Today's Teamster News 09.24.13

Warehouse Workers in Georgia Join Teamsters Local 528  teamster.org   ...On September 11, warehouse workers at Americold in McDonough, Georgia voted to become Teamsters...
Teamsters at Darigold Leaflet Walmart & Sam's Club Shoppers at 10 Locations  Teamsters Local 117 ...Teamster production workers and lab technicians, employed by Darigold, distributed leaflets at ten Walmart and Sam’s Club locations throughout the day to inform consumers about the company’s multiple violations of federal labor law and the growing threat of a potential lockout or strike...
Wegmans Employees Disgruntled Over Retirement Payments  Rochester Homepage   ...Dozens of people were outside Wegmans' company officers Friday practicing picketing over disagreements with Wegmans on retirement payments and wages. Current warehouse and driver employees are represented through the Teamsters Union...
The Average American Family Pays $6,000 a Year in Subsidies to Big Business  AlterNet   ...That's more than an insult—it's an attack...
White House rebuffed union pleas to ditch Walmart  Salon   ...Labor leader says allies in the Administration tried to persuade First Lady to dump retail giant -- but were denied...
Bank of America goes to trial over U.S. mortgage fraud charges  Reuters   ...Bank of America Corp heads to trial this week over allegations its Countrywide unit approved deficient home loans in a process called "Hustle," defrauding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. government enterprises that underwrite mortgages...
One Big Trader Lost Millions Betting on Romney, Study Finds  Washington Wire   ...A new academic paper digging into presidential betting in the final weeks of the 2012 election finds that a single trader lost between $4 million and $7 million placing a flurry of Intrade bets on Mitt Romney—perhaps to make the Republican nominee’s chance of victory appear brighter...
Child Labor Dropped By One-Third Over The Past Decade, But UN Officials Urge Faster Progress  Associated Press   ...The number of children doing hazardous work dropped by half to 85 million from 2000 to 2012, but the rate of progress isn't fast enough to meet the goal of having no child laborers by 2016...
Suicides Spiked One Year After Great Recession: Study  Huffington Post   ...The Great Recession resulted in 5,000 additional suicides worldwide in 2009, according to a recent study -- the first to look at suicide trends globally in the wake of the crisis...
At 77, He Prepares Burgers Earning in Week His Former Hourly Wage  Bloomberg News   ...At the height of his corporate career, Tom Palome was pulling in a salary in the low six-figures and flying first class on business trips to Europe. Today, he juggles two part-time jobs: one as a $10-an-hour food demonstrator, the other flipping burgers…
Why are 47 million Americans on food stamps?  Washington Post   ...There's a fairly basic question underlying the current food-stamp debate in Congress. Why has the program grown so rapidly over the past few years — to the point where 47 million people, one-sixth of the country, now receive food stamps?...
Buy a House, Make Your Payments, Then Discover You've Been Foreclosed On Without Your Knowledge  AlterNet   ...This should never happen, but it did, thanks to the sordid mortgage servicing industry...
Chiquita Asks Court To Block Suits Blaming Banana Giant For Violent Deaths  Associated Press   ...Faced with potentially billions of dollars in legal liability, Chiquita Brands is asking a federal appeals court to block lawsuits filed against it in the U.S. by thousands of Colombians whose relatives were killed in that country's bloody, decades-long civil war...
Ag-gag resurfaces, threatens whistleblowers  Fort Wayne Journal Gazette   ...Opponents of ag-gag legislation reasonably fear that it obstructs First Amendment rights. Such legislation also protects illegal and unethical practices while punishing whistleblowers...
Major police union will sit out race for New Jersey governor  Star-Ledger   ...In a blow to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono, one of New Jersey’s two largest police unions has decided to sit out the election for governor...
Florida offers to cut loan balances for 'underwater' homeowners  Orlando Sentinel   ...Florida homeowners with "underwater" mortgages may now qualify to have as much as $50,000 chopped from their loan balance under a new program announced Friday by the state...
Amazon to collect 6 pct sales tax in WV  Associated Press   ...Amazon will start collecting a 6 percent sales tax on purchases shipped to West Virginia starting Oct. 1...
BART prepares for another possible worker strike  Associated Press   ...As another potential strike looms, Bay Area Rapid Transit officials are preparing other ways to get commuters to work, including possibly allowing managers to drive a limited number of trains...

