Apple is evil, too.

One of the important roles marketing communications must play is to make really despicable companies appear kind, caring or benevolent. So all over the airwaves, the cable stream and through parks and parkways we're reminded of the goodness of various companies.

You can hardly spit in some parts of Manhattan without hitting the logo of some odious banking brand. In front of Lincoln Center, in fact, it seems that individual trees and blades of grass are there courtesy of reactionary right ideologues, Nazi-complicit banking organizations, or just plain banks that brought down the international financial system.

There's the David H. Koch Theater, the Barclays Grove, the Credit Suisse International Grandstand, Hearst Plaza and more. Just about every event poster or event has the logo of some bank behind it, even though opera tickets, for instance, routinely ring in at about $300/ea.

Now, it appears that the company we all love is a company we can all hate. Apple not only subjects its Chinese labor to inhumane working conditions they also make sure they don't subject itself to paying taxes. Apple pays taxes not in Cupertino, where they are based, but in Reno, NV where the corporate tax rate is 0%.

In fact Apple pays taxes at a rate that is just 9.8%--a rate about 60% lower than that of the notorious cheapstakes of Walmart. Apple "allocate(s) about 70 percent of its profits overseas" according to "The New York Times. In nearly bankrupt California--formerly the Golden State--"in 2009, after an intense lobbying campaign led by Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Intel and other companies, the California Legislature reduced taxes for corporations based in California but operating in other states or nations... the change will eventually cost the state government about $1.5 billion a year."

Of course $1.5 billion is small potatoes when it comes to tax revenues but you get the point.

Despite the pangloss on Apple, they are just like most other companies. Evil.