The Hightower Report

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CORPORATE TAX EVADERS

You might remember way back in ancient history – back in 2002 – when George W. was posing as a corporate reformer. He puffed out his chest, focused his beady eyes right into the TV camera, and said that he was sending "a clear message to every dishonest corporate leader: You will be exposed and you will be punished."

Strong words. But as happens so often with W., he talks big ... but wilts when it comes to action. For example, one specific promise he's made repeatedly is that he'll get tough with corporate tax cheats. But an independent analysis of IRS data by experts at Syracuse University finds that there has been a sharp decline of such tax enforcement under Bush, with fewer audits, fewer prosecutions, and fewer penalties. During the last decade, IRS audits of the largest corporations have fallen almost by half, and the agency's enforcement focus in Bush's tenure has shifted from corporations and wealthy investors to you-know-who – us ordinary working stiffs.

This comes at a time when corporate sharpies have created all sorts of new tax dodges, allowing these scofflaws to shrink their tax payments to historically low levels. The General Accounting Office reports that in the four years prior to Bush's term, 60% of large corporations paid no income taxes – zero.

Since then, George has steadily whacked at the corporate tax rate, while also gouging new tax loopholes into the law at the behest of corporate lobbyists. His latest boondoggle is a special-interest tax bill that slashes corporate taxes by another $170 billion – including special loopholes for TV and movie producers, liquor distillers, drug companies, and even Oldsmobile dealers.

Every dollar of taxes that they dodge is a dollar that we you-know-whos have to make up – either by paying higher taxes or receiving less in essential public services. These wealthy elite are shirking their responsibility to help maintain the society that makes their wealth possible.

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TRUMPING TRUMP

Am I the only one who wants to say to Donald Trump: Please, Donnie, please take your orange-dyed, bad comb-over hairdo and your grotesquely inflated ego ... and go away!

"The Donald," as he likes to be known, is the self-promoting, high-society celebrity who vamps shamelessly as a hard-nosed CEO on the "reality" TV show called The Apprentice. He also has a book out called Trump: How to Get Rich.

Both on the show and in the book, Donnie poses as a very rich, successful businessman. He is rich, but he didn't get there himself. Instead, he got rich the old-fashioned way: He inherited a New York City real estate fortune from his daddy. And as for being a business success, you might want to ask investors in his struggling casino empire about that.

Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts is the one business venture that he launched on his own – his claim to corporate success. It's crumbling. Worse, it's about to crash. Only two weeks after signing a new contract with NBC to pose as a business mogul on The Apprentice for another season, his real-life corporation announced a quarterly loss of $49 million. Indeed, Trump Hotels has never been profitable in its decadelong history, and it is stuck so deeply in some $2 billion of debt that Trump's own auditors say there is "substantial doubt" about whether it can survive.

Donnie says it's not his fault: "This has nothing to do with me," he whined. Yoo-hoo, Your Trumpness – you're the CEO and chairman of the board! Investors and analysts lay the blame squarely at "The Donald's" feet, accusing him of ineffective management, slipshod financial practices, and a lack of competitive business vision. From his own board members and creditors, the CEO is about to hear the trademark phrase he uses on his TV show: "You're fired!"

It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. What a fraud.