MORNING MESSAGE: Washington’s Literal Sinkhole, And Our Idiotic Fixation On Deficits

OurFuture.org’s Robert Borosage: “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 collapsed over a sewer line that was laid in 1897. The sinkhole will take at least five days to “repair.” There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.  … Any business leader with a wit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future.”

Troubled Bridge Collapses Over Water

Cars, people sent tumbling into Skagit River as I-5 bridge collapses [Komo News Network]: “The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapsed Thursday evening, dropping two vehicles into the water and injuring three people. Both the northbound and southbound portions of the bridge collapsed into the river sometime before 7 p.m., according to Washington State Patrol trooper Mark Francis. … Bart Treece with WDOT was unsure when the bridge was last inspected. ‘All of our bridges in the area are pretty old,’ he said. The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being ‘functionally obsolete’ – a category meaning that their design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders are low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration. The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.”

Salon’s Natasha Lennard writes that the bridge collapse is part of “an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair”: “In his February State of the Union address, President Obama called for $50 billion in new spending on ‘an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair.’ The I-5 bridge collapse in Washington state Thursday evening calls attention to an all-too neglected infrastructure in the context of decade of expensive war-waging. According to AP analysis the collapsed bridge, built in 1955, was not considered “structurally deficient” but is listed as being ‘functionally obsolete” – ‘a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.’”

Sequester Update

Post-ABC poll: Most Americans still disapprove of sequester [Washington Post]: “The government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester remain unpopular for most Americans, with little difference in opinion across party lines, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll released Friday. Thirty-seven percent of Americans say they have felt a negative impact from the sequester, the poll shows. The data indicates 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the sequester, which is roughly on par with the 57 percent who felt that way in April and the 53 percent in March. Political affiliations seem to matter little, with 54 percent of Republicans disapproving of the cuts, compared to 59 percent of Democrats.”

Sequester Guts Wildfire Prevention, Sets Up Bigger Blazes [Mother Jones]: “Last year saw the third-worst wildfire season in five decades; the Southern California fire that threatened thousands of homes earlier this month looks to be only the first flash of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week will be an above-average season for much of the Southwest. But the sequester took a 7.5 percent bite out of the Forest Service’s budget, nearly half of which is spent fighting wildfires. That means there will be 500 fewer pairs of boots on the ground and 200,000 fewer acres treated to prevent fires; the agency’s next proposed budget cuts preventative spending by a further 24 percent. It’s all part of what fire ecologists, environmentalists, and firefighters interviewed by Climate Desk describe as an increasingly distorted federal budget that has apparently forgotten the old adage about an ounce of prevention: It pours billions ($2 billion in 2012) into fighting fires but skimps on cheap, proven methods for stopping megafires before they start.”

Three big federal agencies to close Friday [Washington Post]: “Three of the largest federal agencies will close to the public on Friday, the first time since the government shutdowns of the 1990s that large corners of the government have ceased operations on a weekday. The mass furlough of 115,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the small Office of Management and Budget — 5 percent of the federal workforce — is happening because of the budget cuts known as sequestration. Even in a government shutdown, thousands of essential employees are still called to work. In this case, the only ones in the office will be a small number of Senate-confirmed presidential appointees who are exempt from furloughs and emergency responders.”

War Is Over?

Obama seeks to redefine the US war on terror [Agence France-Presse]: “President Barack Obama laid out new guidelines for drone strikes and launched a fresh bid to close Guantanamo, warning that a “perpetual” US war on terror would be self-defeating. Obama told Americans their country was at a crossroads, and must move on from the counterterrorism policies deployed after the September 11 attacks to confront a new era of diverse global threats and homegrown radicals. He argued that the idea of a “boundless” conflict everywhere radicalism took root, be it in Pakistan or Arab Spring nations or Somalia, was now obsolete.”

Time’s Michael Crowley asks, “Can Obama end the war on terror?”: “In his broad address on drone strikes, al Qaeda terrorists, and the prison at Guantanamo Bay Thursday, Barack Obama wrestled with some of the hardest moral questions that have defined national security policy since September 11: Who is the enemy? Who can we kill, and where, and how? What to do with suspected terrorists we hold in captivity? And when, if ever, will this war as we know it end? Along the way, Obama issued a strong defense of his reliance on drones to kill suspected terrorists in places where other military means are infeasible or risk more civilian deaths. …But while Obama has an obviously sincere desire to bring the war against al Qaeda to a close and close the books on Guantanamo, however, he also lacks the power to make these things happen on his own. The future of the terror war that Obama inherited from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney depends on some very open questions.”

Republicans are deriding Obama’s speech as a “retreat”: “Republican lawmakers warned that President Barack Obama capitulated to US enemies in his counterterrorism speech Thursday by renewing his call to close Guantanamo and retreating to a pre-9/11 mindset. … Obama argued that the United States would not be able to use force everywhere that radicalism takes root, and in essence cautioned against a ‘perpetual war’ that could ultimately prove self-defeating. But House leaders warned that, after the Boston bombings and signs that terror networks were regrouping in parts of North Africa and elsewhere, now was not the time for a weakened security posture.”

School Daze

Elizabeth Warren Student Loans Bill Endorsed By Several Colleges, Organizations [Huffington Post]: “Back on May 8, [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren announced her plans to set student loan interest rates at the same level big banks receive from the Federal Reserve. Come July 1, some student loan rates are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, prompting Warren to push for legislation that reduces the level to 0.75 percent. By Thursday, Warren’s website showcased that more than two dozen organizations have endorsed the measure. Among the notable supporters were major universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and groups like American Federation of Teachers. Coupled with the support from outside sources is a strong core of political colleagues behind the bill. Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) have joined on as co-sponsors, and Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) has introduced a corresponding House version of the bill.”

