Truly.
Still when I read that article about them not wanting to pay taxes I thought the exact same thing.

I'm guessing that you've never watched your multibillion dollar corporation employer with 60% market share whine that your $11.00/hr job just costs them too much. You've never had to train your replacement from 10,000 mi away, and have to deal with your customers complaints about the service from those foreign replacements fall on deaf ears when management went ahead and did it anyway.

If America stops producing things, if we become only consumers - then we WILL become the third-world country the RW wants us to be.

Aren't we alredy in the service economy?

Love you sign line, btw.

But this is systemic.

almost all of these greedy and huge corporations play games with their taxes and don't pay their fair share. That should have been rectified a long time ago, but of course never will be dealt with.

Apple, apparently, wants to come back. But it is publicly owned and could lose a lot of money doing this, and that loss will make shareholders angry--they are the unpatriotic ones because they'd rather the company stayed out rather than come back and lose them money. Which means that all that can or should be done is to change the rules. Either let Apple come back at a lower rate, which puts them in the U.S. and keeps them here paying future taxes to us, or change the rules that make remaining off-shore beneficial to them and detrimental to us.

And while we're on the subject, Apple used to be a very patriotic company. They made all their computers in the U.S. Guess what? Everyone bought the cheap ones made in China by all those other companies. Guess what? Apple, after kicking out Steve Jobs, figured the only way to stay alive was to make cheaper computers in China like everyone else. Which they did, putting American companies out of business and making it impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. Which is to say, if Apple is not a U.S. company like it used to be, like it stared out, giving jobs to those who made chips and computers here in the U.S....the fault is all ours. Our lack of patriotism led to this result.

A person may patriotically want to die for their country, but a corporation is not a person--from the corporation's point of view, it does them no good to be patriotic if it means they go under. So a corporation's seeming patriotism or lack thereof is only a reflection of what we allow or don't allow them to do. Like rewarding them for investing in the U.S. or punishing them if they don't. In the end, we've only ourselves and our own lack of patriotism if a corporation isn't doing as much for our country as we feel it ought to be doing.

and that's why the board at Disney wanted him off.

As far as "our" lack of patriotism, you'll have to speak

for yourself or some others as I don't have a lack in that department.

workers have become.

If it came to the topic of labor unions, Michael Eisner and Steve Jobs were in agreement, so was Bob Igor. The only difference of opinion was on direction. Eisner's ego is legendary, and he didn't like any potential threat to his power, especially from someone as well known as Steve Jobs.

What I heard from Thom Hartmann on his show was that

Disney has a board of directors, Jobs was on it, and the "board"

was pro-union or representative of unionized workers,

while Jobs was virulently anti-union and they wanted to get rid

of him for that

However the board of directors votes, Eisner can always out-vote them if it came down to a confrontation. If Eisner called for a vote to get rid of a board member, the rest of the board could oppose his move, but since he controls a majority of the shares of the company, his single vote would out-weigh all of them. The person would be kicked off, and somebody else representing that bloc of shares would be appointed by the board as a replacement, typically another shareholder. Since Eisner controls the majority of shares, he basically picks whoever he wants, and the board goes along with it. If they play ball with Eisner, they get to stay on the board and collect the perks of being a board member. Anybody who challenges Eisner's vision and control won't.

The notion that Disney has a board of directors that is pro-labor is a bit daft. Walt Disney himself was notoriously anti-labor as well as anti-semitic. He had absolutely no tolerance for workers forming labor unions in his workplaces, but that was the typical attitude of major employers in his day. He was a true businessman of his time.

This is the same company that employs an electronic bull whip to scare workers into putting in very high levels of productivity that, frankly, aren't sustainable and is cruel on the workers.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lopez-disney-20111018

I don't know who gave that information to Thom about Disney, but from what I saw working for that company, it seems far more likely that Jobs was kicked off the board of directors for challenging Eisner's supremacy, not because he was against labor unions. That sounds more like a cover story than the actual truth because the actual truth may be far too ugly for Disney to have out in the open.

The idea that Walt Disney was an anti Semite is a myth. He was hostile to unions but in the end Disney animators unionized in the 40s and the studio has been a union shop ever since. As for anti semitism, his chief songwriters, the Sherman bros, were Jewish and Disney met with them every single day. In the mid 50s Disney was named Man of the Year by the LA B'nai Broth. The anti Semite slur derives most from repetitive jokes on Family Guy and Robot Chicken (who got it from Robert Smigels TV Fun house). Disney, the son of a socialist, was in fact very left leaning early in his career. It was only after he hit it big and became "Uncle" Walt that he became antagonistic towards unions.

