While I realize the Supreme Court has deemed corporations are people too, it is still fascinating to read some facts about said 'people' Bloomberg has a story on a study showing the relationship between lobbying dollars and federal taxes paid AND CEO pay versus federal taxes paid. Remember, this from the 'people' who claim their tax burden is so overwhelming they can't create jobs. ;) It really shows the level of oligarchy and some would claim fascism (I have called it 'corporate socialism' the past few years) when companies spend more on lobbying then they have to pay in federal taxes. Or when one person in the organization is paid more than the entire federal tax due.

• Twenty-five of the best-paid chief executive officers in the U.S. earned more in salary and other compensation in 2010 than their companies’ federal income tax expenses as disclosed in public filings, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies.
• The Washington-based nonprofit group’s report, released today, examined 100 publicly traded U.S. corporations with the highest-paid CEOs. It found that companies whose CEOs’ compensation exceeded reported tax expense in 2010 had average global profits of $1.9 billion.
• Companies in this group, according to the report, included EBay Inc., General Electric Co., Verizon Communications Inc., Boeing Co. and Dow Chemical Co. The tax expense reported in annual financial statements can differ from actual tax payments, which are confidential, for a variety of reasons.
• The group said its findings underscore the need for an overhaul of the U.S. tax code that would reduce the number of tax strategies available to companies, especially their ability to lower tax payments by parking profits overseas. “Tax reform has to close up some of these loopholes and the offshore system,” Chuck Collins, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview. “We might be able to lower the overall corporate rate by broadening the base.”
• Eighteen of the 25 companies mentioned in the report operated subsidiaries in countries known as offshore tax havens, Collins said. The firms, all combined, had 556 tax haven subsidiaries last year.
• Twenty of the 25 companies on the institute’s list reported spending more on lobbying Congress than they did on federal taxes, the organization said. Data for the report was taken from annual reports and other public filings. The 25 firms highlighted in this study spent a combined total of more than $150 million on lobbying and campaign contributions last year.
• The report echoes some elements of a study released in May by Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based nonprofit group backed by labor unions, which said 11 U.S. corporations reported $62 billion in domestic profits while paying a negative 3.6 percent tax rate in 2010.