Massachusetts educator Adam Kirk Edgerton woke up mad about the impact of recent budget cuts on his Upward Bound students: “You can blame only the Republicans for sequestration — fine. I won’t even bother to argue that point. But think about how Obama and his cabinet members are allocating money within their departments. In the Department of Education, Obama’s dominant policy engine is Race to the Top, which aims to implement standards across state lines with financial incentives. I won’t even bother to argue why a financially-driven education system could create perverse incentives for administrators and teachers. What I will argue is this: a Democratic administration is deliberately funneling funds away from direct services to poor people and towards administrators and consultants and bureaucrats. Race to the Top pays some pretty good grant-funded salaries to curriculum writers in Central Offices. It puts on a good conference (I’ve been to one). What it doesn’t do is teach kids, or shelter them in safe homes, or feed them healthy food.”

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 collapsed over a sewer line that was laid in 1897. The sinkhole will take at least five days to “repair.”

There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Our airports are a global disgrace. Our railroads, broadband, energy grid are all outmoded by international standards. A bridge falls every other day. Our sewage systems are overwhelmed by normal use, and collapse in the extreme weather that has become the national norm. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.

At the same time, over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. The construction industry has still not recovered from the housing collapse. The federal government can borrow money at interest rates near zero. Yet instead of grabbing this opportunity to rebuild the country, Washington is focused on cutting budgets, an austerity that clearly costs jobs and impedes the recovery.

Any business leader with a wit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future. That’s why the head of the Business Roundtable, former Republican governor John Engler, says it. At the top of his wish list for the economy is borrowing money to invest in roads and infrastructure. The resulting growth will more than repay the virtually free money. We’ll end up with a more competitive economy, a healthier and modern infrastructure that will make lives easier and safer, more jobs, more income, more taxes and less debt.

This is literally a no-brainer. Yet when president proposes even a modest infrastructure bill, the Republican Congress rules it dead on arrival.

If desired, Congress could even get the investment done without adding to the debt. The Federal Reserve purchases $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month. Yes, every month. (It also purchases another $45 billion of Treasury bonds). This is designed to keep interest rates low – and is part of the multi-trillion dollar rescue of the big banks, helping them slowly shed the garbage in their basements.

This program – known as “quantitative easing” to befuddle observers – helps to sustain the recovery, despite the counterproductive budget austerity. But flooding the banks with money is a very inefficient way to create jobs and growth. Banks can sit on the dough, or worse, speculate across the world, gambling with what is literally the “house’s money.” Cheap money is more likely to spur mergers and acquisitions rather than new jobs.

A functional Congress would create a national infrastructure bank, designed to make vital investments in rebuilding the country. It could issue bonds that the Federal Reserve would purchase with interest rates near zero. If the Fed spend $20 billion on infrastructure bonds, it would help insure against blowing up the next bubble, while actually putting people to work doing work that has to be done.

Wall Street, of course, objects to this heretical notion. If the Fed is going to print money, then the big banks make certain they are at the door with their hands out. But there is no reason for Congress not to act – other than the bitter truth, as New York Sen. Richard Durbin famously exclaimed, that the big banks “own the place.”

“Internal improvements” used to have conservative support. Alexander Hamilton championed them. So did the Whigs under Henry Clay. Republican Abe Lincoln built the transcontinental railroads and the land grant colleges; Eisenhower the interstate highways. A lot of money was wasted. A lot of insiders got rich. But the country benefited from creating a modern, increasingly efficient infrastructure.

Now the need is pressing; the money is cheap – or free. The work is needed. It is simply idiotic that the Congress refuses to act.

We know Republicans scorn aid to the poor. Food stamps, infant nutrition, preschool, they argue, offer not a safety net, but in Rep. Paul Ryan’s words, a “hammock.” The Tea Partiers seem intent on sacking sensible regulation of the air, water, public health and worker safety.

But repairing roads and rail, building modern airports, keeping our broadband and energy grid at world class standards, making sure the sewers don’t leak, strengthening the sinews for the extreme weather that is upon us – this isn’t an ideological question. It is just common sense.

That this isn’t getting done now reveals exactly how extreme, how corrupt, and how destructive our current politics are.

Did you know that Apple Computer has become a foreign entity? Did you know that it’s more Irish than anything else, at least as far as taxes are concerned? Or that it pays very little in income tax, even though its products wouldn’t exist if it not for U.S. taxes?

Apple products were designed in the United States by U.S.-educated individuals and entrepreneurs. (Even Steve Jobs, who famously dropped out of college, said he came up with essential elements of Apple’s product design by auditing courses at Reed College.)

The company’s logo is an apple, which may or may not have been inspired by the Beatles-owned company of the same name. But since then the image has become synonymous with two iconic qualities of this country’s Silicon Valley: creativity and entrepreneurial drive. And what’s more American than apple pie?

Now that the world has seen its tax payments, maybe Apple should change its logo to a shamrock.

(You can tell Apple to pay its fair share of taxes by signing this petition we’re co-sponsoring with Americans for Tax Fairness.)

Who put the “Mac” in “MacBook”?

Even though only 4 percent of its workforce is based in Ireland, and only a small percentage of its profits are earned in that country, Apple recorded 65 percent of its worldwide profits there. Many other “American” companies are also taking advantage of Ireland’s lax tax laws, including Google, Facebook, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Citigroup.

We now know that, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “Apple used technicalities in Irish and U.S. law to pay little or no corporate taxes on $74 billion over the past four years.”  Sen. Carl Levin described Apple’s bookkeeping as the product of “alchemy” and “ghost companies,” and that’s certainly true as far as the United States is concerned.

A Senate panel concluded that Apple negotiated a deal with the Republic of Ireland whereby it would declare earnings there and pay an ultra-low rate of 2 percent.  That arrangement sits atop a corporate tax filing in which, as The New York Times reports, Apple assigns more than $100 billion in profits to overseas subsidiaries.

As the Times also reports, Apple created an entity called Apple Operations International and incorporated it in Ireland. But despite the fact that this entity is purportedly based on the Emerald Isle, it “keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California.”

Apple Operations International gets all the benefit of being an American company, and collects the lion’s share of profits for one of the most profitable companies in the world.  And yet it pays a tax rate of only 2 percent.