I had always heard that Disney was a redneck anti communist prick!

gopiscrap wrote: "I had always heard that Disney was a redneck anti communist prick!"

Nope. A rock-solid conservative for much of his adult life, but not a super-villain. Disney was deep. He was a cartoonist, don't forget, growing up on Winsor McCay and Ham Fischer. He drove an ambulance in France during WWI at 16, before the USA got in the war. He was the most experimental and innovative filmmaker of his time, called the greatest living artist in the world by Salvador Dali. He lost millions on artistic experiments like Fantasia and most of all was a genuine Utopian, with visions of planned communities and technology that would eliminate poverty and hunger (early designs for EPCOT strongly resemble contemporaneous Soviet planned communities).

I kind of hate what the corporation that bears his name has become.

Do you have an opinion of what Walt would think of what they do now; is he rolling in his grave?

a share. Our tax laws coupled with no accountability for corporations who horde billions offshore are a good place to start, but I would argue that Apple et al, need to pay as much of a fair share of taxes as an autoworker or teacher.

Cheap labor products sold at American-made prices? Their cash account seems to prove this.

your post could easily be attributed to any computer company out there, that is why I think your post is garbage.

Because of all the Steve Jobs worshippers here who don't get it.

Hells bels and GE, and a few other at least thirty companies who are engaging in same practices and lobbying to get it done.

By the way the target of your hate actually paid some taxes last year, unlike oh GE.

Apple in any particular way except they are the company that made the news declaring they would not repatriate money off shore in order to avoid paying taxes.

found on maps. That's why most of them are so dead set on turning America into another fracked up domain of cheap labor for them to exploit on global markets. They give their money, networks and power to the politicians who best emulate themselves. Indeed, they have a fiduciary responsibility to do it on behalf of the corporations shareholders who value only the dollar signs they are provided.

Almost literally. I truly think this is true. The only hope is to make sure you and your's are educated and able to either be an investor themselves, or be able to self-sustain their lifestyle.

That any type of work, purchase or investment that benefits a corporation feeds into the system that is literally shredding the planet & people to pieces in the quest of the almighty dollar.
To have that knowledge and still take part in it is in my estimation the very antithesis of being a liberal. The stark opposite of being someone who believes we have a duty not just to ourselves but to our fellow travelers, the wilderness & wildlife and to those who will come after us and is not willing to trade any of it for self gratification.

yippppeee

But hey, apparently you're obsessed with Apple. An obsession that is verging on the unhealthy.

also refuse to return money to the US in order to avoid paying taxes? Geesh.

however; failure to share your jingoistic fervor is hardly one of them.

in wanting to keep jobs at home, and if another country expressed

similar sentiments, I doubt you'd refer to it that way.

or refuses to pay their fair share of taxes on earnings overseas are unpatriotic.

And doubly so when they wrap themselves in the Flag and lobby to keep it that way.

in my opinion has a deep seated mental block and a personal issue with Apple, their devices and its buyers. These kinds of threads that just single out Apple represent some kind of twisted, repressed and unadmitted hatred for Apple users. I don't know what it is. They are obviously looking for any angle they can to attack Apple users through Apple. Perhaps they don't know how to use Apple devices and feel embarrassed. Or because Apple devices used to be more expensive (not so much now with the iPad price drop) that you associate the "spoiled rich" with Apple products? Or maybe you were made to feel ashamed of your own non Apple devices? I don't know which it is, maybe all, but I do know it's primarily a personal self-esteem issue with yourselves and you should seriously seek help.

"but I do know it's primarily a personal self-esteem issue with yourselves and you should seriously seek help"


Are you KIDDING?...If one doesn't like Apple one has "self-esteem issues and should seriously seek help"??

Thanks for the laugh...That is the funniest thing I've read all day!

Corporations owe a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to legally minimize their tax bills. Complaining about corporations acting legally is like complaining about people who use the mortgage interest deduction, or other legal means to reduce their tax bills. So don't complain about the corporations, complain about the laws that allow this to happen.

Purchase only electronics equipment proudly labeled "Made in the USA".

might be another way to put it.

The Steve Jobs worship is absolutely disgusting. He was a slick salesman and infamously anti union.

Freely around this country? ??

Safe, regulated airports, etc.

Pay fuel taxes, tolls and vehicle license fees so it isn't free.