Kid Rock embarrassed to be a Republican (sometimes)

Kid Rock, the rapper-turned-rocker, famously supported Mitt Romney for president but now says he's ashamed to be a Republican. Sometimes.

Here's what he told Rolling Stone:

Athletes and musicians make astronomical amounts of money. People get paid $100 million to throw a baseball! Shouldn't we all take less and pass some of that money onto others? Think about firefighters, teachers and policemen. We should celebrate people that are intellectually smart and trying to make this world a better place.

We think maybe the Kid is confused. (It's been known to happen to rock musicians.) Kid Rock's concern about teachers doesn't square with support for the Republican Party. After all, it was Republican lawmakers who savagely attacked teachers last year by ramming No Rights At Work laws through the Michigan  Legislature.

Kid Rock is also trying to make his concerts more affordable, a laudable goal. But Republican lawmakers are repealing laws eliminating the cap on scalped tickets, which are aimed at protecting consumers. The Kid doesn't like that either:

That's one of the times I'm fucking embarrassed to be a Republican. It's fucking Republican lawmakers passing those laws, you dumbasses. They already did it in New York and they're trying to do it in Michigan. I've even called some of those guys to try and stop it.

Wish he'd call some of those guys when No Rights At Work was moving through the Legislature as fast as, um, poop through a goose.

There's further evidence that maybe Kid Rock was dropped on his head when he was a little boy. Remember his "Made in Detroit" line of clothing ... that isn't made in Detroit? The Detroit Free Press published an expose about it last year. Columnist Susan Tompor wrote,

So why in the world are Kid Rock's high-end "Made in Detroit" T-shirts made in the Dominican Republic? Or some other country?... 

On top of that, many of the adult-sized Made in Detroit shirts no longer have any labels to tell you exactly where the T-shirts themselves are made.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Romney advisor sells out for $1.2K an hour to fraudulent bank

You will breathe a huge sigh of relief that Mitt Romney lost the election for president when you read this story by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi.

Romney's lackey economic advisor Glenn Hubbard was rumored to be the next Treasury secretary if Romney won the election. Hubbard is dean of Columbia University's business school and, it turns out, a high-paid hustler for a fraudulent bank.

Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide Financial, blamed for a big part of the financial crisis. Countrywide is a major mortgage lender that systematically made crappy loans and then offloaded them. The  housing market ultimately collapsed, foreclosures skyrocketed and taxpayers bailed out banks. The Huffington Post summarizes the fallout:

...the company has agreed to a litany of settlements since 2008, including a $600 million class-action settlement, an $108 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the ousting of former CEO Angelo Mozilo, who paid $67.5 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Hubbard was paid $1200 an hour (no, that's not a typo) to testify before a court that Countrywide's loans didn't fail because of fraud. Writes Taibbi:

He conducted an "analysis" that essentially concluded that Countrywide's loans weren't any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide's underwriting. 

In other words, the Dean of the Columbia University business school testified that the fact that Countrywide claimed to have conducted thorough due diligence when in fact it was pressuring underwriters to approve 60 to 70 mortgage applications a day and failing to verify any income levels or other key information (to say nothing of the outright falsification of such data, which also went on on a mass scale) – he testified that these issues were irrelevant.

Taibbi concludes:

...he's just yet another grasping jobholder who's been exposed as a paid mouthpiece in a court proceeding.

Note on the video above: It was credit derivatives that caused the financial crash in 2008 -- the crash for which working people are still paying.

Whoa! Did Romney campaign rip off reporters?

