in the sense that they pick targets who are damaging life on our planet (and driving countless farmers out of business) rather than merely picking targets for their own gain.
Hacking in and of itself, you see, is neither good nor bad. Technology is morally neutral until someone decides to use it for something. From that point, it is the morals and ethics of the user (or group of users) who determines the ethical implications from its use. Government uses technology to secretly surveil all your emails, for example. That’s evil. The military industrial complex uses technology to fire depleted uranium shells at civilian buildings and structures in Afghanistan. That’s evil too (it’s also a violation of UN conventions, but that’s another story).
So what do you call the use of technology to destroy evil? That’s called “good.” Any use of technology to disrupt the operations of evil institutions, or to halt the expansion of an institution that is causing widespread death and destruction, is by definition GOOD.
Monsanto targeted for crimes against humanity
You can’t find a more evil example of a corporation than Monsanto, in my opinion: This company sues farmers whose fields have been contaminated by Monsanto’s GM seeds; it fights against the full transparency labeling of GMOs in order to keep consumers in the dark; it conspires with the USDA behind closed doors to legalize experimental GM crops; it unleashes untold destruction on the global environment through genetic pollution; and it has been involved with everything from Agent Orange to aspartame. This is a company with a reputation of death, destruction and irreversible global damage.
“Your continued attack on the worlds food supply, as well as the health of those who eat it, has earned you our full attention,” AntiSec wrote about the firm. “Your crimes against humanity are too many to name on one page.”
That’s true. Even NaturalNews can’t keep up with all the crimes of Monsanto.
“You have put over 9000 small-time farmers out of business by using your enormous legal team to bury them with your malicious patent lawsuits,” AntiSec wrote in its statement. “You have continually introduced harmful, even deadly products into our food supply without warning, without care, all for your own profit.”
See the full AntiSec statement at:
http://pastehtml.com/view/bpvygosbp.html
Edible vaccines and more
The data dump acquired by AntiSec reveals what appear to be user-posted comments for an article posted by Monsanto. Some of these comments involve edible vaccines, and they appear to have once been fully public comments.
In one comment with the subject line “Edible HIV Vaccine based on Scrub Typhus”, a Cornell Ag Graduate student named Henry Brown drools over the possibility of feeding the world HIV vaccines by engineering their local food crops to contain the vaccine.
He gives a contact at Cornell who specializes in plant vaccines: Boyce Thompson (cja7@cornell.edu). He then goes on to brag about his own gene mapping thesis which he conducted as “Los Alamos”, saying: “I did thesis on Computer Assisted Genetic Mapping at Los Alamos, HIV, Genome, Human Genome, Genbank. I am former Peace Corps Volunteer/Cornell Ag. Grad.” – Henry Brown (hbrown@pnm.com)
In another comment, someone named Michael Katz talks about how Monsanto needs to indoctrinate children with pro-GMO attitudes by influencing the schools. All the typos are his, by the way, not mine:
“It is amazing to me that so many apparantly intelligent people, including close friends of mine, harbor superstitious views of bio-tech and genetically altered foods and plants. They fail to understand that water and arable land supplies are finite and that world population is not. I would also foward these articles to high schoolers and their teachers. The arguement for bio-tech is going to be a long one and we must include bright youngsters and their teachers in our fight.” – Michael E. Katz
The dump of information also includes a comment from a woman named Heather Stouder who admonishes Monsanto people for their blind ignorance and arrogance about GMOs:
“Why do scientists feel that they can solve the world hunger problem with a simple turn of the corner once again, after so many of those turns (deemed miracles of life science at the time) have failed within the last 50 years… It is completely ridiculous to me that “well-educated” (educated and funded by whom, i wonder…) people cannot see the obvious cultural and environmental disasters waiting to happen with these technologies… Obviously, this message won’t reach many of you in agreement, but I encourage you to take a closer look at the reality of the situation, which is completely masked within this web-site filled with propaganda and half-truths…”
One especially lucid commenter posted on the Monsanto website this powerful explanation:
“The notion that technology itself will save humanity is a dubious assertion, but it is a very modern one. Indeed there is a compelling argument to be made that technology is actually paving the way for humanity’s possible demise. Technology without wisdom leads only to opportunists who seek to use their “ownership” of powerful technologies to control the direction, form and destiny of human civilization for the benefit of their self-interests, neglecting the interests of the world’s population. The common people under democracy were supposed to have been promoted to citizens, instead they have been rendered into consumers: faceless and passive receptacles of mass consumption and production. The key to understanding this is by examining how the mass media operates. The mass media is designed to propagandize the common people in emerging and established democracies who constitute the majority of the burgeoning modern human population, into accepting the status quo as the most viable and practical interpretation of reality.”
