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The Limits of Corporate Citizenship |
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Monday, 07 July 2014 08:05 |
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Reich writes: "Dozens of big U.S. corporations are considering leaving the United States in order to reduce their tax bills. But they’ll be leaving the country only on paper. They’ll still do as much business in the U.S. as they were doing before."
Economist, professor, author and political commentator Robert Reich. (photo: Richard Morgenstein)
The Limits of Corporate Citizenship
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
07 July 14
 ozens of big U.S. corporations are considering leaving the United States in order to reduce their tax bills.
But they’ll be leaving the country only on paper. They’ll still do as much business in the U.S. as they were doing before.
The only difference is they’ll no longer be “American,” and won’t have to pay U.S. taxes on the profits they make.
Okay. But if they’re no longer American citizens, they should no longer be able to spend a penny influencing American politics.
Some background: We’ve been hearing for years from CEOs that American corporations are suffering under a larger tax burden than their foreign competitors. This is mostly rubbish.
It’s true that the official corporate tax rate of 39.1 percent, including state and local taxes, is the highest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But the effective rate – what corporations actually pay after all deductions, tax credits, and other maneuvers – is far lower.
Last year, the Government Accountability Office, examined corporate tax returns in detail and found that in 2010, profitable corporations headquartered in the United States paid an effective federal tax rate of 13 percent on their worldwide income, 17 percent including state and local taxes. Some pay no taxes at all.
One tax dodge often used by multi-national companies is to squirrel their earnings abroad in foreign subsidiaries located in countries where taxes are lower. The subsidiary merely charges the U.S. parent inflated costs, and gets repaid in extra-fat profits.
Becoming a foreign company is the extreme form of this dodge. It’s a bigger accounting gimmick. The American company merges with a foreign competitor headquartered in another nation where taxes are lower, and reincorporates there.
This “expatriate” tax dodge (its official name is a “tax inversion”) is now at the early stages but is likely to spread rapidly because it pushes every American competitor to make the same move or suffer a competitive disadvantage.
For example, Walgreen, the largest drugstore chain in the United States with more than 8,700 drugstores spread across the nation, is on the verge of moving its corporate headquarters to Switzerland as part of a merger with Alliance Boots, the European drugstore chain.
Founded in Chicago in 1901, with current headquarters in the nearby suburb of Deerfield, Walgreen is about as American as apple pie — or your Main Street druggist.
Even if it becomes a Swiss corporation, Walgreen will remain your Main Street druggist. It just won’t pay nearly as much in U.S. taxes.
Which means the rest of us will have to make up the difference. Walgreen’s morph into a Swiss corporation will cost you and me and every other American taxpayer about $4 billion over five years, according to an analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness.
The tax dodge likewise means more money for Walgreen’s investors and top executives. Which is why its large investors – including Goldman Sachs — have been pushing for it.
Some Walgreen customers have complained. A few activists have rallied outside the firm’s Chicago headquarters.
But hey, this is the way the global capitalist game played. Anything to boost the bottom line.
Yet it doesn’t have to be the way American democracy is played.
Even if there’s no way to stop U.S. corporations from shedding their U.S. identities and becoming foreign corporations, there’s no reason they should retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship.
By treaty, the U.S. government can’t (and shouldn’t) discriminate against foreign corporations offering as good if not better deals than American companies offer. So if Walgreen as a Swiss company continues to fill Medicaid and Medicare payments as well as, say, CVS, it’s likely that Walgreen will continue to earn almost a quarter of its $72 billion annual revenues directly from the U.S. government.
But as a foreign corporation, Walgreen should no longer have any say over the size of those payments, what drugs they cover, or how they’re administered.
In fact, Walgreen should no longer have any say about how the U.S. government does anything.
In 2010 it lobbied for and got a special provision in the Dodd-Frank Act, limiting the fees banks are allowed to charge merchants for credit-card transactions — resulting in a huge saving for Walgreen. If it becomes a Swiss citizen, the days of special provisions should be over.
The Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision may have opened the floodgates to American corporate money in U.S. politics, but not to foreign corporate money in U.S. politics.
The Court didn’t turn foreign corporations into American citizens, entitled to seek to influence U.S. law and regulations.
Since the 2010 election cycle, Walgreen’s Political Action Committee has spent $991,030 on federal elections. If it becomes a Swiss corporation, it shouldn’t be able to spend a penny more.
Walgreen is free to become Swiss but it should no longer be free to influence U.S. politics.
It may still be the Main Street druggist, but if it’s no longer American it shouldn’t be considered a citizen on Main Street.
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Bring Back our Children: Palestine-Israel Children's Crusade by the Numbers |
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Monday, 07 July 2014 08:02 |
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Cole writes: "It is important to remember we are talking about real human beings here, not statistics. And above all, real, cute, children and teenagers, who aren’t there any more, leaving a hole and an ache in the hearts of parents and of whole peoples."
Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15, a U.S. citizen who relatives say was beaten and arrested by Israeli police during clashes sparked by the killing Thursday of his cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir. (photo: Oded Balilty/AP)
Bring Back our Children: Palestine-Israel Children's Crusade by the Numbers
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
07 July 14
 he Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people and the conflict it produces has in the past week taken on a horror-film aspect, as reprisal killings against children and teens have proliferated. But these killings and clashes did not begin with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youth a week ago Rather, Israel itself has a long history of capturing and sometimes of killing Palestinian children and youth. In all the ideology and ethnic rancor, it is important to remember we are talking about real human beings here, not statistics. And above all, real, cute, children and teenagers, who aren’t there any more, leaving a hole and an ache in the hearts of parents and of whole peoples.
It was predictable that the far rightwing Israeli government’s massive land theft and push to settle squatters on Palestinian land, and its torpedoing of John Kerry’s peace initiative, would produce another round of violence. While Palestinian militants also bear some blame, the lion’s share of responsibility here rests with the Likud Party and its often even more rabid coalition partners.
Although the two populations are about the same size– 6.1 million Israeli Jews and roughly 6.1 million Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza– the Israelis kill and detain many times more Palestinians than the reverse. Since January of 2009, Israelis have killed 575 Palestinians, while Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis. The Israeli narrative is that Palestinians are violent and Jews are victims, but this statistical result undermines that narrative, indeed, reverses it. Turns out Palestinians are mostly victims and Israelis often behave thuggishly toward them. Israelis point to thousands of small rockets coming out of Gaza in the past decade, but neglect to mention that they mostly don’t hit anything and have caused only a small number of deaths. They don’t go on to recognize that Israeli jets routinely bomb Palestinians in Gaza and they really do kill people with their thousands of bombing raids– lots of people, mainly non-combatants and including significant numbers of children.
The news that Palestinian Muhammad Abu Khdeir, age 16, was kidnapped from his father’s shop in East Jerusalem and then doused with gasoline (including in his mouth) and then set on fire and burned alive (presumably by militant Israeli squatters on Palestinian land) is just as creepy as last week’s horror story about the killing of three Israeli youth by, presumably, Palestinian militants (though there is no evidence Hamas in specific was behind it).
Then the Israeli police compounded things by arresting Abu Khdeir’s cousin Tareq, an American who whose trip to Palestine was a reward for earning straight A’s. Israeli police beat and stomped on him so badly his own mother called him “unrecognizable.”
Here are some numbers, Harper’s style, to put these events in context:
Number of Palestinian children Israel has arrested since 2010: 3,000
Palestinian children arrested, detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system each year: 500-700
Percentage of these arrested Palestinian children who have been subjected to physical abuse and/or torture: 75%
Percentage of arrested Palestinian children who face Israeli military trials: 25%
Number of Palestinian children killed by Israelis since 2000: 1,500
Number of Israeli children killed by Palestinians since 2000: 132
Number of Palestinian children now in Israeli jails: 200
SEE ALSO: Juan's New Book, "The New Arabs" Hits the Shelves
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Eighteen Months of Idiots and Deadly Power Working in Tandem |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Sunday, 06 July 2014 14:23 |
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Excerpt: "Why do some states still allow pistols in bars? Blind people can own guns? Should women be forbidden to wear low-cut blouses to firing ranges? Thanks to Pierce's research, here's an 18-month look back at irresponsible gun lovers."
