Bloomberg reported today that Goldman Sachs, which received $10 billion in loan guarantees from U.S. taxpayers earlier this year, will pay just 1 percent in taxes on 2008 profits. In 2007, they paid 34.1 percent.

Maybe their operations in low-tax countries suddenly became very profitable. Maybe they used their fourth quarter losses and accumulated tax credits appropriately to decrease their overall tax burden in tough economic times (this year, Goldman Sachs posted its first quarterly losses since going public, though its annual profits were positive).

Or maybe it’s just another troubling example of huge companies using shelters and loopholes to wriggle out of tax obligations.

Goldman’s financial statements say that this lower rate came partially from changes in the “geographic earnings mix.” Robert Willens, CEO of a tax and accounting advisory firm, told Bloomberg that this meant “they have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.”

A recent GAO report found that between 1998 and 2005, by “about two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes,” either through loopholes and shelters or by incorporating as tax-exempt entities. The United States actually collects much less revenue than its 35 percent statutory rate would suggest because of these tax loopholes, shelters, and giveaways that minimize, or completely eliminate corporate taxes.

Meanwhile, President Bush’s IRS has recently pushed through a series of rule changes that are “unusually aggressive” in lowering corporate taxes, “going above and beyond what has been allowed in the past.”

For bail-out thirsty banks, the excessive income sheltering is a bit unseemly. As U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) explained, “with the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”

While giving herself “room to support the measure if it’s brought up later,” Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said yesterday that “she doesn’t think federal legislation that would allow labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret-ballot elections is necessary.” The legislation in question is the Employee Free Choice Act, which allow workers to form a union if a majority sign cards of consent, instead of having to undergo a full and very often unfair “election” process.

The Weekly Standard called this a “shrewd move by Lincoln” as “unions are sure to apply increasing pressure to undecided Senators as the session gets under way and a vote draws nearer.” However, it’s only a shrewd move if Lincoln is against seeing her own constituents earn higher wages and have better benefits.

In 2007, just 8.8 percent of Arkansas workers were members of unions. That same year, an Arkansas worker’s average weekly wage was $712, which was 44th in the nation.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has found that “unionization raises the wages of the typical low-wage worker (one in the 10th percentile) by 20.6 percent.” Furthermore, were the Free Choice Act to pass, it is estimated that an additional 14,157 workers in Arkansas would receive health insurance, while 11,164 would receive pension benefits.

But there is a potential explanation for Lincoln’s denial of support for the Free Choice Act. As Matthew Yglesias noted, Arkansas is “poverty-stricken and features ultra low wages. But guess who likes low wages? Wal-Mart. And guess who loves Wal-Mart? Arkansas politicians like Blanche Lincoln.”

And guess what Walmart doesn’t love? Unions:

“We like driving the car,” [Walmart CEO Lee] Scott told the Associated Press earlier this month when explaining his opposition to employee free choice, “and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.”

As David Madland noted, “Corporations rather than workers are increasingly rewarded for growth in the economy.” Unionization could help temper that trend, and it will take lawmakers looking out for the interests of workers instead of CEOs to make it happen.

Yesterday, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) sent a letter to President Bush advocating that the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) not be used to rescue America’s ailing domestic auto industry:

Exercising options already afforded them by law, under a Chapter 11 reorganization for example, the American automobile industry can make the necessary reforms and could soon return to profitability. A federal bailout of the automobile industry, on the other hand, would put taxpayer money at risk, shield the companies from making the reforms necessary to restore competitiveness again, and set a costly precedent that the federal government will bailout other failing companies and industries.

According to MinnPost.com, while announcing her stance, Bachmann declared that, “The real road out of this recession is through Main Street America, not Washington.”

Bachmann is not alone in advocating Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Detroit’s Big Three. In the Wall Street Journal, Todd Zywicki, a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law, claimed that “bankruptcy is the perfect remedy for Detriot.”

However, as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman explained, the current financial crisis preempts any chance of Chapter 11 bankruptcy being successful, and thus he is “very reluctantly screaming” in favor of a bailout:

[T]he credit markets are frozen. So normally a company can keep operating, declare Chapter 11 but keep operating — but that depends on being able to continue to get credit lines to do business. And you can’t do that right now. So Chapter 11 quickly becomes Chapter 7 which is liquidation. So we actually see the thing disappear and then we’re talking about a million plus jobs probably disappearing.

As Eugene Robinson explained, “it would be insanity to throw hundreds of thousands of auto company employees, and maybe a few million others in the supply and sales chains, out of work — leaving them and their families at the mercy of an economy that has no replacement jobs for them.”

Indeed, Bachmann’s proposition for the auto companies could result in unemployment for millions of Main Streeters — who would fall back into an already overextended and inadequate social safety net — which would make it awfully difficult for them to lead the way out of the recession.