Man, talk about the “Luck of the Irish”!

OSX-pats

It was a big deal when it looked as if a foreign company might take over Yahoo!  But Apple’s expatriation happened without a whisper.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a foreign “principal” is defined as “any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.” And if Apple’s a foreign corporation, shouldn’t its lobbyists be forced to report their activities under the Foreign Agents Act?

As a U.S. government website explains

“The purpose of (the Act) is to insure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.”

That’s worth noting the next time President Obama calls somebody like Tim Cook – or speaks with the CEOs of other non-American companies – to discuss “deficit reduction” with them.

After all, our middle-class economic crisis isn’t Ireland’s problem.

The Evading of the Green

Deal or no deal, even the Irish Apple may be too slippery for that nation’s tax collector. Adds the Times: “Apple Operations International has not filed a tax return in Ireland, the United States or any other country over the last five years.” To invert the old Beatles song, when it comes to taxes Apple is “not here, not there, not anywhere.”

CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook (complain that they can’t “repatriate” their earnings to the United States because our taxes are too high. And yet, remarkably, the Times reported today that much of that money is already here.

“Multinationals based in the United States,” writes the Times, “now hold more than $1.6 trillion in cash classified as ‘permanently invested overseas.’” Permanently overseas? Apple’s $100 billion in offshore profits is managed in Reno, tracked by accountants in Austin, and stored in New York banks.

That’s called having your apple and eating it, too.

unGrateful

U.S. tax dollars funded the creation of the Internet and the many of the design breakthroughs that drive Apple’s tax products. American taxpayers underwrite the agencies that protect Apple’s U.S. assets. They educated most of its workers in Reno, Austin, and New York. They’re paying for the police departments and other agencies that protect Apple’s offices and keep the people inside them safe and healthy.

Too bad Apple Inc. isn’t pulling its weight for all these expenses.  You are. Individual taxpayers paid more than $1 trillion in federal income tax in 2011, while corporations paid only $181 billion. Remember those figures the next time they tell you we can’t afford to provide the government services that have helped Americans for generations.

We’re footing the bill for their almost unimaginable success – and the imbalance is getting worse.

Lone Star State of Mind

After Apple made the politically-motivated decision to manufacture one of its product lines (only one) in the United States, it chose Texas as the location.  That tells us even more about Apple’s patriotism and loyalty, since Texas is an anti-union state (they call it “Right to Work,” when “Right to Be Underpaid” is more like it) with lax regulatory enforcement.

What’s more, at least one reliable report says there’s a decent chance that the Texas factory will be owned and operated by FoxConn.

That’s right: Apple’s Texas plant could be owned and operated by the Chinese company that was so lax in its safety procedures – with Steve Jobs’ knowledge and approval – that workers there died horribly in fires.

Will manufacturing one of its product lines in the U.S. make Apple an American company again? Hardly. Toyota manufactures nine models here: the Avalon, the Camry, the Camry Hybrid, the Corolla, the Sequoia, the Sienna, the Solara, the Tacoma and the Tundra.

That’s one down, eight to go, before Apple catches up with its inarguably Japanese counterpart.

An Apple Repair We Can Afford

Senators were eager to express their enthusiasm for Apple’s products yesterday, and why not? They’re beautifully designed. I use a couple myself. But Apple’s a for-profit entity. It’s no more generous to its customers than it is to the taxpaying public at large, without whom it couldn’t exist.

If you’ve ever tried to repair an iPhone you know exactly what I mean. The Wall Street Journal says that “Apple earns almost as much from its customers’ butterfingers as it does through corporate tax loopholes.”

Tim Cook is almost certainly telling the truth when he says that Apple complies with all appropriate tax laws. (We’re not so sure he’s right when he says that Apple complies with the “spirit” of those laws, but since that’s intangible and unquantifiable we won’t quibble.)

The law itself is the problem. That’s why we find ourselves in agreement with Sen. John McCain, who said, “We don’t have to wait and have a grand bargain. It’s a cop-out. We all know there are loopholes that are outrageous.”

Closing those loopholes is one Apple repair we can’t afford not to make.

Under Another Flag

We’re not trying to red-bait or vilify Apple or any other multinational company when we say they’re no longer American corporations. We don’t mean they’re “un-American” in the subversive, treacherous, Sen. Joe McCarthy sense. It’s just time to recognize reality: They fly under no flag but their own.

Don’t blame executives like Cook, either. Their fiduciary duty compels them to place profits over people – or patriotism. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit: They’re not bad, their charters are just drawn that way.

We should treat Apple and other formerly American multinationals as neutral entities with whom we can cooperate at times for our mutual benefit. We should encourage them to invest in the United States and hire American workers, as we do with other non-American corporations.

What we shouldn’t do is treat them as U.S. corporations. The very concept is probably obsolete in the multinational arena.

iBorrow

In a final irony, Apple – which is hoarding $145 billion in cash – borrowed $17 billion last month. Why would a company with that much money on hand choose to go billions of dollars into debt?

One reason for the indebtedness is that it’s yet another legal way to avoid paying taxes. But here’s what really gets the Irony Meter trembling: As the New York Times Dealbook blog notes, Apple issued this debt because it was able to obtain “interest rates that hovered near the low-cost debt of the United States Treasury.”

Investors are essentially paying the United States government to borrow their money, because the U.S. Treasury is still one of the safest places to park your money on the planet. Apple’s rates, as you can see from the above, are nearly as good. When debt is this cheap, it’s fiscally irresponsible – literally – not to borrow.

And what was the President calling Tim Cook about? Ways to avoid borrowing more money. That’s how off-kilter our economic debate has become. At these rates the United States government should be smart enough to do what Apple is doing: Borrowing money to fortify its future.

Bringing Apple Back Home

Our government will have more of the money it deserves someday, too, if Apple becomes an American corporation again.

We can’t wait for Tim Cook to do that. In fact, it would be fiscally irresponsible for Cook or any other executive to voluntarily give up more of his company’s income than is legally required.  It’s up to our leaders, not corporate executives, to fix this problem.

