... on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing - A UK Socialist's blog

… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

After Trump Tax Cuts, Major Corporations Pay Less than Ever
Article by Amy Hanauer republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Inequality is soaring, prices are high, and instead of combatting the affordability crisis, this Congress and this president are passing laws that enrich the richest and abandon the rest of us,” writes Hanauer.
(Image: Collage Generator)
Who bears the cost of these giant companies paying such a pittance? The American people.
President Trump and his allies in Congress, across two presidential terms, have broken the federal corporate income tax.
They reduced the statutory tax rate to its lowest level since 1939 and lavishly exempted an enormous share of corporate income from taxation. The results?
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Last year, the largest profitable corporations in the country paid the smallest share of their profits in federal income taxes since the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the organization I head, began analyzing this over 40 years ago. Extraordinarily profitable companies paid very little and, shockingly, 114 corporations paid nothing at all.
It is likely that most of these corporate CEOs didn’t break any laws. They don’t have to. Their profligate campaign spending elects candidates who are beholden to them.
Who bears the cost of corporations paying such a pittance? The American people.
Our findings should alarm anyone who thinks enormous companies ought to contribute to the government of the country that enables them to profit so much. The report takes the Fortune 1000 and S&P 500 lists of the largest U.S. corporations and examines the 706 of them that reported profits and disclosed enough information to allow analysis of their 2025 federal income tax.
What stands out is not only the number of huge entities paying little or nothing, but the household names.
American Airlines, 3M, Citigroup, CVS, Doordash, Duke Energy, GoDaddy, H&R Block, Hasbro, Honeywell, Live Nation, Palantir, Southwest Airlines, Tesla, United Airlines, and Walt Disney are just some of the 114 companies that paid no federal income tax in 2025.
It wasn’t because they had a bad year. Tesla paid no tax on profits of $5.7 billion, giving Elon Musk his money’s worth from hundreds of millions in political spending. Citigroup paid no tax on profits of $4.4 billion. CVS paid nothing on $8 billion. It’s a nice deal if you can get it.
Along with no-tax corporations, there are plenty of low-tax ones: On top of the 114 zero tax companies, 144 more paid less than 7 percent on their income. Their average rate was 3.1 percent.
This list includes Amazon, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, ExxonMobil, J.P. Morgan-Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Microsoft, News Corp., Uber, and many more. Again… profitable companies all.
On average, the 706 corporations in the ITEP report paid 10.4 percent of their profits in federal corporate income tax in 2025, the lowest level in at least 40 years. One reason is that the legal rate is lower than it’s been in over 80 years, down from 35 percent to 21 percent in President Trump’s first term. On top of that are tax subsidies, the breaks that exempt huge profits so corporations pay even less than 21 percent of their profits in taxes.
Every company in our study was profitable. The 706 corporations reported $1.88 trillion in domestic profits last year. At the pre-Trump rate of 35 percent, they would have paid $658 billion in taxes. Between the reduction in the rate and the subsidies, these corporations saved more than $460 billion.
The corporate tax slashing is happening even as federal spending cuts bludgeon our communities.
It is likely that most of these corporate CEOs didn’t break any laws. They don’t have to. Their profligate campaign spending elects candidates who are beholden to them. Their lobbying dictates what elected officials should do. And they profit from the laws that Congress and the President deliver.
The $460 billion in taxes saved by these 706 corporations could have been used to benefit the American people and tackle some of our biggest policy problems. It could have bought Medicaid coverage for more than 55 million people, Social Security for more than 18 million retired workers, or childcare for more than 34 million children.
The corporate tax slashing is happening even as federal spending cuts bludgeon our communities. While Trump’s 2025 tax law will cut $1 trillion in taxes for the richest 1 percent over the next decade, it will also chop $1 trillion from healthcare, forcing higher health insurance costs for Americans and eliminating insurance entirely for millions. Social Security will be insolvent by 2032 unless Congress allocates more resources. And childcare remains a cost-prohibitive essential for young working families.
Enough is enough. Inequality is soaring, prices are high, and instead of combatting the affordability crisis, this Congress and this president are passing laws that enrich the richest and abandon the rest of us.
Article by Amy Hanauer republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
3 November 2026
Britain must sanction Israel, not just its settlers
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/10/30/britain-must-sanction-israel-not-just-its-settlers
Israeli forces block a road leading to a Palestinian olive grove, having declared the area a closed military zone, in the village of Deir Jarir in the occupied West Bank on October 21, 2026 [AFP]
Israeli forces detained our parliamentary delegation and barred us from the West Bank. The violence we went to investigate is Israeli state policy
By Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South.
This week I tried to enter the illegally occupied West Bank, along with two other British parliamentarians and an international delegation of observers. We were all interrogated and detained by Israeli forces for nearly eight hours and finally prevented from crossing the border.
Our unpleasant experience pales in comparison to the daily experience of Palestinians living under occupation. Year after year, decade after decade, Palestinians have faced not simply inconvenience but a systematic attempt to eradicate their existence. We have seen a genocide in its most brutal form in Gaza. But in the West Bank we see a slow-motion form of ethnic cleansing, perpetrated by Israeli forces and their settler militias.
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Action needed now
The UK’s announcement of sanctions is important. But the sanctions need to be enacted rapidly; we simply cannot wait six months.
There are three priorities.
First, the foreign secretary’s sanctions package must be enacted in the broadest way possible. The core problem here is not simply about fanatical settlers. It is state policy. Israel’s government has used settler militias to carry out brutal attacks on Palestinians and their land. It is therefore the state that must face sanctions.
