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Bugs

And the Clinton hits just keep on coming:

Point:
ABC News: Wolfson: Edwards' Cover-up Cost Clinton the Nomination
Counter point:
Ta-Nehisi Coates (August 11, 2008) - These people are disgusting
An interesting reader comment on the above:
Maybe this year in Denver the head busting will take place inside the convention rather than outside like in Chi-town in '68?

Calling all Clinton supporters to pack your billy clubs for the trip to Denver?

__________________
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion" - Steven Weinberg

Boon Mee

The Ant & the Grasshopper

The Old Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all sum mer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and
plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!



The Democrat Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and
plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while
others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a
table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor
grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody
cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where
the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse then
has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi & Barack Obama exclaim in an interview with Larry King that
the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for
an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the 2007 summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green
bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is
confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a
defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal
judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare
recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of
the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just h appens to
be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain
it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house,
now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once
peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2008

Shamlessly ripped from here

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ผมเป็นคนบ้านนอก

sabang

Tempted to put this in the 'why Obama will win' thread, but do you reckon this little snippet of information might have some bearing on the election, indeed on the marketability of Obamas tax reform policies :-

Two-thirds of firms avoid US income tax


Two-thirds of US corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office released on Monday said about 68 per cent of foreign companies doing business in the US avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of US dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, who asked for the GAO study with Democratic Senator Carl Levin.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million US companies, or 66.7 per cent of them, paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $US2.5 trillion ($A2.87 trillion) in sales. About 25 per cent of large US corporations - those with at least $US250 million ($A287 million) in assets or $US50 million ($A57 million) in receipts - did not pay corporate taxes.

The GAO said it analysed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the US.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices - amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.

"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.

Two-thirds of firms avoid US income tax - Breaking News - Business - Breaking News

What does Mr and Mrs middle America think about this, I wonder?

It seems a strange dichotomy, but the staunchest Republican supporters seem often to be those decent, hard working folk who are actually the ones being most disadvantaged by the Bush admin's tax policies. I wonder why- the racial issue can only be a part of it.

__________________
To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

Jet Gorgon

^ Then those big companies must not be publicly listed (ie, with shares trading on a major exchange). I read P&Ls everyday and big companies DO pay taxes. Sure, every company looks for ways to reduce its tax burden, just like everyman does, but they pay plenty if they are based in the States and not Bermuda, etc.

sabang

I would guess some listed companies avoid tax, smaller ones no doubt, but the vast majority of these companies would undoubtably be private.

Norton

Can't agree with you. I worked for 3 very large publicly listed multinational companies who were constantly looking at the "tax benefits" of transfer pricing.

Transfer pricing is not against the law but I do know some of the schemes in the companies I worked for would be questionable as to legality.

__________________
There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

Woodrow Wilson

sabang

Biggest con going. Shelf companies, nominee directors, nominee shareholders, dodgy jurisdictions- you name it. One gets investigated, just close it down and open another one- preferably in another tax haven, to keep the tax skunks a few steps behind you. No requirement for P&L accounts & balance sheets.

Jet Gorgon

^ & ^^. True, guys. But auditors usually unravel stuff like Div A could not have sold this to Div B at this price, Norts. Sure, stuff can be hidden in shell cos and offshore biz and lots of other sneaky things. Still, big cos do pay pretty hefty taxes and hire lots of people that also pay taxes. The govt should still win if it had any brains.

ChiangMai noon

nail on the head.

Norton

Heard on CNN this morning. Colin Powell is expected to announce his support of Obama. Should he do so, it would be a big boost to Obama. Now here would be an interesting VP choice. Too bad he is "black" or he would be a shoe in. A shame race is such an issue as Powell would be perfect VP for Obama.

Bugs

Would agree Powell would make a good VP choice - actually for either candidate. Yet to be seen if Powell will endorse Obama, he has played it pretty tight to the chest.

But the original report about Powell making the endorsement appears to have indicated Powell would not only endorse Obama, but would do it at the convention with a speech.

Powell has seen come out to say he will not be attending the convention. But it did not directly address if he would be endoring Obama, or McCain for that matter:
Kristol: Colin Powell to Endorse Barack Obama - America’s Election HQ
Edit in:
Optional linky for those that find it hard to accept anything FOX reports as being true or the news:
Colin Powell: Will he or won't he publicly back Barack Obama? | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Jet Gorgon

Powell is too classy to submit to politics, IMO.

Bugs

Dead heat in the Pew Polls:
Overview: Presidential Race Draws Even
McCain finaling securing the GOP base. I think Obama will eventually get the blue base in line - once all those Clinton backers finally accept that she won't get the nomination. Thus giving Obama his boost after the convention.

Bugs

Some noise has been made by both candidates about getting support from the other side of the aisle. But it seems both have the vast majority of thier party tied up:

Republicans For Obama , The Nation: "Obamicans" Are Throwbacks To The Days Of Traditional Republicanism - CBS News
The 90% number is a bit high, especially right now for Obama (see recent pew poll results). But I think both will lock up that 90% number when it counts - in the voting booth.

Norton

Agree. Until the conventions are done both are probing and poking at one another searching for messages that bring the highest acceptance by the voters. McCain has been handed a golden opportunity to demonstrate his "crisis management" claim vis a vis the Russian/Georgian crisis. He needs to be careful though on a too hard line message as the public is certainly very war weary and the last thing they want is another military confrontation.

Norton

This is not good news for McCain. Sure are a lot more Dems than Reps heading for the voting booths. Still believe the winner will need the independent vote. McCain will need a much higher independent percentage to overcome the number of Dems.

Jet Gorgon

^ Norts, very few Americans even know or give a flying fek about Russia/Georgia (lest they think it's Georgia State). Sure, oil pipelines, sure, if war breaks out they take their troops out of Iraq, but really, do Americans care about that? No US GIs over there and they don't get no oil from there either.

sabang

Hasn't Obama gone quiet? Sunning himself in Hawaii, staying out of the limelight, next step the DNC.

I daresay theres some strategy about this. Apart from giving him time to prepare for his debates, his DNC appearances, and presumably decide his VP nominee, no doubt his campaign people are using the vacuum to sit back, look at the numbers and demographics in the various states, and see what the McCain campaign is blustering about. It also somewhat takes the wind out of the 'celebrity Obama' gripes.

Smart or not? We'll see. He certainly wouldn't want to stay in the Aloha state for too long, but I suspect they are being pretty canny here. Keep the opposition guessing for a while, and study their moves. There will be plenty of Press and publicity at the DNC.

Milkman

I think taking a break is good for him and the rest of the publice. I think he's been over-exposed. People just get tired of hearing, seeing, and reading about one person on basically, a daily basis.

This election campaignin also started much earlier than previous elections because of the need to raise to much money, and the fact that the VP wasn't running for the President.

Fatique? At least for me. I have largely tuned out of the election coverage, but of course discuss it here on the forum.

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Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy

Texpat

Powell? The same guy who told the BIG LIE to the United Nations and the world?

Now he's a good guy?

Did he spend some time at the temple or monestary or sumthin?

Geez, dogs kissing cats, oil mixing with water -- Moscow invades Georgia and that's OK, nasty Republican thieving murderous liars are decent folks -- if they're black ...