Let’s hope that yesterday’s Senate hearing means that the process has finally begun.

President Obama has promised Oklahoma “everything that it needs right away” to begin the process of recovering and rebuilding, after the massive tornado touched down in the state on Monday, devastating the cities of Monroe and Newcastle. Already hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Association employees are the ground in Oklahoma, and millions of dollars in federal disaster relief will almost certainly follow. Oklahoma will recover.

But the debate in Washington is a reminder that we’re all threatened by a masssive, man-made disaster called sequestration, that could make the next natural disaster even worse.

Washington’s repsonse to the tornado in Oklahoma was twofold. President Obama expressed the nation’s sympathy and support for Oklahoman’s touched by the diaster and promised that the state would get “everything that it needs” to recover and rebuild. By Tuesday, more than 300 FEMA employees were on the ground in Olkahoma.

The winds had barely died down in Oklahoma when the hot air started flowing back in Washington. Even as rescuers began the delecate work picking throuh the rubble in search of survivors, Republicans in Congress were already talking cuts, and insisting that relief disaster relief for Oklahoma come at the cost of cuts elsewhere. And none other than Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn kicked off the grousing.

But although political leaders of both parties expressed sympathy for the victims, it took only hours for Washington to face off over the possible cost of repairing the devastation and how it would be paid. For the moment, it was a strictly hypothetical debate, since the government already has $11.6 billion available in a disaster relief fund. But it underscored the fact that even national tragedy does not always bring the capital together.

An Oklahoma senator, Tom Coburn, a Republican who is one of the most relentless budget hawks in Congress, kicked off the touchy dispute by saying that any additional disaster relief appropriated by Congress would have to be paid for by cutting other areas of the federal budget.

Some Republicans rushed to his defense, with Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin saying Mr. Coburn’s actions demonstrated “real leadership.”

At least Coburn is consistent. Earlier this year, Coburn and several other Oklahoma Republicans opposed disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy victims, insisting that the aid be “paid for” with cuts in other areas of the federal budget.

But where can cuts be made that, in the context of the sequester’s massive across-the-board cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, won’t be equally disastrous?

As it stands now, the sequester has cut deeply enough into disaster relief and preparedness, to put the government’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to natural disasters and emergencies at risk.

Due to the sequester, FEMA will lose $1 billion from its budget this year alone. Disaster relief takes the biggest hit, with $560 million cut. Another $100 million is slashed from state and local grants. Smaller programs are not spared. Funding to help state and local communities prepare for disaster is cut by $3 million under sequestration, and another $1.9 million is cut from funding for transportation and infrastructure repair.

Meanwhile, FEMA will pay out $10.8 billion in relief to storm victims this year, leaving it with just $2.5 billion in relief funding for the rest of the year. The government has $11.6 billion in a disaster relief fund. So Oklahoma will get what it needs. But if more disasters tax available funds, Congress may have to vote on additional disaster relief. And in this Congress that means more Republican hostage-taking, and relief bills loaded with all kinds of amendments.

Meanwhile, FEMA may have to respond to sequester by making life and work harder or employees like the 300 or so now helping Oklahoma’s tornado victims. Reducing hiring, hiring freezes, and the elimination of comp. time and overtime could leave FEMA with an over-stretched, underpaid workforce responding in an increasing number of natural disasters.

Things aren’t much better on the preparation side of the equation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the National Weather Service and other weather detection programs has been targeted for cuts. Just like the GOP has tried to gut FEMA ever since Hurricane Katrina, Republicans targeted the National Weather Service for  cuts after the 2010 elections. (Right after the agency played a crucial role in warning the West coast about the tsunami in Japan.) The sequester cuts the NOAA budget by 8.2 percent, including $266 million in cuts to crucial programs that fund the agencies satellite programs. 

Strapped for cash, the NOAA has implemented hiring freezes. As a result, the agencies vacancy rate has tripled in the past two years. There are now more than 200 unfilled positions, including nine major forecaster positions in major cities, and general forecaster vacancies across the country. As National Weather Service Employees Organization president David Sobein pointed out last month, vacancies put a strain on the agencies remaining employees, and could impact the quality of forecasting. 

Sobien gave the example of recent poor forecasting of the early March snowstorm predicted to hit Washington, D.C., as an example of what happens when forecasters are stretched thin. But that’s not the worst that can happen, he warned.

“People are going to be overworked, they’re going to be tired, they’re going to miss warnings. We’re going to miss a tornado warning or some other thing.”

That’s before the sequester’s impact. Sequestration further threatens the nation’s weather forecasting.

The Department of Commerce warned that not only will the loss of satellite data and imagery diminish the quality of forecasts, but so will other important weather data surrendered by spending cuts.

“Sequestration will also reduce the number of flight hours for NOAA aircraft, which serve important missions such as hurricane reconnaissance and coastal surveying,” said a DOC spokesperson. “NOAA will also need to curtail maintenance and operations of weather systems such as NEXRAD (the national radar network) and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (used by local weather forecast offices to process and monitor weather data), which could lead to longer service outages or reduced data availability for forecasters.”

In addition to program spending cuts, NOAA faces the possibility of staff furloughs and unfilled positions. While not specifying the number of NWS cuts, the DOC states up to 2,600 NOAA employees will have to be furloughed, 2,700 positions left vacant, and 1,400 contractor positions reduced if the sequester materializes.

“NOAA will face the loss of highly trained technical staff and partners,” a DOC spokesperson said. “As a result, the government runs the risk of significantly increasing forecast error and, the government’s ability to warn Americans across the country about high impact weather events, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, will be compromised”.

The National Weather Service saved lives in Oklahoma this week, by issuing early warnings that gave people time to seek shelter before the tornado hit. The agency issued a tornado warning 16 minutes before the tornado touched down outside of Newcastle, and 19 minutes before it reached Monroe. That may not sound like enough time, but in these situations every minute counts, and any early warning increases the likelihood of getting to safety before a twister strikes. 

