A Bite Of The Apple

David Horsey took a look at the recent news about Apple's tax avoidance scheme and came to some pretty solid conclusions.

Apple, America’s richest, most innovative consumer technology company, is also the most creative in hiding billions of dollars in profits from the taxman, according to congressional investigators. But on Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out that his company’s creative tax sheltering, far from being illegal, is made possible by the loophole-ridden tax laws of the United States.

Cook told the senators that Apple paid a $6-billion tax bill to the federal government last year. Not only does Apple pay everything owed to the IRS, Cook said, the company does not employ gimmicks to avoid required tax payments. ...

...it is preposterous to think the current dyspeptic Congress will get past its dysfunction and find common ground on the best way to reform the tax code. Too much ideology and too many lobbyists stand in the way. As a result, Apple and every other American corporation will continue to slip through the gaps in the outmoded law with big bags of cash bound for foreign lands.  [Emphasis added]

In other words, what Apple did was perfectly legal.  And it will continue to be able to shelter those billions because there is no way that this Congress (and perhaps any other Congress) will do anything about it.  The money being thrown around by lobbyists and campaign contributors will see to that.

And that's the shame of it all.

Tea Party Jihad

(Click on image to enlarge and then trot on back.)

David Horsey has taken another look on the seemingly unending "scandal investigations" by the GOP and has come up with a very interesting word to describe the activity which has essentially brought Congress to a standstill.

Now that more extensive, dispassionate reporting has been done about the "scandal” at the IRS, it is abundantly obvious that what is being called “targeting” of tea party organizations and other conservative groups was the result of bureaucratic confusion, not political conspiracy.

The facts, of course, will not get in the way of this latest Republican jihad against the Obama administration. Republicans will continue to pump up the illusion of scandal for weeks to come and, just as some folks on the right remain convinced that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, those same people will take to their graves the conviction that he and his minions at the IRS plotted to impede the liberties of tea party activists. ...

The shortcut they used in trying to identify groups whose political activities might bar them from getting a tax break was to employ keywords like “tea party” and “patriot” in data searches. As a result, numerous conservative groups got snared for extra scrutiny. But they were not alone. More than 400 organizations of various types got special attention, including two dozen or more liberal groups.

That is not so much a case of targeting as it is an example of casting a wide net to scoop up a variety of politically oriented associations. And it definitely falls far short of a serious scandal. Watergate, this is not. Nor does it have any of the prurient appeal of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. In the end, no one is going to care that a few tax bureaucrats buried by an avalanche of paperwork found a clumsy way to try to dig themselves out.   [Emphasis added]

The reference to "this latest Republican jihad" is almost perfect.  It's only flaw is that it's not really fair to the Islamic sense of jihad, which is a righteous battle.  Still, the Tea Party wing of the GOP probably does see this as a holy war and the rest of the party is only too happy to go along with the wackaloons if it means gains in 2014 and victory in 2016.

The important fact, however, is that while the IRS used shortcuts, not just conservative groups got snagged.  Liberal groups also got audited or at least checked out.  Unfortunately our fearless leader threw a couple of IRS officials under the bus before getting all the facts himself.

Also unfortunate is what all this mucking around in faux scandals is costing the country: money and time that could be better spent on solving real problems.

But, hey!  That would involve buckling down and doing some work that would actually benefit the nation.  We can't be having that, can we?

Daddy Don't Get It

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

Meg Waite Clayton has a very interesting take on President Obama's refusal to allow open dispensing of Plan B to young women.

In the uproar about making the morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B available to our daughters, there has been no similar outcry about condoms and our sons. Anyone of any age can walk into a drugstore — as well as most grocery and big-box stores — and buy condoms. If you want to remain anonymous, you can pay cash; no ID is required. If you're too embarrassed to face the checkout clerk, use the self-check aisle or, for $17.97, get a box of 100 — flavored or with "added sensations," even — delivered to your door in a plain brown box.

President Obama has suggested that restrictions on making Plan B available to younger girls are justifiable because we can't be confident that a younger girl in a drugstore "should be able — alongside bubble gum or batteries … to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect." ...

 The only reasonable objection to making Plan B available over-the-counter to anyone of any age is that, as parents, we want to know if our children are sexually active. But then why aren't we questioning the easy ability to buy 100 condoms for less than the cost of movie tickets for a boy and his date? ...

Teenage boys are expected to desire sex, and sexually active boys are often described as studs. We may not physically stone women in the U.S. for being sexually active before marriage, but sexually promiscuous girls are still verbally stoned as sluts. Is there a word for a promiscuous boy that compares with "slut"?    [Emphasis added]

It is certainly possible that the president's decision was based on the fact that he has two teenaged daughters, and he doesn't want to think about them having sex.  Most fathers get squicked out whenever "daughter" and "sex" are used in the same sentence.

But even if that is not the case, he would certainly know that our culture does not happily allow for women, especially young women, having sexual drives.  I am reminded of a now notorious radio broadcast by one of the fouler Republican wackaloons with regard to a law school student testifying about insurance coverage for birth control.  Rather than lead us away from this cultural misogyny, the president chose to cave to the worst elements in Congress and in the country.

As Hecate would say, "Patriarchy ... you're soaking in it."

And isn't that a shame.

Not Exactly

(Editorial cartoon by Glenn McCoy / Belleville News-Democrat (May 17, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC.)

Doyle McManus took a look at the three scandals currently swirling around the White House and seems to believe that this state of affairs is typical for a second-term president.

What is it about presidents' second terms that makes them seem so scandal-ridden? Simple: The iron law of longevity. All governments make mistakes, and all governments try to hide those mistakes. But the longer an administration is in office, the more errors it makes, and the harder they are to conceal.

