April 6, 2015

S.A. Sullivan 

The Star Ledger

sssullivan@njadvancemedia.com

Mr. Sullivan, 

Your article on the after tax effects of the proposed Exxon/NJ settlement in today’s Star Ledger bespeaks a lack of knowledge of how Orwell spoke of the real world.

“Stones are hard, water is wet.

If that is granted all else follows.”

I am going to assume that while you have signed the back of a pay check you have never signed the front of one. Thus, you would never have to come to grips with the inconvenient truth of the horror, the horror of learning that your salary is deductible to the entity issuing it.

It gets better.

Your underlying premise – corporations are bad, profits are evil, and evil doers must be punished – does not augur well for an early arrival of the much delayed, long anticipated Summer of Revival.

The simple, irrefutable truth is that profit is what makes the dog hunt and the mule plow. Even the great Lord Keynes agreed with that with his repeated call for tax cuts as a way to increase profits which he knew would “create” jobs. [Look it up]

You know – of course you do because you’re writing about business, right? – that corporations don’t pay taxes. Never have; never will. They, like advertising, legal fees, insurance premiums, 3 martini lunches, the aforementioned salaries, and emoluments to the local chapter of the “Undrown the Polar Bear” crusade are expenses borne by the shareholders

Your extra credit assignment is to find out who said the following:

At best, taxes are an enforced exactitude. The taxpayer is under no

 obligation to arrange his affairs in a way that favors the government.

 It is a patriot’s duty to pay the least amount of taxes possible.”

            The answer may surprise you.

        2 more things:

        #1 – Who the hell is PIRG? You cite them several times with no qualifiers. Forget about auditing the Federal Reserve. Has anyone ever seen their tax returns? Do they file tax returns? How about a certified financial statement? Do they get any money from George Soros? The Koch Brothers? Tom Steyer? 

        #2 – My grandfather shoveled coal at the Bayonne, New Jersey Standard plant beginning in 1896. My father was an iron worker there in 1919. I worked at chemical plants on Hook Road where the Exxon plants were located.

       There will be a 5^th Gospel before anyone can find any proof of the existence of wetlands there or anywhere else on the New York harbor side of Bayonne.

       I have GCed the removal of underground fuel tanks. I know what a remediation plan is. It seems to me that the shareholders of Exxon are about to be charged for the restoration of property to a state that never was. 

       I am sure they will be pleased to know that it is tax-deductible.

KEVIN SMITH

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Soros, the Koch Brothers, and Tom Steyer in the same sentence? They have one thing in common. Every time they write a check the IRS gets less money.