Advances in forecasting technology and tornado prediction could mean earlier warnings in the future. New, experimental methods could increase warning times from 15-30 minutes to as much as six hours before a tornado. But it won’t happen if agencies like the NOAA and NWS don’t have the money to maintain and upgrade their satellites and forecasting technology. The best technology available won’t make a difference if no one’s there to operate and monitor it, because the NOAA and NWS don’t have the money hire new forecasters, or even keep their remaining employees on the job. 

Tornado season is upon us, and that means we could see more than 1,000 tornados.   Most will touch down in the Midwest, but the area traditionally known as “Tornado Alley” no longer has a monopoly on tornados. 

Literally and figuratively, Tornado Alley now could be almost anywhere; the “alley” is more like a field that seems to spread by the year.

That funnel cloud in The Wizard of Oz (actually a 35-foot tapered stocking) was remote and exotic to audiences for much of the last century. But the Oklahoma disaster is a reminder that Tornado Alley is less a geographic description than a state of mind, as twisters seem to range farther afield and extreme weather in general turns up in unexpected places — a deadly tornado in western Massachusetts (June 2011), an earthquake in central Virginia (August 2011), storm surge on Wall Street (October 2012).

The number of recorded tornadoes has shot up over the years, but Tom Jeffrey, a hazard scientist with CoreLogic, a Santa Ana, Calif., analytics firm, says it’s not clear if that’s because there are more tornadoes or more people reporting them.

He gives several explanations for our increased concern about tornadoes and all kinds of very bad weather. Climate change seems to portend meteorological extremes; cable TV news and social media focus national attention; meteorologists are much better able to detect, track and measure tornadoes; and the population is larger and more dispersed — a fatter target.

Disasters happen. But the man-made disaster known as “the sequester” didn’t have to happen, and it doesn’t have continue. It’s possible that Congress will approve yet another “exception” to the sequester, for agencies like FEMA, the NOAA and NWS. But Congress can simply repeal the sequester.

We don’t have to sequester the next disaster, but every day that the sequester stands makes it more likely that we will. The only questions are: When and where will it happen? And who will suffer the consequences?

Republicans have been eager to blame the sequester on President Obama, and complain when certain cuts affect their districts. But beyond proposing robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul solutions for things like protecting air traffic controllers, what do Republican want to do about the sequester cuts?

Cut more.

The AP reports:

Republicans controlling the House pressed ahead Tuesday with slashing cuts to domestic programs far deeper than the cuts departments like Education, Interior and State are facing under an already painful round of automatic austerity.

Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and the Pentagon would be spared under the plan approved by the House Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote, but legislation responsible for federal firefighting efforts and Indian health care would absorb a cut of 18 percent below [sequester] legislation adopted in March…

…The foreign aid budget would be sharply cut as well, while a bill funding the IRS budget and implementation of new financial regulations would absorb a 20 percent cut from levels approved just two months ago

And yet, in the very same article, the House Appropriations chair says, “The guillotine of sequestration has fallen, and I think we all agree that its consequences have been, and will continue to be, very harmful.”

In other words, the sequester is bad. So let’s make it worse.

MORNING MESSAGE: What’s Wrong With Jamie Dimon is What’s Wrong With America

OurFuture.org’s Richard Eskow: “After today’s shareholder votes at JPMorgan Chase, Mark Gongloff is right to describe Dimon as a ‘cult leader.’ … But that’s not the end of the story. It’s too easy to externalize responsibility by pinning the blame on villains. … The Jamie Dimon story shows that something more fundamental needs repair – in our economy, in our society, in us.”

Immigration Reform Clears Committee, Stings Labor

Bipartisan immigration reform bill clears committee. Time: “The Senate committee debating a landmark immigration bill approved the bipartisan measure on Tuesday night, voting 13 to 5 to send the amended package to the floor. Ten Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined with three Republicans, including two of the four GOP authors of the bill, in support of a sweeping deal that would open a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants, beef up border security and refashion the clunky U.S. immigration system.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch secures amendment helping tech firms win visa battle over unions. W. Post: “The compromise amendment lifts the requirement that companies first offer tech jobs to Americans for all firms except those that depend on foreigners for more than 15 percent of their workforce and relaxes the formula for determining the annual number of foreign high-tech workers.”

AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka vows to fight tech visa change on Senate floor. The Hill quotes: “Hatch’s amendments change the bill so that high tech companies could functionally bring in H-1B visa holders without first making the jobs available to American workers. Hatch’s amendments would mean that American corporations could fire American workers in order to bring in H-1B visa holders at lower wages.”

No Republican filibuster planned. The Hill: “Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Tuesday said he would not try to block immigration reform from reaching the floor despite the opposition of some conservative leaders … While McConnell stopped short of pledging his support for the legislation, he praised the Gang of Eight’s work and said he is ‘hopeful’ of passing a comprehensive immigration fix through the Senate.”

But more Republican concessions eyed. Roll Call: “…though the deal worked to secure Hatch’s backing for the immigration framework in committee, he and other Republicans are demanding more concessions before they back a final bill on the Senate floor. ‘I am going to vote this bill out of committee because I’ve committed to do that once this amendment passes,’ Hatch told his colleagues … ‘But make no mistake about it, those other four amendments that are Finance Committee amendments, we are going to reserve them for the floor, but I’ve got to get those or we’ll never pass those bills.’”

Apple Faces Senate

Senate hearing goes light on Apple CEO Tim Cook. TNR: “His interrogators seemed eager to prove how much they use Apple products … The problem, for [subcommittee Chair Sen. Carl] Levin, was that he made no determination that the company did anything illegal. He berated Cook for doing exactly what Congress has allowed it to do, by failing to update its tax code for a world where capital is mobile and intellectual property is more valuable than physical property.”

ThinkProgress offers “How To Close The Loopholes That Made Apple’s Tax-Dodging Completely Legal”: “[Economist Alan] Auerbach suggests that multinational companies pay their taxes only in the countries that use their products, so that moving money across borders doesn’t alter the taxes they owe in any given country. Tim Fernholz of Quartz explains that Auerbach’s idea strips ‘the ability to move US profits overseas’ artificially, as present law has encouraged Apple to do. With a few other tweaks, this could make it more attractive to invest in the U.S.”

