Today's news had a piece that I guess I knew, but it's discussion in the media made me mad.

I take care of a 95 year-old lady who was a friend of my Mom. She's been in a nursing home for about 10 years. Within a year, she'll have consumed all her assets paying the nursing home, doctors and her drug bill. In about a year, if she's still alive her ongoing care will have to be paid by Medicaid. She'll be all out of money.

Her income is quite modest--Social Security and a pension from her long-deceased husband. I've done her taxes for years and as unreasonable as it seems, she has had to pay both federal and Illinois state income taxes every year.

Then today's news...General Electric paid NO taxes last year on their $5 billion in profits! They were able to book the profits in offshore subsidiaries and the losses here in the U.S., thereby avoiding any U.S. taxation. I'm sure there were many other large companies that figured a way to escape the fingers of the IRS in their pockets as well. I worked for one of the biggest banks in the country and it didn't pay any federal income taxes for years!

So we have a tax system where a little old lady in a nursing home pays more in income taxes than one of America's largest companies. Yet there is a continued hue and cry from many who say we need to further reduce corporate taxes. Avoiding the discussion of how you can reduce taxes to less than nothing, I think this kind of a tax system is ridiculous...more than ridiculous, it's downright offensive!

This situation certainly demonstrates how the largesse that corporate lobbyists pours into the pockets of the members of Congress who write the tax codes is certainly working. And if you listen closely, it's exactly those members of Congress who continually use their opportunities to get their sound bites in the news who lecture everyone that if we further reduce corporate taxes, it will be good for the economy....pretty much saying what they've been paid to say.

In the meantime, a little old lady lying in a nursing home having her life savings sucked away by the healthcare industry, still has to pay income taxes.

Baloney!