No one should be surprised that a vulture-capitalist-turned-politician would exploit the news organizations covering his campaign.

It looks as if that's exactly what Mitt Romney did.

Nine news organizations signed a letter to the Romney campaign contesting charges forwarded to them for reporters who traveled with the candidate.

Buzzfeed was one of the organizations that signed the letter, which was sent today. Here's what it says, in part:

We’ve dealt with numerous campaigns over the past decades and understand that we pay a premium to travel with a candidate. But recent invoices from your campaign have raised serious questions about the charges you have forwarded to us for travel with Mitt Romney. 

We are not quibbling over charter flights or hotel bills. We are focused on what appear to be exorbitant charges for food, filing centers/holds and ground transportation.
Some examples: $745 per person charged for a vice presidential debate viewing party on Oct. 11; $812 charged for a meal and a hold on Oct. 18; $461 for a meal and hold the next day; $345 for food and hold Oct. 30. 

These costs far exceed typical expenses on the campaign trail. Also, it was clear to all present that the campaign’s paid staff frequently consumed the food and drinks ostensibly produced for the media. Were any of the costs of these events charged to the campaign itself, to cover the care and feeding of its staff? We would like to see how exactly the costs were determined for any specific event above $200, including the amounts you were charged and to whom you in turn assessed charges. 

We have similar concerns about ground transportation costs, which at times exceeded $1,000 a day and were far higher per capita than what the campaign charged during the primaries--despite the larger numbers of reporters, photographers and television crews travelling and dividing the costs. One news organization contacted two of the bus agencies used by the campaign; it was clear from their reporting that the costs you charged us far outdistanced what you paid for the transportation.

Nice!

Sensata worker: Go to the polls

Protest outside the Sensata plant in Freeport, Ill. 

This message from Tom Gaulrapp, Sensata factory worker, was posted on the Teamsters Facebook page by Sarah Wagner: 

Today is my last day of work at Sensata Technologies after 33 years on the job, making high-quality, American auto sensors for car companies like Chrysler and GM. 

And tomorrow—Election Day—I'm going to get up, I'm going to go to the polls, and then I will go and sign up for unemployment compensation for the first time in my life. 

On behalf of all of the Sensata workers here in Freeport, Illinois, I wanted to thank you for turning the offshoring of our jobs into a national news story that people are paying attention to. We hope that when people go to the polls tomorrow, they remember what a Romney Economy did to our American dream. 

Find your polling place and let’s go out and vote tomorrow. Even if you know yours, forward this to your friends and family—because that just might be the reason they stay home tomorrow.

http://action.99uniting.org/findpolls/
What we see here in Freeport is the Romney Economy in action, where they outsource good manufacturing jobs to places like China. And all that's left in Freeport are part-time, minimum wage jobs, with no benefits. They’re jobs no family can survive on. Mitt Romney created Bain Capital. He helped pioneer and still profits from the outsourcing of good American jobs to China. It's a business model that puts profits above people -- at all cost to us back home. And it's the approach he would take as CEO of our country.  

We don’t want to be rich. We just want to have a decent house, in a decent neighborhood, and be able to support our families. But instead, we had our American dream ripped out from underneath us for nothing more than an extra buck. 

Forward this link below to your friends and family. Make sure they have a plan to vote tomorrow. Remind them what’s at stake tomorrow for all of America. http://action.99uniting.org/findpolls/ 

Thanks for all that you’ve done, Tom Gaulrapp Sensata Factory Worker

Romney profited from auto bailout, then screwed workers

Mitt Romney made $15 million from a hedge fund investment that sent most of Delphi's job overseas. The hedge fund principals blackmailed the government into an enormous payout.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast explains in The Nation:

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds that invested in Delphi was Elliott Management. Romney invested $1 million in the fund through his wife's blind trust.

Romney never would have profited had it not been for the U.S. taxpayer. Writes Palast:

...without taking billions in taxpayer bailout funds—and slashing worker pensions—the hedge funds’ investment in Delphi would not have been worth a single dollar, according to calculations by GM and the US Treasury. 

