I can't quite believe that Rick Ungar is allowed to post this stuff on the Forbes blog, but he's been doing it for awhile, so they must have noticed by now. This is some infuriating news, don't you think? Instead of keeping their mouths shut and counting their blessings, they're yelling for austerity cuts for the rest of us while they're making money hand over fist:

Yesterday, I wrote about how the GOP is falsely pushing the argument that America’s corporations are overtaxed. I included some great data courtesy of conservative commentator Bruce Bartlett whose New York Times piece did an extraordinary job of putting the lie to the Republican assertions.

Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo.

Here are the bullet points presented by the report:

• From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion.

• All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years.

• Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period.

According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate.

Right after the President's speech yesterday, John Cole wrote this:

As good of an idea as it is, the merits of the plan will never be discussed. Ever. That just isn’t how our media rolls- it’s right there in the second paragraph. All Republicans will have to do is dismiss this as an “election year stunt,” and the ground has already been readied by the Politico and elsewhere by calling the WH desperate, and our media will go into full-on horse-race mode.

And of course, he's right. Here, watch this little snippet from yesterday's speech again. It's short, but entertaining:

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Of course, John Boehner comes straight out of the gate with this:

Republicans have targeted an unemployment rate that continues to hover above 9 percent despite last year's economic stimulus plan. "If we've learned anything from the past 18 months, it's that we can't spend our way to prosperity," Boehner said.

When Forbes bloggers even come down hard with the criticism, maybe it's time for Republicans to rethink that knee-jerk thing.

The GOP’s constant kneejerk rejection of economic ideas simply for the sake of Saying No has as much to do with our current malaise as anything being done wrong in the White House. The newly-minted fiscal conservatives on the Republican side of the aisle, many of whom are themselves responsible for the $3 trillion and counting Iraq War, are like the old men in the Muppet Show who heckle from the balcony.

It’s naysaying for naysaying’s sake at this point and I hope voters will remember that their favorite Republican All-Stars are equally complicit in the crime that is 15 million unemployed 3 years into a recession.

Obama's proposal and Boehner's rejection aren't really news. It's been thus from day one, when Republicans decided the best they could do would be to simply obstruct. But now it has an added dimension: It plays straight into the current horserace narrative, and the press could not wait to jump right on that bandwagon, just like John Cole predicted.

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At last, someone has seen the Emperor's New Clothes and called them what they are. Paul Krugman tears down the myth of the 'angry populist movement' and gives a peek into who they really are.

Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office.

[...]

For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It’s one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, “anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.” When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.

At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable.

Oh, those poor, poor babies, having to pay higher taxes after enjoying some of the lowest historical tax rates ever. And the little darlings seem to have short memories, too, because they can't seem to process facts very well. Especially facts that show empirically and beyond all doubt that higher tax rates actually make them richer, not poorer.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Oh yeah. I forgot. :)

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You see, people get mad when there's 10% unemployment and a quarter of mortgages are underwater. They get even angrier when they see their government bail out the gigantic financial institutions that got us into this mess in the first place. And furthermore, they get super-duper-wicked-pissy-forever mad when the government decides to spit directly into our faces and tell us that we've entered a glorious Recovery Summer.

And when people are this angry at their government, they simply don't give a damn how crazy the opposing party is -- they're gonna vote for them anyway. David Brooks, in a rare insightful column, makes this point well:

This doesn’t mean that the Tea Party influence will be positive for Republicans over the long haul. The movement carries viruses that may infect the G.O.P. in the years ahead. Its members seek traditional, conservative ends, but they use radical means. Along the way, the movement has picked up some of the worst excesses of modern American culture: a narcissistic sense of victimization, an egomaniacal belief in one’s own rightness and purity, a willingness to distort the truth so that every conflict becomes a contest of pure good versus pure evil.

