The Nation: US Uncut Takes the Stage (mobilizing against corporate tax cheats)

Johann Hari's recent Nation essay detailed Great Britain's growing popular movement demanding an alternative to forcing the poor and middle class to pay for an economic crisis caused by the rich.

The group, UK Uncut, has opposed government cuts, targeted companies accused of avoiding millions of pounds in taxes and taken its message far beyond the usual precincts of progressives. "The UK Uncut message is simple," Hari wrote. "If you want to sell in our country, you pay our taxes. They are the membership fee for a civilized society." This Saturday will see UK Uncut's first national day of action with protesters expected to bring more than 30 branches of Barclays Bank to a standstill.

Hari's article also noted the potential for a US Uncut, a progressive Tea Party, if you will. There's certainly no shortage of targets, as this slide show highlighting eight egregious US companies receiving federal dollars from the TARP bailout while hiding their own profits in overseas tax havens demonstrates.

-snip-

Now, in the best tradition of advocacy journalism and the core values of The Nation, Hari's article has sparked the potential powder-keg of disenchanted Americans. As the Guardian reported today, Carl Gibson of Jackson, Mississippi recently started the first US UNcut group after reading Hari's piece in The Nation, and there are now at least 20 chapters coast to coast.

-snip-

http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-uks-progressive-tea-party

... Think of it as an open-source protest, or wikiprotest. It uses Twitter as the basic software, but anyone can then mold the protest. The Western left has been proud of its use of social media and blogging, but all too often this hasn’t amounted to much more than clicktivism. By contrast, these protesters have tried at every turn to create a picture of George Osborne, Cameron’s finance minister, sitting in his office, about to sign off on another big tax break for a rich person, paid for by cuts to the rest of us. Is a big Facebook group going to stop him? No. Is an angry buzz on the blogosphere going to stop him? No. But what these protesters have done—putting all the online energy into the streets and straight into the national conversation—just might. And by creating a media buzz, it draws in people from far beyond the tech-savvy Twitterverse, with older activist groups—from trade unions to charities—clamoring to join.

...

Can this model be transferred to the United States? Remember that a few months ago, Brits were as pessimistic about the possibility of a left-wing rival to the Tea Party as Americans are now. Of course, there are differences in political culture and tax law structure and enforcement, but there are also strong parallels. In the United States the same three crucial factors that created UK Uncut are in place. First, at the state level, Americans are facing severe budget cuts, causing the recession to worsen. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says state governors are acting like “50 Herbert Hoovers…slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.”

Second, most of these cuts could be prevented simply by requiring superrich individuals and corporations to pay their taxes. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) calculated in 2008 that eighty-three of the 100 biggest US corporations hide fortunes in tax havens. And even without these shelters, the rich have been virtually exempted from taxes across America. Billionaire Warren Buffet recently conducted a straw poll in his office and found he paid a lower proportion of his income in taxes than anybody else there—and considerably less than his secretary. Indeed, tax expert Nicholas Shaxson says that in many ways “America itself is a tax haven for many rich people.” WikiLeaks is poised to release the details of a whole raft of corporations and banks using tax havens in the Cayman Islands, laying out the dodging for all to see.

And third, public opinion is firmly behind going after the rich and corporations. A poll in January for 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair asked Americans which policy they would choose to reduce the deficit. By far the most popular, chosen by 61 percent of respondents, was to increase taxes on the rich. The next most popular, chosen by 20 percent, was to cut military spending. Other polls bear this out.

...