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from (Elliott Management's director Paul) Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers.

Then the hedge funds sent the company to China. Palast:

...they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers. 

Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).

Now the United Auto Workers are suing Romney for breaking ethics laws by failing to disclose his investment in Delphi.

Nice guy. Maybe he'll finish last.

Today's Teamster News 11.02.12

Shock Doctrine, American-Style: Hurricane Sandy Devastation Used to Push for Sale of Public Infrastructure to Investors  Naked Capitalism   ...The wreckage from Hurricane Sandy hasn’t even been cleared, yet financial entrepreneurs are looking to profit from it...
Nonpartisan Tax Report Withdrawn After G.O.P. Protest  New York Times   ...The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economic theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper’s findings and wording...
With paychecks, size matters (opinion)  Los Angeles Times   ...Unemployment is still too high, but we also need to focus on the problem of declining pay and the shrinking middle class...
Mexico is now a top producer of engineers, but where are jobs?  Washington Post   ...while the number of graduates in engineering has soared during the Calderon presidency, the number of Mexicans employed as engineers has grown only slightly, from 1.1 million in 2006 to 1.3 million in 2012...
Romney's Delphi scandal involves his undisclosed 2009 taxes & Bain Capital  DailyKos   ...Mitt Romney made a fortune off of the auto-bailout by investing in Delphi and screwing those workers. And instead of using its extra capital to do right by the American worker, Delphi just finished buying factories in Asia that make car parts, for the same amount of money Delphi cost those workers' pensions...
Gritty New York faces grimy mess: Rotten meat, failing toilets  NBC News   ... The sanitation department was also handling hurricane debris cleanup citywide...

Today's Teamster News 11.01.12

Consumer Spending Increased 0.8%, Real Personal Income Minus Government Payments Decreased -0.1% for September 2012  Economic Populist   ...Americans spent more than they earned...
Greek death spiral raises heat for German-bloc creditors  The Telegraph   ...Greece’s debt-load is rising much faster than expected as the country spirals into a sixth year of depression, ratcheting up the pressure on Germany and Europe’s creditor states to accept debt-forgiveness for the first time...
Mitt Romney Refuses To Talk About FEMA After Hurricane Sandy Event  Huffington Post   ...Mitt Romney refused to answer reporters' questions about how he would handle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after a Tuesday "storm relief" event in Ohio for Hurricane Sandy...
Teamsters, Allied Waste remain at an impasse  Youngstown Vindicator   ...Contract negotiations between Teamsters Local 377 in Youngs-town and Republic Services/ Allied Waste have reached an impasse as the contract ended at 12:01 a.m. today, but both sides plan to continue working toward a deal and no disruption of service is expected...
Allendale and Teamsters agree on new contract  NorthJersey.com   ...At the Oct. 11 Mayor and Council meeting a memorandum of understanding between the borough and the 14 members of the Teamsters union was approved...
A Christmas break for commissioners and added vacation for Teamsters  Alexandria Echo Press   ...Norm Salto, Jerry Johnson and Bev Bales felt that since the workers were required to put in more time for special projects, they should be allowed to keep the vacation time accrued despite the “use it or lose it” stipulation in their contract...
Crosby police union files lawsuit  Brainerd Dispatch   ...Teamsters Local 346, the union representative of Crosby Police Department sergeants and patrol officers, filed a lawsuit in Crow Wing County District Court against the city of Crosby and Police Chief Kim Coughlin. The Teamsters Local 346 reported it is asking the court to stop what the union says are “rampant abuses of employees’ rights” by Coughlin...
Teamsters Canada ups strike pay to a maximum of $300 a week; highest in Canada  Canadian Business   ...The Teamsters says that while strike benefits vary depending on the member's employment status, most Canadian workers represented by the union will benefit from the increase...
Hospital workers approve contract proposal  Herald Standard   ...Teamsters union Local 491 is asking to meet with Uniontown Hospital negotiators to present a proposed contract aimed at ending talks that have been on-again, off-again for the past 15 months...