(photo: FireArmsTraining4u.com)
Eighteen Months of Idiots and Deadly Power Working in Tandem
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
06 July 14
 harles P. Pierce does an excellent job of documenting absurd gun violence across the country with his recurring post, “Today in Responsible Gun Ownership.” His many examples hardly show the tip the iceberg that is gun violence across the United States. In most instances, these trigger-happy absurdities across our land best serve as bloody highlighters circling the ineptitudes in our laws.
What good is a restraining order if the stalker can still own an arsenal?
Why do some states still allow pistols in bars?
Blind people can own guns?
Should women be forbidden to wear low-cut blouses to firing ranges?
Thanks to Pierce’s research, here’s an 18-month look back at irresponsible gun lovers.
June 16, 2014
An ambiguously drunk man, “kind of bumping into some stuff,” is detained after carrying a “large semi-automatic rifle” along the streets of a Michigan neighborhood. Cops return the rifle the next day after determining that he didn’t “brandish” the weapon but merely held it openly, which is legal in Kalamazoo. Semantics: super important when drunkards carry loaded weapons.
June 4, 2014
Georgia’s new law permits guns in any building that doesn't have a security screening. Entertainers now contemplate canceling performances at Macon Centreplex and Macon City Auditorium, since the locations are now massive tragedies waiting to happen.
June 2, 2014
As a neighbor teaches his 7-year-old daughter how to ride a bike, 61-year-old Gary Drake drunkenly shouts advice from his Minnesota porch. When the father says, “I got it,” Drake pulls out a Remington 870 shotgun, points it at the father and threatens to kill him. Fortunately, his wife talks some sense into belligerent old drunkard.
May 28, 2014
The Louisiana House passes a bill that allows lawmakers to carry firearms into government buildings. Rep. Jeff Thompson (R-Bossier City) ensures there are no psychiatric tests required.
May 19, 2014
Seven people are shot at a sports bar shootout in Ohio, a state where concealed weapons were recently permitted in bars. This shooting happens after James Irvine, chairman of Buckeye Firearms Association, boasts the success of the trigger-happy law prematurely.
May 13, 2014
A New Hampshire hunter is shot by his cousin after accidentally resembling a turkey. The victim gobbles five non-lethal BB’s across his body, including one in the spleen.
February 24, 2014
A blind man in Florida, who shot and killed a guy with a .308 at a range of under 18 inches, is acquitted under the “stand your ground law” and returned his guns. He remains blind and with guns.
January 27, 2014
A 62-year-old Virginian shoots and kills two brothers with a .243 after they shake the door of a shed on their newly purchased property. The shooter does not own the shed, has no belongings in the shed, and gives no warning before killing.
January 29, 2014
Senator Rand Paul offers an amendment to allow legal gun owners to enter post offices with firearms as they can any other venue. If there’s one thing someone going postal needs, it’s guns.
January 13, 2014
In Tennessee, man takes off his pants, which hold a loaded .25 caliber Berretta pistol in the front pocket (easy to forget about). He puts them on the dresser and inadvertently shoots himself in the chin.
January 8, 2014
Kentucky Representative Leslie Combs is unloading her Ruger 380 semi-automatic in her office at the Capitol Annex when she accidentally fires the weapon at nobody. Says the representative, “I’m a gun owner. It happens.” Good point, Lessi. Good point.
December 2, 2013
A 72-year-old with Alzheimer’s is shot and killed for approaching his former Georgia home. After shouting commands that were not followed, the shooter assumes the victim is evil – a frail, slow-moving bad guy worthy of death.
November 11, 2013
Four members of Mothers Demand Action are in the Blue Mesa Grill when forty members of Open Carry Texas gather in the parking lot to hold guns menacingly and intimidate the mothers.