Ethical hacking targets destructive institutions
Personally, I enjoy seeing the hacker community go after the bad guys like Monsanto. If government regulators won’t hold these groups accountable, and the mainstream (sellout) media won’t ask the tough questions, who is supposed to keep these institutions honest? There is a great sense of social justice in seeing this take place.
Some people counter and ask, “But isn’t hacking illegal?”
Well yeah, technically, but so is half of what the federal government does every single day. Unleashing genetically modified crops upon the landscape is blatantly illegal and violates numerous provisions of federal law, yet the USDA does that every single week, it seems. Reaching down your pants at the airport and fondling your nut sack is illegal, but the TSA does that countless times each day (and that doesn’t even count the number of children they molest or the number of women they strip search, too).
Former MF Global head Jon Corzine, who has powerful connections to the White House, stole a billion dollars (or more) from investors and hasn’t even been arrested. Countless “green energy” companies with ties to the White House blew through billions of dollars of taxpayer money, creating no products whatsoever, went bankrupt, and then nobody gets in trouble for that either. The banks steal your mortgages, the government steals your retirement, the Fed keeps devaluing your dollar, and the government regulators like FDA, USDA, DEA and DHS are operates entirely as criminal gangs, with absolutely no respect for federal law, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Heck, the ATF runs guns into Mexico! (http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html)
So who’s the real criminal in all this? Government, of course. And the corporations they selectively allow to operate.
A revolution may be brewing…
It is a well-known fact of history that the People will only remain oppressed for a short while, after which they will take matters into their own hands. This targeting of Monsanto by AntiSec is just one sign of many more to come — signs that the People are tired of being poisoned, lied to, exploited and fed an endless stream of corporate B.S. and government lies.
Personally, I think AntiSec is just the beginning of Monsanto’s troubles. I had a weird dream just the other night involving thousands of farmers from across the country physically marching upon Monsanto’s headquarters, conducting citizens’ arrests of all Monsanto employees, then torching the entire complex and watching it burn it to the ground. I didn’t know what to make of it — was this a vision of things to come? Or just my subconscious mind playing out its own creative vision of social justice? My position has always been to avoid violence, of course, so I hope that if such an event does occur, nobody gets hurt.
What I do know is that Monsanto is engaged in the ultimate violence against humankind — the kind of “violence” that is insidious because it happens invisibly, at the microscopic level. Yet it wreaks death and destruction everywhere; not just in the farmer suicides across India (http://www.naturalnews.com/030913_Monsanto_suicides.html), but also in the frustration and despair that inevitably follows a farmer’s decision to plant GM seeds and spray his fields with Roundup. Little does he know that he is destroying his own future and poisoning the land for at least a generation.
AntiSec may very well turn out to be the champion of the People that exposes the lies of biotech and helps end this technological insanity that threatens the future of viable life on our planet. It is my secret hope that they uncover yet more information that may help protect the People and our natural world from exploitation by destructive corporations like Monsanto.
If anyone from AntiSec is reading this, please note that we have a public tip submit system, whereby anyone can send us documents or text that needs to be made public. That URL is: http://www.naturalnews.com/newstips/NewsTips.asp
And for the FBI agents reading this, no I do not know any AntiSec operatives. Their identities are a total mystery to me. But I do believe they are for the most part people of conscience who only resort to hacking as a tool for social justice. And my guess is that they are growing stronger with each insult to freedom and justice that is committed by the federal government working in conspiracy with evil, destructive corporations.
My deepest wish is that we could all coexist in a world of true justice, where even those who claim to be authorities of the law are, themselves, subjected to those same laws. Much of what takes place in government today is outright runaway criminality. I ask: How do We the People stand a chance against runaway tyranny if not for the help of the faceless, nameless, anonymous defenders of justice who put their own freedom at risk to expose the truth that no one else will?
Funding the revolution against genetically engineered poison
By the way, when it comes to social justice, I’m also taking decisive action to expose the truth about Monsanto and its destructive technologies.
