America's filthy cabal of corporate slobs managed to grow another pustulating boil on the leperous skin of America's crumbling collective human dignity according to anew report from the Institute for Policy Studies showing that a quarter of the nation's top-paid executives took home larger checks than the ones their corporations mailed to the IRS. Bonus boil: many of those companies also spent more on corporate lobbying and campaign contributions than they paid in taxes! Let's have a random example: "[General Electric CEO] Jeff Immelt earned $15.2 million in 2010, while the company got a $3.3 billion federal refund and invested $41.8 million in its own lobbying and political campaigns." Ho-boy! So, this must mean there is some good news here for the average American, right??

According to some foul undead economic theory of trickle-down job creationism, this should mean rich CEOs have twenty new jobs for every American now, is what we were told? Where do we line up for our new jobs? Haha, NO! Go back to your garbage can fires before they go out, unemployment is still terrible.

Reuters reports on the study:

Two-thirds of the firms studied kept their taxes low by utilizing offshore subsidiaries in tax havens such as Bermuda, Singapore and Luxembourg. The remaining companies benefited from accelerated depreciation.

Shareholders have responded favorably when companies in which they invest keep a tax bill low through legal methods, thereby benefiting earnings. But Chuck Collins, an IPS senior scholar and co-author of the report, said that is a mistake.

"I think it's an exposure of weakness in a company if their profitability is dependent on their accounting department and not on making better widgets," he said.

Sure, whatever! And then some pretend-outraged Democratic mannequin on the pretend House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who heard about all this typed an angry letter to top corporate hooker committee chairman Darrell Issa telling him to hold government hearings on executive pay, and Issa laughed so hard he nearly choked on his own bile, the end. [Reuters]