September 24
A Missouri legislative assistant leaves his fully loaded 9 milli sitting on the toilet paper after pinching a loaf. Missouri has allowed concealed weapons among “legislators and their staffers” since 2011. This is the first time that the new law, shall we say, backfired.
September 16, 2013
In Indiana, a moron named Zachariah Grisham murders the 3-year-old son of his girlfriend when playing a game where the toddler says “bang-bang” and the moron points a real gun at him and pulls the trigger in jest. This time, the gun is loaded. The moron is soon arrested.
September 13, 2013
Two men go to a Milwaukee farmer’s market with AR-15 rifles over their shoulders and pistols on their hips. Police draw guns on them and debate Wisconsin’s open carry laws. The provocateurs are legally free to continue being dicks.
August 15, 2013
An Ohioan gun instructor accidentally shoots his student while teaching how to not accidentally shoot people.
July 31, 2013
A man with grenades, automatic rifles, and multiple other firearms leaves his 3-year-old alone in the Miami apartment with the weapons in reach, because he’s late for work and short on time. Calamity ensues.
July 30, 2013
Buckeye Firearms Association, an Ohio-based pro-gun lobby, raises $12,000 for George Zimmerman to “buy a gun, gear, ammunition, training, security systems, personal protection, whatever he [feels] appropriate to defend himself, defend his family, defend his parents.” Yes, George Zimmerman.
July 29, 2013
At an Arkansas gun show, one ambitious bullet is accidentally fired through the shooters’ hand before ricocheting to graze another man. The show goes on.
July 26, 2013
During their annual river float in Missouri, Paul Dart and his family and friends stop at a gravel bar to for a bathroom break when the property owner murders him for trespassing.
July 25, 2013
A couple is driving their five children around backwoods Virginia when they turn the car around in the wrong driveway. As they’re reversing the Tahoe, 72-year-old Margie Rhea Ramey fires two shots at the family. One bullet strikes the vehicle but no one is injured.
April 9, 2013
After a sheriff’s deputy in Tennessee shows a gun to his wife, a toddler picks the gun up from the bed and accidentally kills the 48-year-old wife.
May 16, 2013
A Floridian man gets shot in the leg in an alley, a bowling alley. The shooter is the victim is the dumbass bowling with a loaded gun in his pocket.
May 14, 2013
A Colorado school employee and part-time security guard gives a schoolboy a ride home. While putting his firearm into the glove box, he shoots the boy in the leg.
May 8, 2013
A 5-year-old Texan gets out of the bathtub with his 7-year-old brother, retrieves a .22 rifle, and shoots his sibling in the back. The child survives. Some parents stop bathing children together once they start asking the wrong questions. Other parents need more prompting.
March 19, 2013
In Michigan, a 23-year-old disassembles a loaded pistol when he accidentally busts a cap his teenaged buddy’s leg.
March 18, 2013
Despite a protective order requiring David Holten to stay two blocks away from his ex-wife, he is legally allowed to keep two pistols and a semiautomatic rifle in the state of Washington. Consequently, Holten takes his wife hostage with his firearms. Fortunately, this incident does not add to the five murders over the last decade where gun-owners with restraining orders killed their significant others.
February 13, 2013
A 64-year-old man in Utah fires blindly and futilely down the road at burglars fleeing with his property. Police take his .357 handgun and slap him on the wrist with a $700 fine.
January 30, 2013
A Vietnam vet in Georgia murders a 22-year-old who mistakenly pulls into the old bastard's driveway.
January 28, 2013
A casing flies into a woman’s blouse at a gun range in Florida. Startled, she shoots her husband.
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Why Hobby Lobby Could Open a Pandora's Box Of Legal Discrimination |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=28465"><span class="small">Peter Moskowitz, Al Jazeera America</span></a>
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Sunday, 06 July 2014 14:13 |
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Moskowitz writes: "Some effects of the Supreme Court's decision on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores will be relatively immediate: Women who work at companies with owners who decide it's against their religious beliefs to provide birth control will lose free or cheap access to contraceptives such as the Plan B pill, IUDs and, potentially, condoms, as well as the most popular pill form of birth control."