Jeffrey Smith of the Institute for Responsible Technology needs additional funding to finish the editing of a powerful film about GMOs. This film, once completed, will blow the lid off the GMO cover-up and may in fact finally turn the tides against GMOs once and for all.
The IRT needs funding to finish this film, so on behalf of NaturalNews, I have pledged $10,000 in matching donations to be used in the editing and finalization of this film. Your support is needed! Please consider donating any amount — $10 or more — at this article page:
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/blog/1853
With NaturalNews readers donating a cumulative total of at least $10,000, plus another $10,000 from NaturalNews, we can raise the $20K necessary to get this film completed! This is a hugely important film, and NaturalNews plans to help release the film and bring it millions of additional viewers.
So please consider supporting this with whatever donation you can. Thank you for your support, and remember that NaturalNews is working hard right alongside you to help Jeffrey get this film completed and released. There is no commercial gain for any of us in doing this. We do this out of a sense of social justice, not personal gain or profit.
For The Full Report Go To Natural News
Important Victories Won Over Monsanto, Other GMO Corporations
January 11, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
January 11, 2012
Natural News
By PF Louis
With all the bad news about Monsanto and other corporations who create and promote GMOs, here’s a couple of good news items from the last couple of years to relieve some doom and gloom. Hopefully, these victories against GMO companies, one by an individual farmer in Canada, the other by a large rice collective in the USA, will inspire others to hold their ground.
Normally, bully Monsanto sues small independent farmers, forcing them to pay fees for GMO plants that grew from various sources of GMO contamination, not by the farmer’s choice. But the expense and mental strain of lengthy legal procedures against a wealthy corporation with soulless attorneys is too much to bear. So many settle rather than go bankrupt with Monsanto seizing the farm.
A feisty Canadian commercial canola farmer, Percy Schmeiser, started his fight against Monsanto’s intimidation tactics in 1998. This is not a promotion of canola, but the story of a farmer who has used, saved, and developed his own seeds on his own land for over 40 years, and his David versus Goliath struggle.
After discovering his crops had been contaminated with GMO seeds from neighboring farms and passing Monsanto trucks, he was sued by Monsanto for patent infringement. Monsanto has been in the business of intimidating farmers with a similar fate by suing them for patent infringement after their fields were contaminated from GMO farms.
This intimidation and harassment has either bankrupted farmers or forced them into signing onto Monsanto’s seed plan. Big bully companies use lawsuits to financially destroy small businesses even if there is no actual violation. Schmeiser and his wife, both approaching 70, decided to fight it out on principle.
Patent law says there is no violation if a patented product is not used or stolen. After some back and forth court battles and appeals over ten years, Percy won. Monsanto agreed to settle out of court by paying for cleaning up Percy’s farm and not issue a gag order (customary with settlements), which enables Percy to continue touring with his message of resisting GMO and corporate intimidation. The agreement also left Monsanto liable for any recontamination of Percy’s farm.
Sometimes when a big guy goes after a trouble maker, the trouble maker gets it big. In April 2011, Riceland Foods won a major case against Bayer Crop Science in the Arkansas State Court System. The case involved contamination from an experimental, unapproved GM rice, Liberty Link. Its function is withstanding unlimited use of Bayer’s herbicide Liberty.
Click here for the full report from Natural News.
Documents Reveal U.S. Diplomats On Monsanto Payroll
January 11, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
January 11, 2012
Natural News
By Anthony Gucciardi
Biotech giant Monsanto has been genetically modifying the world’s food supply and subsequently breeding environmental devastation for years, but leaked documents now reveal that Monsanto has also deeply infiltrated the United States government. With leaked reports revealing how U.S. diplomats are actually working for Monsanto to push their agenda along with other key government officials, Monsanto’s grasp on international politics has never been clearer.
Amazingly, the information reveals that the massive corporation is also intensely involved in the passing and regulations concerning the very GM ingredients they are responsible for. In fact, the information released by WikiLeaks reveals just how much power Monsanto has thanks to key positions within the United States government and elsewhere. Not only was it exposed that the U.S. is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto with military-style trade wars, but that many U.S. diplomats actually work directly for Monsanto.
