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Home > Jim Hightower: How the Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy
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Jim Hightower: How the Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy
By Jim Hightower [1] / AlterNet [2]
April 21, 2016
It's always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural
habitat. For example, there's nothing more vicious-and terrified-than a wild
animal who is cornered. And few things are more devious than a top political
or corporate official caught in a scandalous hypocrisy.
We're now bearing witness to this latter phenomenon, for a whole menagerie
of political critters have recently been screeching and scrambling after
being backed into a corner by the Panama Papers. This is a trove of
thousands of Internet documents leaked to global media outlets, revealing
that assorted billionaires, rich celebrities, corporate chieftains,
and-yes-pious public officials have been hiding their wealth and dodging the
taxes they owe by stashing their cash in foreign tax havens.
We've known for a while that tax dodging is a common plutocratic scam, but
the details from the leaked files of an obscure Panamanian law firm named
Mossack Fonseca now give us names to shame.
One is David Cameron, the ardently conservative prime minister of Britain,
who has loudly declaimed tax sneaks in public. But-oops-now we learn that
his own super-wealthy father was a Mossack Fonseca client, and that David
himself has profited from the stealth wealth he inherited from the elder
Cameron's secret stash. Trapped by the facts, the snarling, privileged prime
minister used middle-class commoners as his shield, asserting that critics
of his secluded wealth are trying to "tax anyone who [wants] to pass on
their home ... to their children." Uh-uh, David-we merely want to tax those
who try to pass off tax frauds on the public.
One of Cameron's partisans even claimed that critics "hate anybody who has a
hint of wealth in them." No, it's the gross, self-serving hypocrisy of the
elites that people hate. Yet now, doubling down on their hypocrisy, Cameron
& Company have announced that they'll host an anticorruption summit meeting
to address the problem of offshore tax evaders!
The global web of corruption involving thousands of super-rich tax dodgers
and money launderers that the Panama Papers reveal is an explosive
scandal-yet, interestingly, very few names of the moneyed elite in our
country have surfaced as players in Mossack Fonseca's Panamanian shell game.
Perhaps U.S. billionaires and corporations are just more honest than those
elsewhere.
Hahaha, just kidding! They're not more honest, just luckier. You see,
America's conniving richies don't have to go to Panama to set up an offshore
flim flam-they have the convenience of hiding their money and wrongdoings in
secret accounts created right here in states like Delaware and Nevada.
The New York Times notes that it's easier in some states to form a dummy
money corporation than it is to get a fishing license. Indeed, the ease of
doing it, and the state laws that provide strict secrecy for those hiding
money, have made the U.S.A. a global magnet for international elites wanting
to conceal billions of dollars from their own tax collectors, prosecutors
... and the general public.
State officials in Delaware even travel to Brazil, Israel, Spain and other
nations to tell the "Delaware story," inviting rich foreign interests to
stash their cash in corporate hideaways that the state sets up, no questions
asked. Likewise, Nevada flashes a dazzling neon sign inviting the global
rich to incorporate their very own shell corporations there,
promising-shhhh-"minimal reporting and disclosing requirements." The
money-hiding industry is so hot in Nevada it attracted none other than
Mossack Fonseca to get in the action by opening a branch office there.
The law firm is being branded as a criminal enterprise for the rich. OK, but
it shares that shameful brand with our own state governments.
Jim Hightower [3] is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker
and author of the book Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go
With the Flow [4] (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly Hightower
Lowdown [5], co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
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Source URL:
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ous-hypocrisy
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-hightower
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.jimhightower.com/
[4] http://jimhightower.com/store/swim_against_the_current
[5] http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Jim Hightower: How the
Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy
[7] http://www.alternet.org/
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Jim Hightower: How the Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy
Jim Hightower: How the Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy
By Jim Hightower [1] / AlterNet [2]
April 21, 2016
It's always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural
habitat. For example, there's nothing more vicious-and terrified-than a wild
animal who is cornered. And few things are more devious than a top political
or corporate official caught in a scandalous hypocrisy.
We're now bearing witness to this latter phenomenon, for a whole menagerie
of political critters have recently been screeching and scrambling after
being backed into a corner by the Panama Papers. This is a trove of
thousands of Internet documents leaked to global media outlets, revealing
that assorted billionaires, rich celebrities, corporate chieftains,
and-yes-pious public officials have been hiding their wealth and dodging the
taxes they owe by stashing their cash in foreign tax havens.
We've known for a while that tax dodging is a common plutocratic scam, but
the details from the leaked files of an obscure Panamanian law firm named
Mossack Fonseca now give us names to shame.
One is David Cameron, the ardently conservative prime minister of Britain,
who has loudly declaimed tax sneaks in public. But-oops-now we learn that
his own super-wealthy father was a Mossack Fonseca client, and that David
himself has profited from the stealth wealth he inherited from the elder
Cameron's secret stash. Trapped by the facts, the snarling, privileged prime
minister used middle-class commoners as his shield, asserting that critics
of his secluded wealth are trying to "tax anyone who [wants] to pass on
their home ... to their children." Uh-uh, David-we merely want to tax those
who try to pass off tax frauds on the public.
One of Cameron's partisans even claimed that critics "hate anybody who has a
hint of wealth in them." No, it's the gross, self-serving hypocrisy of the
elites that people hate. Yet now, doubling down on their hypocrisy, Cameron
& Company have announced that they'll host an anticorruption summit meeting
to address the problem of offshore tax evaders!
The global web of corruption involving thousands of super-rich tax dodgers
and money launderers that the Panama Papers reveal is an explosive
scandal-yet, interestingly, very few names of the moneyed elite in our
country have surfaced as players in Mossack Fonseca's Panamanian shell game.
Perhaps U.S. billionaires and corporations are just more honest than those
elsewhere.
Hahaha, just kidding! They're not more honest, just luckier. You see,
America's conniving richies don't have to go to Panama to set up an offshore
flim flam-they have the convenience of hiding their money and wrongdoings in
secret accounts created right here in states like Delaware and Nevada.
The New York Times notes that it's easier in some states to form a dummy
money corporation than it is to get a fishing license. Indeed, the ease of
doing it, and the state laws that provide strict secrecy for those hiding
money, have made the U.S.A. a global magnet for international elites wanting
to conceal billions of dollars from their own tax collectors, prosecutors
... and the general public.
State officials in Delaware even travel to Brazil, Israel, Spain and other
nations to tell the "Delaware story," inviting rich foreign interests to
stash their cash in corporate hideaways that the state sets up, no questions
asked. Likewise, Nevada flashes a dazzling neon sign inviting the global
rich to incorporate their very own shell corporations there,
promising-shhhh-"minimal reporting and disclosing requirements." The
money-hiding industry is so hot in Nevada it attracted none other than
Mossack Fonseca to get in the action by opening a branch office there.
The law firm is being branded as a criminal enterprise for the rich. OK, but
it shares that shameful brand with our own state governments.
Jim Hightower [3] is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker
and author of the book Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go
With the Flow [4] (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly Hightower
Lowdown [5], co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [6]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[7]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/world/jim-hightower-how-panama-papers-reveal-scandal
ous-hypocrisy
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jim-hightower
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.jimhightower.com/
[4] http://jimhightower.com/store/swim_against_the_current
[5] http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Jim Hightower: How the
Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy
[7] http://www.alternet.org/
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