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part IX

Rolling Stone's thorough reporting allowed us to present what we thought was an eight-part series about Mitt Romney's tax dodges. But yesterday we read a Bloomberg report about another one. So today we bring you the charitable remainder trust tax-avoidance scheme.

THE CHARITABLE REMAINDER TRUST DODGE

According to Bloomberg, 

In 1997, Congress cracked down on a popular tax shelter that allowed rich people to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money. 

Individuals who had already set up these vehicles were allowed to keep them. That included Mitt Romney, then the chief executive officer of Bain Capital, who had just established such an arrangement in June 1996 

...Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity -- the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing -- to defer taxes for more than 15 years. At the same time he is benefiting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires, according to tax returns obtained by Bloomberg this month through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Bloomberg explains that Romney was basically renting his favorite charity's tax-exempt status. Here's how it works:

When individuals fund a charitable remainder unitrust, or “CRUT,” they defer capital gains taxes on any profit from the sale of the assets, and receive a small upfront charitable deduction and a stream of yearly cash payments. Like an individual retirement account, the trust allows money to grow tax deferred, while like an annuity it also pays Romney a steady income. After the funder’s death, the trust’s remaining assets go to a designated charity.

As trusts and estates attorney Michael Arlein said,

The Romneys get theirs off the top and the charity gets what’s left. So by definition, if it’s not performing as well, the charity gets harmed more.

Today's Teamster News 10.31.12

Northeast residents try to rebound after Sandy's punch, but challenge of rebuilding remains  Associated Press   ...People in the coastal corridor battered by superstorm Sandy took the first cautious steps to reclaim routines upended by the disaster, even as rescuers combed neighborhoods strewn with debris and scarred by floods and fire...
Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Rise by Most in Two Years: Economy  Bloomberg   ...The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities rose 2 percent from August 2011, the biggest year-to-year gain since July 2010, after climbing 1.2 percent the prior month, the group said today in New York...
UPS, FedEx Search for an Edge  24/7 Wall Street   ...Package delivery giant United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) said yesterday that it plans to hire 55,000 seasonal workers to sort, load, and help deliver packages during the coming holiday season. The total matches the number that UPS hired last year and that the company had been expected to hire again this year...
Here’s a Memo From the Boss: Vote This Way  New York Times   ...the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has freed companies from those restrictions, and now several major companies, including Georgia-Pacific and Cintas, have sent letters or information packets to their employees suggesting — and sometimes explicitly recommending — how they should vote this fall...
Judge strikes down law giving Walker new powers in setting DPI rules  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...A portion of a law giving Gov. Scott Walker veto powers over rules written by the state schools superintendent was struck down Tuesday by a Dane County judge, the latest in a series of legal skirmishes between the GOP governor and public employee unions...
EXCLUSIVE: Romney Campaign Training Poll Watchers To Mislead Voters In Wisconsin  ThinkProgress   ...Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters...
Flailing in Ohio, Romney rolls out Jeep ploy: editorial  Cleveland Plain Dealer   ...Ohio voters know who stepped up when the auto industry was at the abyss -- and it wasn't Romney...

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part VIII

Here is what we thought would be the last installment of an eight-part series about Mitt Romney's tax dodges, compliments of Rolling Stone. But today we got a surprise from a different publication about another Romney tax dodge. So we bring you the penultimate installment in a nine-part series showing how Mitt Romney fails to pay his fair share of taxes.

Today it's the Tax-Free Trust.

TAX-FREE TRUST

Romney has shifted enormous wealth – as much as $100 million – into a family trust, a fortune he doesn't include in the $250 million estimate of his net worth. His campaign admits he paid no gift taxes in transferring assets to the trust, even though individual gifts above $13,000 are subject to taxation. A direct gift of $100 million would have incurred a tax hit of at least $29 million, according to Michael Graetz, a former Treasury official under George H.W. Bush.

