February 21, 2011 journal, you have more money in your pocket than BankAmerica paid in taxes or Citibank or Mighty G E or Exxon Mobile according to a report from Truthout. CNN reporting on failing nations said the people of Greece do not pay taxes thinking that only a fool would pay taxes. It is funny how we can get such good jokes out of misery. You want to bet the America's major corporations pay more money in taxes than you have it your pocket? "Today, hundreds of thousands of people comprising a Main Street Movement - a coalition o.f students, the retired, union workers, public employees, and other middle class Americans - are in the streets, demonstrating against brutal cuts to public services and crackdowns on organized labor being pushed by conservative politicians. These lawmakers that are attacking collective bargaining and cutting necessary services like college tuition aid and health benefits for public workers claim that they have no choice but than to take these actions because both state and federal governments are in debt. But it wasn't teachers, fire fighters, policemen, and college students that caused the economic recession that has devastated government budgets - it was Wall Street. And as middle class workers are being asked to sacrifice, the rich continue to rig the system, dodging taxes and avoiding paying their fair share. In an interview with In These Times, Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today's UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers, explains that while ordinary Americans are being asked to sacrifice, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. As he says, if you have "one dollar" in your wallet, you're paying more than the "combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America": [Gibson] explains, "I have one dollar in my wallet. That's more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system." Help fight ignorance. Click here for free Truthout email updates. Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world's richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers - corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes: BANK OF AMERICA: In 2009, Bank of America didn't pay a single penny in federal income taxes, exploiting the tax code so as to avoid paying its fair share. "Oh, yeah, this happens all the time ," said Robert Willens, a tax accounting expert interviewed by McClatchy. "If you go out and try to make money and you don't do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?" asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. The same year, the mega-bank's top executives received pay "ranging from $6 million to nearly $30 million." Boeing Aircraft Co. has just lifted $300 million from a hurting South Carolina Treasury. BOEING: Despite receiving billions of dollars from the federal government every single year in taxpayer subsidies from the U.S. government, Boeing didn't "pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes" between 2008 and 2010. CITIGROUP: Citigroup's deferred income taxes for the third quarter of 2010 amounted to a grand total of $0.00 . At the same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. "John Havens, the head of Citigroup's investment bank, is expected to be the bank's highest paid executive for the second year in a row , with a compensation package worth $9.5 million." EXXON-MOBIL: The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This was the same year that the company overtook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of Exxon-Mobil's CEO the same year was over $29,000,000. GENERAL ELECTRIC: In 2009, General Electric-the world's largest corporation - filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas. That same year GE CEO Jeffery Immelt-who recently scored a spot on a White House economic advisory board - "earned total compensation of $9.89 million." In 2002, Immelt displayed his lack of economic patriotism, saying, "When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China ....I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion." WELLS FARGO: Despite being the fourth largest bank in the country , Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also saw his compensation "more than double" as he earned "a salary of $5.6 million paid in cash and stock and stock awards of more than $13 million." In the coming months, politicians across the country are going to tell Americans that the only way to stave off huge deficit and balance the budgets is by gutting programs for the poor, eviscerating support for the middle class, eliminating labor rights, and decimating the government's ability to serve the public interest. This is a lie. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and income inequality is higher now than it has been at any time since the 1920's, with the top "top 1 percentile of households [taking] home 23.5 percent of income in 2007." It is simply unfair for Main Street Americans who've already been battered by one of the worst economic crises in our history to have to continue to sacrifice while the rich and well-connected continue to rip off taxpayers and avoid paying their fair share. That's why a Main Street Movement consisting of Americans who are fed up with the status quo is rocking the nation, and one of its first targets should be tax dodgers like Bank of America and Boeing. "America is a Free Fire Zone-Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers: "On January 12, thirty thousand people attended a memorial service for the seven victims of the Tucson massacre. Thirty thousand: that's about the same number of Americans who died in 2006 from gunshot wounds. Almost one hundred every day. That is a statistic that stands alone among the civilized nations of the world... Then, as now, I asked myself, what more can I say about the gun menace in the United States, that has not been repeated, time and again, ad nauseam? What could I possibly add to the debate? Perhaps my contribution might be drawn from insights gained from my four decades of toil as a professor of philosophy and a frequent teacher of critical thinking" "Death has lost its sting and the grave has lost its victory." There is not much about death and hell I want to know about, I want to know about heaven. However, when I painted Heaven and Hell, hell got more attention than heaven and it seemed to interest people more than my painting of heaven. We live in a hostile world not only from the government but also from the Church, the Church of unbelievers. How can we change those things that are wrong and bring right? . Christian people should have their mind on Christ and their devotion and service, not all the cares of this world or the corruption in Washington or on politics in general. Heaven will not be a freedom loving democratic Society, heaven will not even be a republic. The saints of God will have everything they need to live in peace without fear of wars or greed. Let our testimony of our faith in Christ be heard! Let us live holy with the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit of God within us. Let us study the Scriptures daily. Dear Lord make our hearts to desire to serve thee always. Fill us with thy great Holy Spirit. We thank thee for eternal life and for the light of truth and faith available to us here and now. Watch this video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEAYtk8NnaU&feature=related