In 2007 it was requested that specific nations inside the European Union be punished for not supporting the expansion of Monsanto’s GMO crops. The request for such measures to be taken was made by Craig Stapleton, the United States ambassador to France and partner to George W. Bush. Despite mounting evidence linking Monsanto’s GM corn to organ damage and environmental devastation, the ambassador plainly calls for ‘target retaliation’ against those not supporting the GM crop. In the leaked documents, Stapleton states:
“Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices.”
The undying support of key players within the U.S. towards Monsanto is undeniably made clear not only in this release, but in the legislative decisions taken by organizations such as the FDA and USDA. Legislative decisions such as allowing Monsanto’s synthetic hormone Posilac (rBGH) to be injected into U.S. cows despite being banned in 27 countries. How did Monsanto pull this off?
Click here for the full report from Natural News.
You Can Either Pay Now, Or Pay Later…
December 20, 2011 by admin
Filed under Kevin's Blog
This is an example of why people in America are fat, disgusting pigs, and why you all have diabetes. It’s all because of processed food and fast food. Everyone gets high cholesterol and is dying of diabetes and has heart disease and is depressed.
Years ago, it was different because we were working in the fields. We were moving our body all day long. But now you wake up in the morning, hop in your car, drive to work, sit at a desk all day long. Then after work you get in the car, drive home, sit down in front of the TV and then you go to bed. Most people don’t move their body at all, there’s no physical movement.
So if you look at the average person who does nothing all day, how many calories should they be consuming a day? Any clue? Any idea? Well, I’ll give you the news, you should be consuming around 2000 calories a day, otherwise you’re going to gain weight.
Yours in health,
KT
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 8-13-11
Today, the director of Farmageddon, Kristin Canty, stops by to give you the inside story on what really happened during the Rawesome Foods raid and why her documentary is so important for every American to see! Plus, Thomas James of HempUSA.org stops by to discuss the amazing health benefits you could receive just by consuming hemp products on a regular basis.
Self Help:
Detoxify Your Body
Weight Loss Cure
Protect Yourself & Your Family
Health:
How Safe Are the Drugs in Your Medicine Cabinet?
Diet Sabotage: Nearly 1 In 5 Calorie Counts Wrong
Cargill Recalls Potentially Tainted Turkey
Study Shows That Hospitals Are More Dangerous Than Flying
Why ’100% Orange Juice’ Is Still Artificial
Prince Charles Branded a ‘Snake Oil Salesman’
Government:
Congress To Form The Debt “Super Committee”
Wealth:
Food Stamp Use Rises to Record 45.8 Million
Dow Plunges 500 Points
Global Stocks Tumble After U.S. Selloff
How to Survive the Stock Market’s Wild Ride
10 Signs The Double-Dip Recession Has Begun
Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Stand with KT!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 8-5-11
Today, Kevin delves deep into how scary America really is and why doing your homework before believing complete nonsense is so essential if you want to be successful. Plus, the director of Farmageddon, Kristin Canty, stops by to give you the inside story on what really happened during the Rawesome Foods raid and why her documentary is so important for every American to see!
Health:
Cargill Recalls Potentially Tainted Turkey
Study Shows That Hospitals Are More Dangerous Than Flying
Update:
A Small Rawesome Foods Victory
Wealth:
Food Stamp Use Rises to Record 45.8 Million
Dow Plunges 500 Points
Global Stocks Tumble After U.S. Selloff
How to Survive the Stock Market’s Wild Ride
Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Stand with KT!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!
G.E. Paid No Taxes in 2010
April 4, 2011 by admin
Filed under News Stories
April 4th, 2011
NYTimes.com
By: David Kocieniewski
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
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. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.
While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.
In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.
Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.
Yet many companies say the current level is so high it hobbles them in competing with foreign rivals. Even as the government faces a mounting budget deficit, the talk in Washington is about lower rates. President Obama has said he is considering an overhaul of the corporate tax system, with an eye to lowering the top rate, ending some tax subsidies and loopholes and generating the same amount of revenue. He has designated G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, as his liaison to the business community and as the chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and it is expected to discuss corporate taxes.
“He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Immelt, on his appointment in January, after touring a G.E. factory in upstate New York that makes turbines and generators for sale around the world.
A review of company filings and Congressional records shows that one of the most striking advantages of General Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks.
Over the last decade, G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law, from more generous depreciation schedules on jet engines to “green energy” credits for its wind turbines. But the most lucrative of these measures allows G.E. to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.