Some corporate cash, parked offshore to avoid taxes, actually in US banks. NYT: “Apple’s $102 billion in offshore profits is actually managed by one of its wholly owned subsidiaries in Reno, Nev., according to the Senate report on the company’s tax avoidance. The money is tracked by Apple company bookkeepers in Austin, Tex. What’s more, the funds are held in bank accounts in New York. Because the $102 billion is technically assigned to two Irish subsidiaries, however, the United States tax code considers the money to be under foreign control, and Apple is legally entitled to avoid paying taxes on it. Tax experts say that such an arrangement is not uncommon among American multinationals.”

Fed Presses Europe To Quit Austerity

Fed Reserve member presses European central bank to adopt monetary stimulus. NYT: “The public comments were highly unusual. While central bankers from different countries frequently confer in private and offer advice and criticism to their peers behind closed doors, it is rare for any official to go public with even the mildest criticism of another central bank … The European Central Bank has given no signals that it is seriously considering quantitative easing.”

Keynesians winning the argument, to no avail, notes NYT’s Eduardo Porter: “For despite all this intellectual firepower, governments across the industrial world are zealously tightening their belts. The Italian government has cut its annual budget deficit to 3 percent of G.D.P. last year from 5.5 percent in 2009, and the Irish government has slashed it to 7.6 percent from 13.9 percent. In Britain … the government of Prime Minister David Cameron reduced the deficit to 6.3 percent of G.D.P. last year, down from 11.5 percent in 2009 … The German government is running a budget surplus. And despite the public’s belief that Washington is engaged in a spending spree, the deficit in the United States narrowed to 7 percent of G.D.P. in 2012 from 10.1 percent in 2009.”

“Sequester Part 2″ coming in January. The Hill: “Unless President Obama and congressional leaders reach a deficit grand bargain, experts say Congress is on track to put most spending on autopilot with another continuing resolution.

Amendment to protect food stamps from cuts fails on Senate Floor reports HuffPost.

Sens. Paul and McCain have floor flight over debt limit. Roll Call: “Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine joined Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., on the floor in support of going to conference without imposing special mandates on conferees. McCain objected to a bid by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to require that Senate budget negotiators not provide for an increase in the debt limit … Allowing a debt limit increase through budget reconciliation would require agreement from House GOP budget conferees, which would be led by Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis. McCain highlighted that point during a floor exchange with Collins. ‘Isn’t that a little bit bizarre?’ McCain asked Collins.”

On the menu this morning

MORNING MESSAGE: The Latest Lie – IRS Targeted Conservatives

The Bite of Apple: Worming Through Tax Loopholes

Homeowners Arrested; Say Bankers Should Have Been

Good Deficit News Bad News for Right

Latest Immigration Bill Twists

Breakfast Sides

MORNING MESSAGE: The Latest Lie – IRS Targeted Conservatives

http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130520/the-latest-lie-irs-targeted-conservatives “The corporate media is blasting out the story that the IRS “targeted conservative groups.” Some in the media say there was “IRS harassment of conservative groups.” Some of the media are going so far as claiming that conservative groups were “audited.” This story that is being repeated and treated as “true” is just not what happened at all. It is one more right-wing victimization fable, repeated endlessly until the public has no choice except to believe it.” Continue reading

The Bite of Apple: Worming Through Tax Loopholes

“Senate investigators find Apple employs elaborate tax avoidance scheme. Time: “The world’s most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish subsidiary that earned $22 billion in 2011 paid only $10 million in taxes … The strategies Apple uses are legal, and many other multinational corporations use similar tax techniques to avoid paying U.S. income taxes on profits they reap overseas. But Apple uses a unique twist … Apple capitalizes on a difference between U.S. and Irish rules regarding tax residency…”

Apple tax avoidance strategy “went beyond anything most experts had ever seen” reports NYT.

“Apple prepares for Washington onslaught” at hearing today, reports Politico: “Apple isn’t taking any chances with senators looking to embarrass CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday at a hearing on the tech giant’s offshore $100 billion stash … Apple has turned to a top Washington law firm for help, O’Melveny & Myers – veterans at trying to keep big companies out of trouble, like Enron, Ford and Goldman Sachs.”

Homeowners Arrested; Say Bankers Should Have Been

District and federal law enforcement officials arrested 17 people at the Justice Department Monday. The Washington Post: “About 100 protesters with groups called the Home Defenders League and Occupy Our Homes marched on the building about 2 p.m. … ‘A couple months ago, Eric Holder said banks are too big to prosecute,” [Jason Collette, a protester,] said. “We think that is fundamentally wrong.’” …

Campaign for Fair Settlement launches “Week of Action” to pressure Justice Department to “prosecuting the bankers who destroyed our economy.

Foreclosure victims arrested in Justice Dept. protest. ThinkProgress: “…a group of activists and foreclosed homeowners marched on the Justice building in downtown Washington, D.C. … protesters moved past a police barricade and attempted to establish a sit-in, at which point police began arresting homeowners and activists.”

OurFuture.org’s Jas Sajjan talks to homeowners who showed up at the protest.

Good Deficit News Bad News for Right

The “deficit scolds” aren’t happy that the deficit is down, notes Paul Krugman: “You’re Bowles/Simpson, with a lucrative and ego-satisfying business of going around the country delivering ominous talks about The Deficit; you’re an employee of one of the many Pete Peterson front groups; and now, all of a sudden, the deficit is receding, and you had nothing to do with it. It’s a disaster!”

W. Post’s Jamelle Bouie reminds cutting the deficit never was what Republicans really wanted: “…Obama and Congress have already taken three major actions to deal with the deficit … [But] the GOP was never really interested in a ‘grand bargain’ to take debt and deficits off the table. Rather, as evidenced by the rhetoric of many Congressional Republican, the real goal was to dismantle the social safety net with aggressive cuts. At the moment, that hasn’t been successful.”