The Tea Party style is beginning to replicate itself in parts of the conservative world. Dinesh D’Souza’s Forbes cover article, “How Obama Thinks,” contained the sort of untethered assertions that have become the lingua franca of this movement. Obama got his subversive radicalism from his father’s grave, D’Souza postulated: “He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and freedom are code words for economic plunder.” The fact that Newt Gingrich embraced this offensive theory is a sign of how severely the normal intellectual standards have been weakened.

But that damage is all in the future. Right now, the Tea Party doesn’t matter. The Republicans don’t matter. The economy and the Democrats are handing the G.O.P. a great, unearned revival. Nothing, it seems, is more scary than one-party Democratic control.

Here's the analogy I'll use:

Let's say you've found that your spouse has been secretly cheating on you for years on end without your knowledge. Your first instinct is to head down to the nearest dive bar and hook up with every sleazy person you can find, all the while relishing the angry revenge you're taking on your wayward partner. Sure, you know that the people you're shacking up with seem to scratch themselves a lot and some of them seem to have severe mental illnesses, particularly the one that keeps mumbling about the coming onslaught of sinister mice people. But that's not important, see, because you've been wronged and this is your time to seek righteous vengeance.

Two weeks later, of course, you're itching all over and rushing to the doctor to get an STD Value-Pack treatment.

So America, what I'm trying to say is this: I understand why you want to boot out the Democrats and I understand that you don't care who you have to vote for. But dudes, you're gonna wake up with crabs. Just be ready for it.

The top ten think tank directors make a between $450,000 and nearly $1 million per year. Conservative think tanks seem to pay better, probably because they're funded with a lot of money from the Billionaire Boys' Club.

I wonder how I can get one of those jobs. I can think. I spend all day thinking. Maybe that's the problem.

Forbes is a magazine so bad, I once canceled a free subscription. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they've published articles attacking what they call "ObamaCare."

I especially like this one, "ObamaCare Can Punish You for Being Healthy." Now, you would think of the audience that reads Forbes, they would agree - but the comments are overwhelmingly critical of the author's outright hackery. (Which makes me wonder: if readers of a magazine like Forbes are so critical of the health care system, where are the calls opposing reform coming from? Hmm.)

Anyway, here's a sample:

This has got to be one of the worst articles I have seen on Forbes. I am a registered Republican and no left winger but what a crock. The assumption is that the HMO system motivates people to live a more healthy life. God has anybody looked at Americans in the last 40 years! We have a country full of Obese, Unhealthy, entitlement mentality citizens. On the other hand looking at countries like Japan which have partially subsidized health care similar (but not the same) to what the Obama administration is offering has allowed Japan to become one of the healthies countries in the world. They live longer than anywhere else. It is because you can get regular check ups that Doctors are able to influence people with bad habits more regularly to adjust or face the consequences. I know this problem and the laws are MUCH MORE complex than just this, but the logic behind parts of this article are pretty sad.

Or this one:

Will you stop publishing biased articles? First, a piece about the 10 best blue collar jobs -- but you fail to mention that these jobs are all held by men. Then, this slick article about how the healthy will be punished by the prospect of decent health insurance coverage for all. I'll have you know that I have had allergies to dust and mites all of my life. That is considered a "pre-existing" condition. Yep -- something minor treated with allegra is in the same category as a serious condition such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer. My untreated assault as LAUSD while substitute-teaching a PE class with 53 students is also considered a pre-existing condition. But the District's insurance has been stalling treatment for more than a year and when they finally approved it, they approved it for one day two weeks ago. That is absolutely ridiculous. You should be ashamed for misleading the public and writing complete falsehoods.

Or this:

I have no idea where you can get health insurance that tailors your premium to your fitness. My employer (300,000 employees) certainly doesn't offer it and I doubt if most other employers do either. Since I'm tied to my employers' offered plans, it doesn't matter if "someone" out there offers it, I have limited choices. If I could get it, it would probably be like my life insurance- my doctor says I'm extremely healthy but because I have a condition that "can" be a problem, I pay outrageous rates for life insurance. I don't need that for health insurance, too.