Just ask Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, all of whom spent much of their second terms playing defense.

The longevity rule caught up with Barack Obama last week as he wrestled clumsily with not one controversy but three: the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of "tea party" groups, the Benghazi killings and the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press telephone records....

If Obama is both smart and lucky, all three controversies will gradually fade away, assuming no more wrongdoing comes to light. His Republican critics already run the risk of repeating their error in the 1998 impeachment of Clinton; if they hound the White House on charges that don't pan out, they'll be vulnerable to charges that they're wasting time on partisan squabbles.   [Emphasis added]

 I agree that the second term is difficult for most presidents, but this series of events is a zebra with a different stripe.  Yes, Obama is behaving clumsily, stumbling gracelessly on the first two "scandals" involving the IRS and Benghazi.  On the third, he at least has used the cover provided him by the various iterations of the Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly by the congress critters since 9/11, 

Ironically, that third scandal has merit, but not exactly the one the wackaloons in the current Congress want to touch.  I think that's why we've seen fewer fireworks being shot off on that one.

I also think that what really is ginning up the controversies is a desire to keep the wackaloons in place for the 2014 election, perhaps even after the 2016 election.  If the basest base of the GOP can be kept energized, the Tea Party movement (primarily funded by Our Owners) will last a little longer and its hangers-on (Ryan, Bachmann, and Issa) will be in place for another couple of years at least.

It's never too early to campaign for the next election.

Sunday Poetry: Langston Hughes

Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

-- Langston Hughes

Sunday Funnies: 2-fer

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (May 15, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC.)

(Editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich and published 5/17/13 in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.)

As always, click on image to enlarge.

Bonus Critter Blogging: Tokay Gecko

Photograph by Erin Yard, Your Shot and published at National Geographic.

Michele Stays Busy

(Editorial cartoon by Steve Sack and published 4/14/13 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Click on image to enlarge and then be so kind as to return.)

Michele Bachmann, convinced that her constituents are as distracted by shiny keys as she is, continues to lead the wackaloons in the House in pointless exercises.  From the Star Tribune:

For Rep. Michele Bachmann, Thursday hearkened back to the halcyon days of 2009, when her Tea Party supporters flocked to the U.S. Capitol and she led Republican opposition to President Obama’s health care law.

Tea Party rally? Check. House vote to repeal Obamacare? Check.

The Tea Partiers rallied around the Minnesota Republican in the morning to express their outrage over the IRS’s disclosure that it had targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Hours later, by a vote of 229-195, the GOP-led House passed its 37th attempt to defund all or part of the health care law, a measure championed by Bachmann. “This issue is now revived,” Bachmann said of the repeal bill. “It’s back on the table.” ...

But Bachmann still plans to ride the issue in Minnesota, where she has launched a two-week television ad blitz focusing on the repeal of Obamacare, an issue that helped thrust her into the national spotlight three years ago and that became no small part of her 2012 presidential bid.

The ad campaign, 18 months before voters go to the polls, represents an unusually early start in congressional elections. But Bachmann faces a potentially tough challenge next year in her rematch with DFL businessman Jim Graves, who lost by just 4,296 votes in November in an overwhelmingly Republican Sixth District.

Bachmann also has been battered in recent months by ethics and campaign finance allegations stemming from her presidential campaign. Her ads are running as she is in settlement talks in connection with a politically damaging lawsuit filed by a former staffer who accuses her of covering up the alleged theft of a proprietary database taken by the chairman of her Iowa caucus campaign.   [Emphasis added]

I imagine Michele has been doing a lot of dialing-for-dollars  to cover the costs of those ads and to help pay any settlement she reaches with the former staffer in his law suit.

I also imagine that there are several powerful groups perfectly willing to finance her, just as they did during her presidential bid and her last re-election campaign.  Will it be enough?

That all depends on the House Ethics Committee report.  I think we know what that will look like.

Friday Cat Blogging

Granny Bird Award: Medicare Fraudsters

This edition of the Granny Bird Award, an award issued from time to time to those who harm the interests and benefits of the elders, goes to those who are fraudulently collecting money from Medicare.

From McClatchy DC:

Doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals were among 89 people recently arrested in nine cities, accused of scheming to defraud the Medicare program of nearly $223 million in false billings, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.

The defendants face charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, money laundering and violating federal anti-kickback statutes for submitting claims to Medicare for purchases, treatments and services that, according to federal officials, either were medically unnecessary or never provided.

In many cases, patient recruiters, Medicare recipients and others were paid cash to supply beneficiary information that later was used in billing scams, federal law enforcement officials said. Most of the alleged fraud involved home health care services, but the charges included mental health services, psychotherapy, physical and occupational therapy, durable medical equipment and ambulance services. ...

Over the past three fiscal years, every dollar spent fighting health care fraud has returned an average of nearly $8 to the U.S. Treasury and the Medicare Trust Fund, Holder said. But that success is threatened by the across-the-line federal budget cuts known as sequestration, which cut $1.6 billion from the Justice Department’s budget for the current fiscal year, he said.   [Emphasis added]

The illegal conduct was spotted by the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) primarily by a sophisticated computer program, but also by elders who checked the report from CMS each receives regularly and noted charges for goods and services they did not receive.  In other words, CMS is doing its job, but needs elders to do theirs as well.

While I am not Eric Holder's biggest fan, I do think the DOJ has been doing its job well in prosecuting Medicare fraud.  I hope the sequester is lifted soon so that we can continue to nail the sleazes who would rob the system so vital to elders.