Just because CNBC's ridiculous "Rise Above" campaign has ended in abysmal failure (because who could have possibly imagined that the pin is not mightier than the utter dysfunction that is America's Congress), does not mean that other companies besides the Comcast-GE JV can't try their hands at an advertising campaign that piggybacks on politics. Sure enough, here is the company that an infamous movie made famous as Planet Starbucks, making a desperate plea to its readers to please "come together", think of the children, and "fix the debt." The same Starbucks that apparently had no such qualms as recently as a few months ago when it was revealed [3]that the same company paid virtually no taxes in the UK, thereby quite directly contributing to "unfixing the debt."
Starbucks full page ad in the WaPo urging readers to "come together" and "fix the debt":
[4]
Because, you know, without Starbucks' sage advice, the US would never figure out it has a debt problem.
And now one wonders: just how much tax, not for GAAP purposes, but for purely IRS purposes, has the global tax "evading" company paid in its US jurisdictions? Because after all the first step to "fixing the debt" supposedly involves not printing more money, but paying your taxes (depending on who one listens to).
We are confident the coffee brewing company will be delighted to see its corporate cash pay (not the one used for EPS calculations, but the real one) tax rate hiked to Venti levels in order to do just what it so righftully demagogues.