How did Romney skirt the limits on gifts? Tax experts believe that he made his contributions to the trust in the form of the carried interest he received from his Bain funds. For income-tax purposes, the assets were technically valued at zero, because the gains would not be taxed until the fund's investments were cashed out years later. In reality, though, Romney could have sold his carried interest to a third party for millions – making it absurd for him to pretend that his gift had no market value. Yet even if the move was illegal, Romney has nothing to fear: Tax returns on gifts are almost never audited, and they can't be challenged at all after three years.

Romney also used a scheme called an "intentionally defective grantor trust" to dodge the gift tax. Instead of having the trust pay taxes on its profits, Romney pays the tax bill himself. That keeps more money in the trust – amounting to another massive transfer of wealth that evades the gift tax. Even worse, the trust is exempt from the estate tax – meaning Romney's heirs will eventually pocket some $31 million they would have owed in taxes had he not siphoned off his fortune into the trust, tax-free.

Read the whole thing here.

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part VII

It's taking us more than a week to share Rolling Stone's report all the ways Mitt Romney avoided paying taxes on the fortune he made harvesting companies at Bain Capital. This one's a little complicated. But note the practices described in Part VII were investigated by New York's attorney general.

FEE FAKERY

Not content with the carried-interest boondoggle, Bain also uses a scheme known as fee conversion to transform smaller management fees – which are supposed to be taxed as regular earnings – into investment income taxed at only 15 percent. A Bain manager simply "waives" his right to his fee and is instead staked an investment of equal value in the private equity fund. Because the manager can then cherry-pick from the fund's investments, he is virtually guaranteed a rich return – flouting the spirit of the lower tax rate on capital gains, which is designed to reward investors who take risks with their money. "Because they didn't receive the cash, they claim that it's not a taxable event," says Fleischer. "It's not legal." New York's attorney general has launched a criminal investigation into the practice.

Romney denies he took part in such waivers, which may have robbed the Treasury of up to $220 million. But according to Fleischer, Romney's financial records suggest he "benefited personally from fee conversion." He also served as the sole shareholder in the firm that set up the deals, making him legally responsible for determining how Bain structured them.

Read the whole thing here.

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part VI

The nice thing about being superrich is that you don't have to play by the same rules that everybody else does. Mitt Romney pays taxes at a lower rate on his fortune than nurses or law enforcement officers pay on their middling incomes.

Here we bring you an explanation of how Romney gets away with it, thanks to Rolling Stone.


A BIG LOOPHOLE

For political purposes, Romney claims his investments are held in a blind trust that he doesn't actively manage. (In fact, the trust sees just fine: It's managed by a close friend and is invested heavily in his son Tagg's hedge fund.) But if Romney told the IRS he were merely a passive investor, he wouldn't qualify for his most notorious tax break: the loophole for carried interest.

Here's how it works: Bain partners earn a cut of the profits from the investments they manage – usually 30 percent. This "carried-interest" is not a return on any personal investment they made – it's just another form of compensation, like an ordinary paycheck. Yet under the carried-interest loophole, the earnings are taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent, rather than the income-tax rate of 35 percent. (They're also completely exempt from payroll taxes, which support Social Security and Medicare.) "When Romney says, 'I have a low tax rate because most of my income comes from investments,' that's not really true," says Fleischer. "He's receiving carried interest in exchange for past services."

Indeed, more than a decade after he left Bain, Romney is still booking carried interest as though he were actively leading the firm. Ann Romney's blind trust also claims carried interest, for allegedly "performing services" for a Bain fund in the Caymans. In the past two years alone, the loophole has allowed the Romneys to dodge $2.6 million in taxes.

Read the whole thing here.

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part V

Now that we've told you about four countries where Mitt Romney hides money, we are moving on to his U.S.-based, er, techniques.

