Former Vice President Dick Cheney became notorious during the Bush administration for maintaining financial ties with the contractor
Halliburton, which received numerous government contracts for projects in Iraq and after the Katrina Hurricane in New Orleans. This led to the overall impression on Americans that the Bush administration had become merely an arm of the ever wealthy military-industrial complex. It also propagated the popular misconception that the wealthier a person was, the more conservative-leaning they were.
Meet
George Kaiser, a 9.8 billion-dollar Oklahoma oil businessman and Chairman of BOK financial corporation. Forbes ranks him among the top 100 richest people in the world, perhaps because he's only paid taxes
one time since he hit it big! When he did manage to have a year without loopholing his way around the nation's tax code, it turned out to be for a measly 11 grand. Now I know what you're thinking -this guy
MUST be George Bush's uncle, or at the very least his best friend.....
Lately, and coincidentally, Kaiser has become an even bigger fan of Obama in the white house. You see his family foundation was invested in a solar energy company called
Solyndra - perhaps you've heard of it! Despite growing concerns that Solyndra wasn't going to be a profitable business, the company was
fast-tracked by the Obama administration to receive a loan from the American people of around five hundred million dollars.
Subsequently, the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, and refinanced it's loan (with the help of a few other kind fellows at the Obama administration) to allow it's investors -including Kaiser- to receive payout to cover their losses before the taxpayers did.
To throw a little more fire onto the flames of Solyndra, the company is also being
sued by all of it's employes -who were immediately laid off amidst lofty Obama promises of green jobs!
In response Obama continues to say he has no regrets about the
Solyndra loan. And why would he? If the man writing the checks for your campaign costs the taxpayers a few hundred million dollars, it's certainly going to be worth it if it keeps you in office for another four years when the campaign bill comes around again...
Obama has expressed his support for the ideals of equality embraced at the wall street protests, but why then would he back a loan which is clearly covering losses for the top .01% using the taxes from the other 99.99%? Was this a desperate attempt to pump money into a struggling Solar industry? Or a ploy to quickly produce figures to refer to on the idea of "green jobs"? Either way, Im sure you could think of a great deal of better ways to spend a chunk of change like that.
Perhaps the .01% extends beyond people like George Kaiser, who merely wants to avoid paying taxes on his billions of dollars. While Kaiser controls around 9.8 Billion dollars of Americas wealth, there's a gentleman sitting in the oval office who has access to trillions upon trillions of American wealth from past present, and years to come. And I'm quite sure if there was a group of angry people urinating, defecating, and camping for a month outside the white house lawn they would be dealt away with in a much swifter fashion than the ones on wall street
(who are enjoying 5 star meals)
What do you think? Would you rather be a tax-dodging oil baron, defense contractor, or the man in charge of which of the two gets your money??
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