What is more, stopping the construction of new settlements is not enough. We must make the whole settlement economy unviable, and roll back decades of apartheid. We have ample opportunity to do so. The text of Britain’s sanctions regulations suggests the government can sanction companies that profit from the illegal settlements. We must do so. And while attention has focussed on companies bidding for the E1 settlement, we also need sanctions targeting entities that help facilitate the maintenance of the illegal settlements that already exist. This should include companies that provide finance, insurance and surveillance technologies to the settlements and the infrastructure around them.
Second, although the government has confirmed that it will stop all arms sales to Israel that materially contribute to the occupation, components for F-35 jets are still allowed to reach Israel, helping keep those planes in the air over Gaza and the West Bank. Arms licences for aircraft that help train the very forces that oversee the occupation also continue. These loopholes must be closed. Let us be frank – we should not be selling weapons to a military which is perpetrating both a genocide and apartheid.
Finally, we cannot forget Gaza. The government’s changes to the Global Human Rights sanctions regime empower it to sanction actors involved in the blocking of humanitarian aid. With Palestinians in Gaza facing disease and starvation this winter, the government must act quickly. This is not simply about individual fanatics blocking trucks; it is state policy, for which Israeli ministers must face sanctions.
And it goes far beyond emergency aid, which will simply keep Palestinians on the verge of starvation. Gaza needs to be rebuilt, and for this the siege must end. Until it does, a full package of sanctions should be applied.
…
See the original article at https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/10/30/britain-must-sanction-israel-not-just-its-settlers
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.
Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
3 November 2026
Healey suggests Labour won’t keep manifesto pledge to end youth minimum wage gap
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/healey-suggests-labour-wont-keep-manifesto-pledge-end-youth-minimum-wage-gap
[John Healey]
CHANCELLOR John Healey refused to say today whether Labour will meet its manifesto commitment to end the “discriminatory” minimum wage gap for young people.
In 2024 Labour committed to closing the gap between the adult minimum wage and pay for 18 to 20-year-olds, but in last week’s Budget, Mr Healey said that younger workers would see the same 3.9 per cent rise as older workers, leaving a £1.94 hourly difference between 18- to 20-year-olds (£11.27) and those aged 21 and over (£13.21).
Unions have strongly opposed the minimum wage gap for young workers and warned the government against breaking its pledge to equalise pay.
Asked whether Labour may break the commitment on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg today, Mr Healey said: “There’s no question about whether or if: it’s a question of when. It’s a question of how fast. And I want to make sure that we can look hard at those trade-offs that inevitably are there between jobs and wages.
“I want to take business, I want to take trade unions with me and with the government, because together we have to get into what at the moment is a moral shame on this nation: a million youngsters written off, without any prospect of being helped into work and making a contribution to this country for the future.”
…
Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/healey-suggests-labour-wont-keep-manifesto-pledge-end-youth-minimum-wage-gap
Andy Burnham brings absurd comedy to politics
3 November 2026
Hundreds rally outside Energy Department opposing Rosebank oilfield
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hundreds-rally-outside-energy-department-opposing-rosebank-oilfield
Campaigners from Fossil Free London, Christian Climate Action and Stop Rosebank gathered outside DESNZ to protest against new oil and gas, October 31, 2026[Pic: Fossil Free London]
HUNDREDS of climate activists rallied outside the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero in London on Saturday, demanding that it rejects an application to develop the North Sea Rosebank oil field.
Activists from Fossil Free London, Christian Climate Action, Stop Rosebank, and Greenpeace also denounced the government’s decision last week to approve the Jackdaw gas field, displaying banners and chanting: “Rosebank? No thanks!”
Fossil Free London director Robin Wells said: “At a time when we need climate action, the government slapped us with Jackdaw. If Rosebank is also approved it would be a climate wrecking ball whose impact would shatter public safety for generations.
“It shouldn’t be anybody’s job to remind those in elected positions that burning more oil and gas is not compatible with a liveable future in which we can enjoy safety in our homes, workplaces and the national parks we love. Fires and heatwaves will only get worse. [Prime Minister] Andy Burnham knows this.”
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Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hundreds-rally-outside-energy-department-opposing-rosebank-oilfield
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that he’s delayed the go-ahead for Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas extraction until after the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – don’t want democracy interfering with Capitalism.
3 November 2026
‘I fear for our civil liberties’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/i-fear-our-civil-liberties
People take part in a protest organised by Defend Our Juries outside the US embassy in south London in support of Palestine Action ahead of a Supreme Court hearing over the group’s proscription, October 31, 2026
300+ arrested outside London’s US embassy for protesting against Gaza genocide and Palestine Action proscription
MORE than 300 protesters were arrested in London at the weekend for daring to stand against the genocide in Gaza and the “dystopian” proscription of Palestine Action.
About 400 people took part in Saturday’s vigil at the US embassy organised by Defend Our Juries to show solidarity with the people of Gaza and Palestine, shame the US for its complicity with Israeli forces’ criminality, and demand the British government ditch the proscription of Palestine Action.
According to the Metropolitan Police, 325 of them were arrested at the demonstration, 320 under the provisions of the Terrorism Act for the crime of holding placards with slogans such as “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” and “we are protesters, not terrorists.”
The latest round of arrests takes the tally to over 4,000 since Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by then home secretary Yvette Cooper in July last year.
Before he was carted off by police for allegedly posing a threat, 74-year-old Charles Allison explained why he had made the journey from Cumbria to join the vigil.
“I fear for our civil liberties, which are being devalued and watered down, even by this new Labour government,” he said.
“So I’m dejected, but enthused that there are so many wonderful people protesting.”
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Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/i-fear-our-civil-liberties
Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objecting.
3 November 2026