Half of Georgia GOP wants to secede

Please stop teasing us, Georgia. Stop talking about it and just DO it. Please, please, please!

All we would lose is a Delta hub and several million idiots.

URL: http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/05/01/poll-almost-half-of-georgia-gop-think-state-would-be-better-off-seceding/

Obama to close overseas tax loopholes

I bet Obama's use of the phrase "perfectly legal" was no accident.  He's been reading my man David Cay Johnston!

Yesss, this is why we elected him!

Obama to raise $190 billion by denying tax havens
By Ryan J. Donmoyer
May 4, 2009  |  Bloomberg.com

The proposal, combined with a $60.1 billion plan to limit many expense deductions for American companies that take advantage of laws allowing them to defer tax on foreign profits and a $43 billion crackdown on abusive foreign tax credits, would be the biggest tax increase on U.S. corporations since 1986. Obama also would shift the burden of proof to individuals when the IRS alleges assets are being hidden in certain offshore bank accounts, the White House said in a statement.

"I want to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world," Obama said. "But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens."

In 2004, U.S.-based multinational corporations paid about $16 billion in U.S. taxes while earning about $700 billion offshore, an effective tax rate of about 2.3 percent, according to the administration statement. The top marginal tax rate for U.S. companies is 35 percent; drug companies such as Amgen Inc. and technology companies such as Microsoft are among companies that make the biggest use of tax-deferral benefits.

The rules were originally designed to reduce paperwork for companies and the IRS by allowing companies to classify entities within their corporate structure in the most tax-efficient manner without inviting a tax challenge.

Unintended Consequence

Clinton administration officials realized they also had made it easy for multinationals to create entities whose only purpose was to shift profits into low-tax countries and out of reach of the tax authorities, according to a January Government Accountability Office report that found 83 of the 100 biggest companies had subsidiaries in tax havens.

Once the assets were in the haven, the U.S. parent company borrowed from the subsidiary. The interest payments were deductible in the U.S. and tax-free in the haven, the GAO said. The nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation recommended in 2005 that the rules be repealed.

400 richest Americans paying more taxes?

The 400 richest Americans and their terrible tax burden
By Justin Fox
April 15, 2009  |  TIME.com

Back in January, the IRS issued a report (pdf) on the income tax returns of the 400 highest-income taxpayers in the U.S. I missed it when it came out, but I've been looking through it and it provides a nice, simple demonstration of the fallaciousness of Ari Fleischer's argument about the tax burden. Fleischer bemoans the fact that the top 10% of earners in the U.S. have been paying an ever higher share of the nation's income taxes. The same is true for the top 400 (those making more than $110.6 million in 2006):

But this is a story about the income distribution, not tax rates. The top 400's share of the nation's income went from 0.52% in 1992 to 1.31% in 2006—an even bigger increase than its share of taxes paid. When you chart the average tax rate paid by those in the top 400, the picture is nearly opposite:

The most interesting information in both charts may actually be contained in the kinks. In the first, all the flat spots and downward legs coincide with bad years for financial markets. Thus, what Fleischer would call the tax "burden" borne by the 400 top earners appears to be determined almost entirely by what the market does. Sure enough, in 2006, 64% of the adjusted gross earnings of the top 400 came from capital gains. So the current financial disaster must be great news in Fleischerworld, in that it will reduce the tax burden on the highest earners. Yay!

When you look at average tax rates, the big downward swings seem to correlate both with good times in the market and reductions in the capital gains tax rate—which dropped from 28% to 20% in 1997, and from 20% to 15% in 2003. The differential between capital gains tax rates and the tax rate on regular income also explains why those making more than $110.6 million a year pay taxes at a lower rate than those making $300,000 or $400,000 a year—because the really rich get a much higher percentage of their income from capital gains than the HENRYs do.

Blithe calculus of Iraq's welfare

Yes, I'm glad Saddam is gone and his evil reign is finished, but since then Iraq has not been Candy Land.  The human cost of ousting Saddam includes some 800,000 to 1.3 million dead Iraqis, millions of Iraqi refugees (including the best and brightest professionals and academics from the moderate middle class), rampant mental illness, unemployment, child starvation, privation, lack of education and basic services, more than 50,000 Iraqis imprisoned without charge, and on and on.  (These facts don't get much media "air time" either.)  

By comparison, it is estimated that in his 24 years in power, Saddam executed some 290,000 to 600,000 Iraqis, and sent another 500,000 Iraqis to die in the needless war with Iran.  So which way do the scales tip?  Far be it from me to say.  Nor should you think that you can so blithely perform the moral and physical calculus required to declare that Iraqis are indeed better off thanks to G.W. Bush's invasion and occupation.  To the Iraqis who were killed or forced to flee, Iraq is certainly not better off.

"Tell me, if you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then asked you: Are you glad that you no longer have a knee problem? The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem."

In any case, it so callous and unfair to ask or answer the question as posed by Christopher Hitchens and his ilk to justify the illegal Iraq invasion: "Yes or no, is the world better off without Saddam in power?"  To start asking questions like that, and then, based on whatever answer you receive, attempt to justify whatever it is you did or intend to do, implies that the asker believes he is above the law.

Moreover, it implies that "the world's" needs trumped the sovereignty of Iraq.  (Aren't U.S. conservatives principally opposed to the UN or any kind of "world government" that would limit America's sovereignty?  And yet they would disregard other countries' sovereignty whenever they choose, just because they can, since might makes right.)  And anyway, a majority of the world has always opposed the Iraq invasion and occupation; so it is the height of arrogance and deception for the U.S. and its allies to decree they know not only what is best for Iraq, but also what is best for the world. 

For additional perspective, suppose if some foreigner had managed to assassinate G.W. Bush in office and then tried to justify his crime by asking me, an American, "Yes or no, is the world better off without Dubya?" my answer and the question itself would have been completely beside the point from any moral or legal standpoint, despite my strong political antipathy toward Bush.  In other words, a colossal wrong can't make a right.  

Disturbingly, in the ethically murky days since 9/11, more and more often America's leaders have asked us to accept that wrongs -- like illegal invasion, illegal torture, illegal domestic wiretapping, illegal rendition, detention and denial of habeus corpus, etc. -- do make rights.  It implies that we Americans think our laws and moral values aren't cut out for the "real world," as some put it; that our beliefs are quaint niceties made for a more gentle and civilized world; and therefore, paradoxically, that to survive in this world we must disregard our most basic beliefs in order to preserve them. 

This trend of thought at home worries me more than any cruel dictators or bearded loonies abroad.

And to start -- but not end -- another discussion, or just to give food for thought, consider this: We robbed Iraqis of the chance to free themselves.  Surely the consequences of this can be seen in the ensuing political chaos and the breakdown in national pride, increase in sectarianism, and loss of what it means to be Iraqi.  

By contrast, 200+ years ago Americans took the huge risk to free themselves [with a little help from the French] and it paid off; and those brave, heroic days have provided the unifying ideological and mythological foundations of our country to the present.  Iraq will never have the same chance again, because we took it from them.  We did the hard work for them.  Indeed, isn't it a conservative belief that one can never truly appreciate what one hasn't earned with one's own hard work, sweat, blood, and tears?  From now on, we should leave the hard work of national liberation to those nations who would be liberated.  We are not gods on Earth to decide what's best for everybody.

WWJT?

Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds

April 30, 2009 | CNN.com

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it.

People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.

[I'm shocked. - J]

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.