We are indebted to Rolling Stone for bringing us this eight-part series on ways the Republican presidential candidate avoids paying his fair share of taxes. So if you think he's the guy to make sure the benefits of our economy go to regular working and middle-income families -- well, good luck with that.

Today, thanks to Rolling Stone, we bring you Romney's retirement tricks.

RETIREMENT TRICKS

Romney has stockpiled as much as $87 million in his IRA – even though contributions to such retirement accounts are limited to just $30,000 a year. "Congress never intended IRAs to be used to accumulate that kind of wealth," says Wilkins. To get around the limits, Romney appears to have directed his IRA to invest in a special class of Bain stock. By assigning an artificially low value to the shares, Bain ensured that any returns would be wildly inflated – as much as 30 times the initial investment. By buying rigged stock with his limited IRA dollars, Romney got to reap the bonanza tax-free.

Romney also padded his IRA by investing in "blocker funds" that Bain has set up in the Caymans. Such funds attract tax-exempt investors – like college endowments or Romney's IRA – that want to avoid paying the Unrelated Business Income Tax, a 35 percent penalty designed to prevent tax-exempt investors from having an unfair advantage over for-profit businesses in private-equity deals. But by buying shares in offshore blocker funds that then invest in Bain and other takeover artists, investors like Romney bilk the Treasury out of $100 million a year. "It's an absurdly easy escape," says Shaviro.

Read the whole thing here.

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part IV

No tax dodge would be complete without the Cayman Islands, and you can bet Mitt Romney took advantage of it!

Rolling Stone brings us the eight ways Mitt Romney avoids paying his fair share of taxes. Here we bring you Part IV:

Cayman Cash

Romney has nearly $30 million stashed in at least a dozen Bain funds in the Cayman Islands, where, as one filing boasts, investments are free from "income, estate, transfer, sales, or other Cayman Islands taxes."

But because some of those funds are directly invested in U.S. companies, they likely disclose their investors to the IRS, making them unattractive to tax cheats. So Bain also raises capital for its deals by selling shares in "feeder funds" – intermediary entities that invest in Bain's official funds, but don't have to make disclosures to the IRS. "If you want to cheat, they've rolled out the red carpet for you," says Wilkins.

Has Romney paid all his taxes on the shady funds? Only he and the IRS know for sure. But even if Romney never cheated personally, the feeder funds he appears to have invested in cater to tax criminals, making it easier for him and his Bain partners to raise capital and rake in big management fees.

Romney is profiting from one form of tax evasion in the Caymans: equity swaps. Under this racket run by top Wall Street banks, American firms pay out their profits – tax-free – to investment funds based in the Caymans. According to a Senate investigation, the purpose of these complex instruments is "to dodge payment of U.S. taxes on U.S. stock dividends." Romney has more than $1.25 million invested in four funds that profit from equity swaps – including two managed by Goldman Sachs.

Read the whole thing here. And thanks to Rolling Stone!

Mitt Romney, economic traitor (video)

Here's a tough new ad about Mitt Romney's company sending jobs to China. And taking down the American flag while the U.S. workers trained their Chinese replacements!

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part III

We bring you part III in the eight-part series on Mitt Romney's tax dodges. Rolling Stone first published them earlier this month. We are deeply grateful.

This one, the Luxembourg Shelter, is short but sweet -- for Mitt.

Luxembourg Shelter

In 2000, when Romney was CEO of Bain, the firm hit the jackpot: A $40 million investment in the Italian yellow pages during the tech boom returned an astonishing $1 billion. Romney himself reportedly ended up with $50 million – a cut larger than Bain's initial investment. To evade taxes on the gains, Romney steered the profits through Bain subsidiaries in Luxembourg, Europe's most notorious tax shelter, where the money would be exempt from foreign taxes. In 2009, as a board member for Marriott, Romney also helped the hotel chain use the same tax tricks to shelter more than $200 million in Luxembourg. Marriott wound up paying less than half the corporate tax rate – just 16.9 percent.

Read the whole thing here.

