This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook was questioned in a Congressional Hearing about his company’s complex scheme to avoid paying taxes. According to Mr. Cook, the company’s stash of billions of dollars in overseas shell corporations was not tax dodging – it was ingenuity. And, just in case anyone actually fell for the tech company’s creative explanation, Mark Gongloff of the Huffington Post shared an incredible chart, which illustrates exactly how unjust our nation’s tax system has really become.
On Tuesday, a “sinkhole” suddenly sank in Washington D.C. three blocks from the White House. Not a metaphor, but a massive hole in the road as “long as a Ford Explorer,” double the width of a train car and 17 feet deep. The asphalt eroded around a metal plate covering potholes in the street and [...]
The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is using a process that is rigged from the start. It is not being negotiated by governments for the benefit of their people, it is being negotiated by executives (or future executives/lobbyists currently in government) largely for the benefit of the giant corporations they serve. The process has these [...]
Yes, they’re already on it. I wrote about this building pseudo-scandal the other day, and it appears it’s gaining steam. I noticed that on Fox yesterday it came up several times as “yet another case of the Obama administration shaking down private industry.” When I first read about it, the suggestion was that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was appealing to insurance companies rather than trying to find corporate sponsors for the purpose of educating the public about Obamacare, which is slightly different, but still not particularly scandalous.
After all, if the congress would agree to fund the outreach as any sane government would do for a big new government program, this wouldn’t be necessary. But naturally, they are trying to make it fail so they don’t want the public to be informed of what the new benefits are and what they need to do to get enrolled in insurance and obtain the subsidies.
For over a week, Republicans have refused to focus on anything but so-called scandal. And, it turns out, that’s exactly the way they want it. On Thursday, the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, sent a letter to GOP leaders, and told them to avoid working on any legislation that could take the focus off of the Obama Administration.
The “Apple hearing” is underway (Go Sen. Levin!!) with Apple CEO Tim Cook explaining why Apple “can’t” bring back over $100 billion they have parked outside the country because they would have to pay the taxes they owe. Senator after senator is explaining that our tax rate is not “competitive.” Not sure what this really [...]
This report by the Kaiser Family Foundation about elder poverty is shocking. I don’t think people realize just how many millions of people are barely subsisting in their old age, but it’s many more than the government likes to admit to. Just as with the Chained-CPI, we’re dealing with how they are accounted for rather than the actual numbers these people are forced to live on.
Did you know that Washington, DC is the 9th most expensive American city to live in? Did you also know that thousands of private sector workers whose jobs are supported by taxpayer dollars don’t earn enough to live in the city where they work? Tomorrow, those workers are rallying for livable wages, in America’s 9th [...]
For weeks, I’ve been writing that the movement to increase the minimum wage near you. Next week, however, that movement will arrive in my own back yard. Low-wage workers organized by Good Jobs Nation are coming to Washington, DC to rally for living wages, on Tuesday, May 21st, at 12:00pm, at Columbus Circle, in front of Union Station.
But this protest isn’t targeting fast food restaurants like McDonald’s or Burger King or retail shops like TJMaxx. On Tuesday, low-wage workers will take their demands to the biggest low-wage job creator in the country — the one funded by taxpayers like you and me: the federal government.
There was a time when a $200+ billion reduction in the federal budget deficit would have been big news and hailed as a singular achievement worthy of either fiscal sainthood or a dance-on-the-table party…or both.
Yet yesterday’s Congressional Budget Office report showing that the fiscal 2013 federal deficit will be $642 billion, $203 billion less than CBO’s previous estimate of $845 billion, did not create any spontaneous cannonizations or celebrations. It also didn’t change the still-stalemated and crisis-oriented federal budget debate by even a small amount.
The bottomline: It’s in almost no one’s interest to be happy about the budget news that should have made everyone happier.