Get the picture? Even relatively well-off Americans are unhappy with their very expensive, unreliable health care coverage and see it as inherently unfair - because it is.

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Michael Ozanian, a Forbes national editor who I've posted about before. (FOX's Ozanian compares Hillary to Goebbels ) has a ludicrous view of what the middle class is in America, but why wouldn't he---he's a Saturday FOX Stock regular on Forbes on FOX and they never can tell the truth. The segment was from a couple of weeks ago that focused on VP Biden saying that Unions help the middle class and I just had to get this up. These rich Wall Streeters hate unions so they come up with bogus info to lie through the show. One idiot on the panel says benefits are robust in the private sector. Another says union member shouldn't be so antagonistic to their employers. For who? But Ozanian is the worst of the bunch and he gets rewarded with another show. Right Wingers take care of each other.

Ozanian: In general Unions have never worked. They have been detriment to the economy as Jack pointed out.

Asman: What about a hundred years ago, they weren't a detriment to the economy a hundred years ago.

Ozanian: You wanna go back to the way we were a hundred years ago?

There was a time when Unions did some good.

Ozanian: If you're in the middle class int this country, you have two cars, you have a house, you have some investment portfolio, you have very high standards for your food that you eat. That, you don't get in any to the other countries with high unions so you can take your safety net and stick it.

Asman: Give Neil a chance.

Neil Weinberg: As a Forbes editor you can say that that is average, two cars and a big house. 50,000 a year. I'm sorry, the average American worker does not feel wealthy, does not feel comfortable

Asman: It's still better than China where middle class income is at 3000dollars a year.

So now the standard we have to judge ourselves, the richest country in the world is China, who have no human rights? We're lucky we don't make 3K a year. OMG. David Asman sure makes an ass out of himself. I'm so glad we all eat like pigs and don't need any security to fall back on. I think all these Stock show pricks should have their salaries posted directly under their names whenever they go on these shows if they are going to lie with abandon like this.

Ozanian also is part of a new show called "Sports Money." Please leave him some comments.

By the way, Quentin Hardy is quite good on these telecasts even though I cut him out of this one. Here's his Facebook if you want to leave him a nice message.

HorsesAss: French aerospace enthusiast, John McCain.

Daily Howler: During the 2004 Republican convention in New York, a certain saint threw himself a birthday bash. Check out the guest list.

Beat the Press: Can't the media find any economists who don't think that handing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the big banks and the incredibly rich people who own and manage them is a good idea?

Lance Mannion: The war that will never be lost as long as we stay there until the sun dies.

HOLY CRAP: Bad Moon Rising: A true story of Washington gone mad...Unless he's going to actually govern, Jesus is not relevant to the presidential race, but religious pandering has always worked...Souled Out...Theocracy Rejected...Southern Baptist Ethics...Interfaith Alliance Media Roundup...Randy Forbes and Military Chaplains...Seven sensationalist sins...Sam Harris on religion and modernity...Pot pourri

PBS's NOW:

How does a democracy decide to wage war? At 8:30 pm (check local
listings) on Friday, December 7 - the very day Pearl Harbor was attacked
by Japanese warplanes 66 years ago - David Brancaccio interviews
filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and the Rev. James Forbes Jr. about
Burns and Novick's epic World War II documentary "The War". Looking to
the past as a mirror to the present, the four discuss how the waging of
war intersects with our notion of democracy.

"It's incumbent upon a democratic society to evaluate what the
arithmetic is -- the cost of war," Burns tells the group.

See the full show on the NOW website

In addition, in a web-exclusive interview, NOW speaks to BeliefNet's Dan Gilgoff, who shares his insight into the effect of Mitt Romney's speech on religion, the role of faith in the 2008 presidential race, and how America's faithful are reacting. And take note, all you Ron Paul fans: NOW is focusing on Paul and his campaign next week.

Forbes says so, but Princess Sparklepony says it's clearly a typo.