Mitt Romney's tax dodges, Part II

Rolling Stone provides us with a helpful guide to Mitt Romney's tax-avoidance schemes. Yesterday we brought you Part I, "Bermuda Shell Game." Today we bring you the second installment in this eight-part series, "Swiss Secrecy."

Thanks again to the good people at RS.

Swiss Secrecy

On his 2010 tax return, Romney disclosed that his wife Ann's trust held $3 million in a Swiss bank account at UBS, which had just been busted by the IRS for abetting criminal tax evasion by U.S. citizens. As part of a $780 million settlement, UBS was forced to turn over the names of thousands of its long-secret clients, who were then offered a partial amnesty: disclose their hidden assets, pay penalties and avoid prosecution. Romney – who had omitted the Swiss account on previous financial disclosures – suddenly came clean. Did he reveal his secret account to avoid prosecution for tax evasion? "He's not quite denied that," says Daniel Shaviro, a professor of tax law at NYU. The record of paying an IRS penalty on the Swiss account could explain why Romney has been so determined to keep his 2009 tax return under wraps.

Read the whole thing here.

Today's Teamster News 10.20.12

Unemployment rate drops in 41 states, including most swing states  Washington Post   ...the state-based unemployment numbers can actually be a better indication of how the voters that matter in the 2012 election (i.e. swing state voters) are viewing the economy than the national unemployment figures...
Unions shift political muscle to state and local races to limit anti-labor measures  Associated Press   ...In New Hampshire, unions want to keep the governor’s seat in Democratic hands to prevent a right-to-work measure. In Maine and Minnesota, labor leaders hope to overturn Republican majorities in state legislatures. And in Michigan, unions are trying to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state constitution...
Can Apple start making their product in the U.S. again? The answer is YES.  manufacture this   ... labor is a small part (probably less than 10 percent) of Apple’s cost of manufacturing, far less than capital equipment and components.  With wages rising in China and U.S. manufacturing workers actually being far more productive, the labor cost differential become very small...
Does the Romney Family Now Own Your e-Vote?  truthout   ...Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7...
Teamsters Applaud Signing Of Military Commercial Drivers' License Act  iBT   ...The demand for qualified, safe truck drivers has risen over the past few years and the new law will make it easier for veterans and service men and women to obtain Commercial Drivers Licenses (CDL), making them more employable once they leave active-duty...
Atlas Air / Polar Air Cargo Teamsters Reach Tentative Agreement By International Brotherhood of Teamsters  IBT   ...Flight Dispatchers to Vote on a First Contract, Securing Strong Job Improvements...

Today's Teamster News 10.18.12

At Bain Capital-Owned Sensata, Six More Arrests Ahead Of Plant Closure  Huffington Post   ...Six people were arrested Wednesday morning at a north central Illinois plant run by Bain Capital-owned Sensata Technologies, where 170 workers are set to lose their jobs by the end of the year. The closing of the Sensata plant has turned into an unlikely presidential campaign issue, as the lost manufacturing jobs will be relocated to China...
Leaked Audio Captures Romney Asking Employers To Tell Their Employees How To Vote  ThinkProgress   ...I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. ..
Mexico’s Labor Law Reform Sparks Massive Protests In These Times   ...A plan to gut labor protections has spurred unrest in Mexico’s streets...
State jobs agency lost track of $8 million in overdue loans  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...The blunder - only the latest in a whole series of problems at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. - began at nearly the same time as the quasi-public authority championed by Gov. Scott Walker took over for the state's previous jobs agency...
Unionized Hendrickson Trucking employees asked by police to leave company's property during auction Wednesday morning  MLive.com   ...William Bernard, business agent for the Teamsters union, said the employees were not causing any problems and thought they had the right to be at the auction...
Teamsters Local 118 to host clothing and food drive  Gatehouse News Service   ...The Teamsters Local 118 Retiree Chapter will be holding its 16th annual clothing and food drive from Oct. 29 through Nov. 11...