“Projected Medicare and Medicaid Spending Has Fallen by $900 Billion” notes CBPP.

Latest Immigration Bill Twists

Immigration deal with Sen. Orrin Hatch, favoring tech companies over labor concerns, may be near. NYT: “…behind-the-scenes negotiating and arm-twisting picked up in earnest, with Mr. Schumer’s office taking the lead in trying to work out an agreement with Mr. Hatch … By late Monday night, Senate aides said, Mr. Hatch was closing in on a deal with the bipartisan group, and was expected to offer his high-tech amendments on Tuesday.”

“Rubio breaks with Dems on immigration bill’s asylum, student visa provisions” reports The Hill: “Rubio was dismayed the Senate Judiciary Committee defeated an amendment sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to halt proposed changes until a coordinated review detailing the intelligence and immigration failures [related to the Boston bomb attack] was submitted to Congress by the inspectors general of the relevant agencies … Rubio plans to address the issue after the Judiciary Committee’s markup.”

But bill is withstanding committee process. Time: “Slow but sure seems to be working for the supporters of the Senate’s immigration bill. With Washington distracted by scandals large and small, the Senate Judiciary Committee continued to chew its way through amendments to the bipartisan measure … The Judiciary Committee is hoping to wrap up its work as early as Wednesday night.”

Breakfast Sides

More seniors are living in poverty than previously thought. Politico reports on a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis: “The estimate, which takes into account health spending and regional cost of living, finds 1 in 7 seniors lives in poverty. It was previously thought that just 1 in 10 did. … under some proposals to reform Medicare, these poverty levels would keep climbing. “Under the supplemental poverty measure, which deducts health spending from income, poverty rates could increase if beneficiaries were required to pay higher cost sharing or premiums for Medicare,” the analysis states.”

Labor unions express unease with Obamacare implementation. The Hill: “A variety of unions are publicly balking at how the administration plans to implement the landmark law. … Many UFCW members have what are known as multi-employer or Taft-Hartley plans. According to the administration’s analysis of the Affordable Care Act, the law does not provide tax subsidies for the roughly 20 million people covered by the plans. Union officials argue that interpretation could force their members to change their insurance and accept more expensive and perhaps worse coverage in the state-run exchanges. … [S]ome employers won’t have the incentive to keep their workers’ multi-employer plans without tax subsidies.”

U.S.-China summit set for next month. NYT: “President Obama plans to meet President Xi Jinping of China next month for the first time since Mr. Xi’s installation as the leader of the world’s most populous nation, as the two leaders try to establish a working relationship on critical issues like North Korea, the global economy and allegations of state-sponsored cyber attacks…”

Gov. Chris Christie joins the climate change deniers. Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky: “It wasn’t so long ago that Christie spoke like a rational person on these matters … [But now, when Christie was asked should] New Jersey have prepared with climate change in mind? No, the governor said, ’cause I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change.’ It’s that ‘proof’ that’s the giveaway. No proof is what the science deniers say.”

OurFuture.org’s Roger Hickey and Richard Eskow explain during their appearance Sunday on “Pivot Point with Maya Rockeymoore” what it will take for progressives to win the fight against conservative austerity economic policies that are holding down the economy and preventing the job growth that we need.

“The great thing is that the idea of austerity has been debunked in recent months,” Hickey points out in the interview, citing the recent disclosure that an influential paper written by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that encouraged U.S. and European to support austerity measures contained mathematical errors that undercut its thesis. “It’s been very, very clear now that this medicine that’s been prescribed by these witch doctors has been bleeding our economy and yet the whole thing has been on automatic pilot, so we are continuing to see sequestration sap the strength of the economy.”

But Richard Eskow warns that while the intellectual underpinnings of austerity has been “completely discredited,” he goes on to say that “I would argue that this was never primarily an intellectual movement. It was a movement of economic self-interest on the part of certain parties that needed intellectual cover, so in that sense it is very much alive and very much dangerous.”

Sunday, May 19, 2013, was one of the saddest and most notorious moments in the sordid history of the federal budget.

Let’s start from the beginning.

It’s December 2012 and House Republicans are facing a number of politically very difficult and unpalatable choices because taxes will go up automatically on January 1, the sequester will go into effect on January 2 and the by-now- commonplace-but-still-called “extraordinary” measures the Treasury has been using for several months to deal with the problems caused by not raising the debt ceiling are about to be exhausted.

The tax problem was dealt with by agreeing to a smaller increase than was set to happen under current law and then blaming the White House for it. The sequester was postponed until March 1 when both the GOP and the administration thought that the threat of cuts to domestic and military programs, respectively, would cause the other to back down.

But it was the unique and disgraceful way the debt ceiling was handled that deserves the scorn.

In theory, with more exotic options like the trillion dollar coin and 14th amendment rejected by the White House, the only two choices facing Congress at that moment were to vote to increase the debt ceiling so the federal government could borrow the cash it needed to keep operating, or not to raise the borrowing limit and force Washington to default on some of its obligations. It was a very clear pass/fail, true/false, black/white choice.

This presented the House GOP with two very difficult choices. Voting against the debt ceiling hike was becoming increasing untenable as Wall Street and corporate America made it clear that was not an appropriate alternative from a financial perspective. But voting for the debt ceiling increase was a total nonstarter for the tea party wing of the GOP, which since it first came to prominence in 2010 had made debt ceiling votes one of its biggest political litmus tests.

The GOP’s solution to this dilemma was disgraceful. Instead of taking a political bullet and voting either for or against the debt ceiling, it came up with a scheme that allowed them to do neither. Rather than actually increase the debt ceiling and incur the wrath of their base, House Republicans brought a bill to the floor that required the federal debt ceiling to be iGNORED, that is, the Treasury could borrow whatever amounts it needed to cover its cash needs without any restrictions.