Justice Samuel Alito. (photo: unknown)
Why Hobby Lobby Could Open a Pandora's Box of Legal Discrimination
By Peter Moskowitz, Al Jazeera America
06 July 14
The court’s opinion in the contraception case could lead to broader decisions against women, gay people and the disabled.
 ome effects of the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores will be relatively immediate: Women who work at companies with owners who decide it’s against their religious beliefs to provide birth control will lose free or cheap access to contraceptives such as the Plan B pill, IUDs and, potentially, condoms, as well as the most popular pill form of birth control.
But other consequences of the Hobby Lobby decision could take years to pan out, and they would affect not only contraceptives but also various women's rights as well as LGBT rights and the rights of the disabled.
Despite the assurance by Justice Samuel Alito in his majority opinion on Hobby Lobby that the implications of the case are narrow — solely focused on “closely held” companies and likely to affect only birth control — legal scholars say the ruling could open a Pandora’s box of court cases in which discrimination is justified under the rubric of religious freedom.
“I don’t think his assurances say this case won’t be applied to anything else,” said Kevin Russell, a partner at Goldstein & Russell, a law firm that represents cases before the Supreme Court. “It is going to arise again when someone sues over gender or sexual orientation discrimination.”
Russell says it may take a few years, but it’s not hard to imagine a case in which an employer decides to treat a woman differently than a man, or doesn’t provide equal health coverage to a same-sex couple, and justifies the decision by citing his or her religious beliefs. A case like that could easily wend its way up to the Supreme Court, according to Russell and other legal experts.
It’s hard to predict exactly what kind of cases Hobby Lobby will bring about, but there’s wide agreement that Monday’s decision was just the beginning of the story.
For one thing, Alito and the four other court conservatives for the first time argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says the government can’t substantially burden a person's right to exercise his religion, can be applied to companies in the same way it is applied to people and nonprofits.
Companies can therefore legally be allowed to apply their owners’ religious beliefs to their employees. Alito insisted only smaller, privately held corporations would be affected by this ruling, pointing out that a public company has not yet used the RFRA in a court case. But Alito didn’t specifically bar one from doing so in the future.
Alito also insisted that the RFRA would likely be applied only to cases similar to Hobby Lobby, in which birth control is the main factor in religious objection. But some point out that his decision doesn’t explicitly prevent the RFRA from being used for other forms of opting out.
“He said that this case can’t be used for race discrimination, but there’s a whole lot that he didn’t say,” said Ian Millhiser, a constitutional policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. “What about gender? What about sexual orientation? As an objective matter, this is a very broad opinion.”
Legal experts also say Alito’s reassurances about the narrowness of Hobby Lobby don’t really matter. Previous Supreme Court cases that have cited narrowness have proved ineffective at preventing other courts from broadly interpreting the decision.
Take the recent history of another hot-button cultural issue — gay marriage. The spread of legal acceptance of same-sex marriage in the U.S. is based on the continued reinterpretation of similarly narrow legal rulings.
When the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that the state’s anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional, the justices took pains to say that their decision wasn’t an implicit endorsement of same-sex marriage. Just months later, the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down that state's same-sex marriage ban, citing in part Lawrence v. Texas. And last year, the case was mentioned no fewer than eight times by the Supreme Court in its majority opinion striking down key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Then, in its DOMA ruling, the Supreme Court said that DOMA wouldn’t specifically apply to states’ bans on gay marriage. But in the past year, several federal and state judges have used that decision to strike down statewide bans.
Legal experts say the Hobby Lobby decision could have a similar legal domino effect.
“In Lawrence v. Texas the justices said it can’t be used for same-sex marriage, and then the Supreme Court used it against DOMA,” said Mark Kende, a professor of constitutional law at Drake University. “So who knows what courts are going to do with this case? That’s the slippery slope.”
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