FedEx Fights Back

I first saw this one on Sargon’s latest video. But what a sweet fightback story it is.

So the New York Times did much the same as the Guardian does over here – it went to town with a fact-free hit piece accusing FedEx of not paying taxes. The CEO of FedEx wasn’t going to take this lying down and came out fighting:

In response to that story CEO Smith published a scathing statement, bashing the article as  ‘distorted and factually incorrect’ and challenging the Times publisher and its business editor to a public debate.

Well, distorted and factually inaccurate would pretty much sum up modern journalism. These vile, parasitic creatures are nothing more than progressive activists posing as journalists. The fair tax meme is an example of this risible nonsense. There is no such thing as fair tax. There is what the law demands – nothing more, nothing less.

No man in this country (applies equally to those colonials over the pond – Ed) is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores.

James Avon Clyde, Lord Clyde – Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services and Ritchie v. IRC (1929) 14 TC 754.

So… Is FedEx paying what the law demands? Yes, indeed it is. Therefore, nothing to see here, yet this doesn’t stop the so-called journalists of the NYT engaging in a fact-free smear.

However, coming out fighting, Smith points out the hypocritical mote in the NYT’s eye:

Pertinent to this outrageous distortion of the truth is the fact that unlike FedEx, the New York Times paid zero federal income tax in 2017 on earnings of $111 million, and only $30 million in 2018 – 18% of their pretax book income.  Also in 2018 the New York Times cut their capital investments nearly in half to $57 million, which equates to a rounding error when compared to the $6 billion of capital that FedEx invested in the U.S. economy during that same year.

Now that’s the way to do it. Give the bastards a taste of their own medicine good and hard. “Equates to a rounding error”. My that’s delivering a nice punch below the belt there. Love it. And let’s be fair here – which organisation actually delivers a real benefit to the American economy? A scummy leftist rag peddling lies and smears or an organisation that not only employs people to do something useful, but provides a genuine service to its millions of customers, pours billions into the economy – including such things as income tax – and is overall a good thing?

Then, having delivered a jab to the solar plexus, follows up with a left hook:

I hereby challenge A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and the business section editor to a public debate in Washington, DC with me and the FedEx corporate vice president of tax.  The focus of the debate should be federal tax policy and the relative societal benefits of business investments and the enormous intended benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners.

I look forward to promptly hearing from Mr. Sulzberger and scheduling this open event to bring further public awareness of the facts related to these important issues.

Absolutely. However, I don’t share Sargon’s optimism here. They won’t, for deep down they know they will be justly slaughtered on the field of battle because faced with facts, logic and evidence all they have are lies, distortions and smears. It’s what they do. Indeed, they are doubling down, claiming that their story is factually true.

‘Fedex’s colorful response does not actually challenge a single fact in our story. We’re confident in the accuracy of our reporting. FedEx’s invitation is clearly a stunt and an effort to distract from the findings of our story,’ a Times spokesperson said to DailyMail.com.

There weren’t any facts in their story. Indeed, all I can see is sophistry and deliberate misrepresentation by conflating different years and attempting to claim that all of the investment should have occurred in the same year as the tax cut and because it didn’t, billionaires are sitting on piles of unearned  gold – as opposed to buying new trucks and employing more staff (which they have).

Facts and journalists aren’t so much ships that pass in the night, as ships that pass on separate oceans in different decades on two discrete planets light years apart. Unless you can clearly demonstrate with evidence that they are telling the truth, you have to take the line that they are lying, because lying is what comes naturally to them.

Has FedEx done anything wrong here? No. Nothing to see here, move along. Are the journalists of the NYT a bunch of dirty, dirty, smear merchants? Yes. Normal operation, then.