Then on May 19, without an additional vote and, therefore, with no member of the House or Senate having to go on record, the official federal debt ceiling would be raised to the amount the government had actually borrowed over the previous four-plus months. At that point, with the debt ceiling reached, the Treasury again would start to impose the so-called extraordinary measures and the countdown to the next debt ceiling crisis would begin.

At best, the federal debt ceiling is an anachronism, a vestigial organ of the federal budget process that should be eliminated. The actual borrowing needs are determined when legislation is enacted that changes either the amount the government spends or raises in revenues. Increases in the debt ceiling should be part of those bills rather than separate decisions and no member of Congress should be able to vote for a tax cut or spending increase unless he or she agrees at the same time to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate that choice.

But unless and until members of Congress and the White House have to face their constituents for agreeing to eliminate the debt ceiling, they should not be able to allow it to be ignored without taking responsibility for their actions.

The ultimate irony here is that congressional Republicans have been complaining about Senate Democrats not producing a budget between 2009 and 2012. That’s certainly true; Senate Democrats found the votes in favor of a congressional budget resolution with high deficits very politically difficult and decided that the better course of action was to ignore the requirement.

But now the same people on Capital Hill who relentlessly have castigated Democrats for ignoring their budget resolution responsibilities are the ones that authored the completely analogous procedure for the federal debt ceiling.

That makes May 19, 2013, one of the most egregious abrogations of legislative responsibility in U.S. history.

Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

Apple (like many giant, multinational corporations) has been avoiding paying the taxes they owe to the country by setting up foreign “subsidiaries” in tax-haven countries, and moving jobs and profit centers out of the country. They have accumulated billions upon billions of dollars in these tax havens. Now they want a special tax break to reward them for doing that.

Tomorrow the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code – Part 2 (Apple, Inc.)” with Apple’s Tim Cook. Apple is holding more than $100 billion in tax haven countries, to evade U.S. taxes. At the hearing, Cook (2011 compensation $378 million) is expected to offer a proposal for changes to the corporate tax system.

Cook’s proposal is likely to be for a “tax repatriation holiday” and a “territorial tax system,” both of which mean giant, multinational companies like Apple will pay less in taxes, people like Cook will have even more money, and We the People will end up with higher taxes, fewer good schools and good roads and police and teachers and the other things government does to make our lives better. As a bonus, this makes giant multinationals that move jobs and profits overseas even more competitive against smaller American companies that keep jobs and profits here and do not have foreign “subsidiaries” located in tax havens.

New Report On Apple’s Tax Avoidance

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the AFL-CIO held a conference call today to talk about a new report by CTJ, “Apple Holds Billions of Dollars in Foreign Tax Havens,” documenting Apple’s offshore tax avoidance. The report states that,

An analysis of Apple Inc.’s financial reports makes clear that Apple has paid almost no income taxes to any country on its $102 billion in offshore cash holdings. That means that this cash hoard reflects profits that were shifted, on paper, out of countries where the profits were actually earned into foreign tax havens.

How much is this costing us? First, with Washington all aflutter over deficits, the tax dollars: $35.3 billion. From the report:

Applying this same U.S. tax rate to Apple’s $102.3 billion offshore cash hoard as of March 2013 would generate $35.3 billion in U.S. income taxes, without deferral.

Worse, however, is the cost in jobs and manufacturing infrastructure. The current tax laws encourage companies to move jobs, factories and profit centers out of the country. They actually subsidize this with tax breaks!

“Back-Alley Thief”

On the call were Bob McIntyre, Executive Director of CTJ, Damon Silvers, Policy Director and Special Counsel for AFL-CIO and Frank Clemente, Campaign Manager for ATF.

ATF’s Frank Clemente said Apple is “acting like a back-alley thief trying to pick the pockets of American taxpayers.” Clemente also said the proposal for a tax holiday is “another mugging of the American taxpayer.”

CTJ’s Bob McIntyre said that Apple has more than $102 billion accumulated offshore, “virtually all in tax havens, never taxed. Often profits made in the U.S. that they pretend to earn abroad.” McIntyre said Apple is a “poster child for why we need to get rid of deferral,” and “If they are doing business in real countries and paying taxes, give them a credit, but companies like Apple, it all ends up in a situation where they pay very little in taxes. Deferral has cost the U.S. taxpayers in Apple’s case $35 billion and is growing every year.”

Hurts Smaller American-Based Businesses

AFL-CIO’s Damon Silvers described the terrible cost we pay for this, because it hurts smaller American-based businesses. Silvers spoke of the tax policies Apple seems likely to advocate in terms of the current “sequester” cuts, saying, “Today as Apple testifies we are dismantling vital government services, laying people off because we are in theory in a fiscal crisis. Head start, cancer research, national defense … there is a long list of vital functions not being carried forward because in the view of Congress we don’t have revenues to support it.”

“Apple is one of the most profitable corporations in America and perhaps the world, setting aside $102 billion, not paying tax. On a cash basis Apple only paid $3.3 billion in taxes worldwide, less than 10 percent. Walmart is paying 24 percent. But more damaging is what Apple is saying we should do with corporate taxes in general. Deferral lets companies with overseas subsidiaries avoid taxes. This is not something available to most companies, only to global corporations that can move profits and operation offshore.”

“Small business is paying the full freight as are all of us as individuals. But Apple is asking for a special rate on offshore profits of 10 percent. And now key lobbyists, led by Fix the Debt, are proposing foreign overseas earnings tax free.”

Resources

ATF has an extensive facts page at “Apple Is a Bad Apple when It Comes to Paying Its Taxes” and you can download the fact sheet by clicking here. You can tweet using the #BadApple hashtag.

CTJ has a page describing their new report, Apple Holds Billions of Dollars in Foreign Tax Havens and you can read a PDF of the full report by clicking here.

About CTJ and ATF

CTJ is a public interest research and advocacy organization focusing on federal, state and local tax policies. They push for tax fairness for middle and low-income families, requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share and closing corporate tax loopholes.

ATF is a coalition representing more than 280 groups. They are pushing for a tax system that makes the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

FYI – ATF will be live blogging and live Tweeting from the Tuesday U.S. Senate hearing.

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