Company officials say that these measures are necessary for G.E. to compete against global rivals and that they are acting as responsible citizens. “G.E. is committed to acting with integrity in relation to our tax obligations,” said Anne Eisele, a spokeswoman. “We are committed to complying with tax rules and paying all legally obliged taxes. At the same time, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to legally minimize our costs.”
The assortment of tax breaks G.E. has won in Washington has provided a significant short-term gain for the company’s executives and shareholders. While the financial crisis led G.E. to post a loss in the United States in 2009, regulatory filings show that in the last five years, G.E. has accumulated $26 billion in American profits, and received a net tax benefit from the I.R.S. of $4.1 billion.
But critics say the use of so many shelters amounts to corporate welfare, allowing G.E. not just to avoid taxes on profitable overseas lending but also to amass tax credits and write-offs that can be used to reduce taxes on billions of dollars of profit from domestic manufacturing. They say that the assertive tax avoidance of multinationals like G.E. not only shortchanges the Treasury, but also harms the economy by discouraging investment and hiring in the United States.
“In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.”
The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.
The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.
That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.
The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.
G.E. officials say the donation was granted solely on the merit of the project. “The foundation goes to great lengths to ensure grant decisions are not influenced by company government relations or lobbying priorities,” Ms. Eisele said.
Mr. Rangel, who was censured by Congress last year for soliciting donations from corporations and executives with business before his committee, said this month that the donation was unrelated to his official actions.
Defying Reagan’s Legacy
General Electric has been a household name for generations, with light bulbs, electric fans, refrigerators and other appliances in millions of American homes. But today the consumer appliance division accounts for less than 6 percent of revenue, while lending accounts for more than 30 percent. Industrial, commercial and medical equipment like power plant turbines and jet engines account for about 50 percent. Its industrial work includes everything from wind farms to nuclear energy projects like the troubled plant in Japan, built in the 1970s.
Because its lending division, GE Capital, has provided more than half of the company’s profit in some recent years, many Wall Street analysts view G.E. not as a manufacturer but as an unregulated lender that also makes dishwashers and M.R.I. machines.
As it has evolved, the company has used, and in some cases pioneered, aggressive strategies to lower its tax bill. In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan overhauled the tax system after learning that G.E. — a company for which he had once worked as a commercial pitchman — was among dozens of corporations that had used accounting gamesmanship to avoid paying any taxes.
“I didn’t realize things had gotten that far out of line,” Mr. Reagan told the Treasury secretary, Donald T. Regan, according to Mr. Regan’s 1988 memoir. The president supported a change that closed loopholes and required G.E. to pay a far higher effective rate, up to 32.5 percent.
That pendulum began to swing back in the late 1990s. G.E. and other financial services firms won a change in tax law that would allow multinationals to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income. The change meant that if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.
Known as active financing, the tax break proved to be beneficial for investment banks, brokerage firms, auto and farm equipment companies, and lenders like GE Capital. This tax break allowed G.E. to avoid taxes on lending income from abroad, and permitted the company to amass tax credits, write-offs and depreciation. Those benefits are then used to offset taxes on its American manufacturing profits.
G.E. subsequently ramped up its lending business.
As the company expanded abroad, the portion of its profits booked in low-tax countries such as Ireland and Singapore grew far faster. From 1996 through 1998, its profits and revenue in the United States were in sync — 73 percent of the company’s total. Over the last three years, though, 46 percent of the company’s revenue was in the United States, but just 18 percent of its profits.
Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist for the trade publication Tax Analysts, said that booking such a large percentage of its profits in low-tax countries has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.”
G.E. officials say the disparity between American revenue and American profit is the result of ordinary business factors, such as investment in overseas markets and heavy lending losses in the United States recently. The company also says the nation’s workers benefit when G.E. profits overseas.
“We believe that winning in markets outside the United States increases U.S. exports and jobs,” Mr. Samuels said through a spokeswoman. “If U.S. companies aren’t competitive outside of their home market, it will mean fewer, not more, jobs in the United States, as the business will go to a non-U.S. competitor.”
The company does not specify how much of its global tax savings derive from active financing, but called it “significant” in its annual report. Stock analysts estimate the tax benefit to G.E. to be hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
“Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, who played a key role in those changes. “The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.’s rampant tax sheltering.”
