Because, you know, they posted the birth certificate with no prompting and for no reason whatsoever, and if they hadn’t posted it, there would be no question about Obama’s birth. Like.. what?? I had to look twice to make sure that the talking head was not a Republican shill. Nope. The TH in question is a proud bearer of the Progressive banner, and his contention — supported by Keith O’s stand-in for the evening — is that the Obama campaign essentially created the birther controversy by responding to it. Circular reasoning, anyone?

I have another suggestion to incentivize businesses to move their base of operations back here to the good old USA. Give them a chance to cut their tax liability in half. That’s right. You’re hearing me right. I am advocating completely cutting corporate income taxes in half for big business under this plan. Here’s the specifics (and remember, I know that there are very likely huge holes that could be poked in this. I understand that it is not taking many other things into consideration. I offer it for discussion and as a talking point.)

Let’s amend the progressive income tax to a graduated corporate income tax pegged to their investment in the U.S.A. job market. Set up a system with a single tax rate – but adjust the percentage of profit taxed to the percentage of the company’s jobs that are here in the United States.

Under my plan, if your company earned $100,000 in profit and 100% of your jobs are here in the US, you pay taxes on 50% of your income. That’s it. You get to keep half of your money completely tax free. For every percentage of your job equity that is sent overseas, you pay taxes on another .5% of your profits. Thus, if your company earned $100,000 and 50% of your jobs are overseas, you’ll pay taxes on 75% of your income. If 90% of your jobs are overseas, you’ll pay taxes on 95% of your income.

However, it also requires a change in another aspect of the tax code to really drive it home – the part of our tax code that encourages big businesses to keep their profits (and move their profits) overseas. That needs to be addressed – we MUST remove the incentive for companies to move their jobs and keep their profits overseas instead of bringing them home and spending them here.

First, the basic concept that you have to understand is this: multinational companies – companies who do business in foreign markets – are required to pay taxes to that foreign country on the income earned there. They are not required to pay US taxes on those profits AS LONG AS THEY DO NOT BRING THE PROFITS HOME. In other words, as long as those profits are held in a foreign holding company and not attributed to the US company, there is no need to pay US taxes on them. In addition, there are ways to shift US profits to offshore companies and avoid paying US taxes.

Next, let’s take a little side trip to the web site of a company that helps US companies take advantage of all the tax breaks they’re allowed under US tax policies. Here’s a few excerpts:

Foreign Tax Credit Maximizer | Maximize a US taxpayer’s ability to use foreign taxes that the taxpayer’s foreign activities are subject to, as tax credits against the US tax liability.

In other words, if a company pays foreign taxes to a foreign country on earnings in that country, the amount of the tax can be deducted against the amount of tax that they pay in the U.S. Yes – income should be taxed once and only once, but it should be taxed fairly.

Transfer Pricing | Let us assist you with intercompany pricing studies and analysis to support intercompany pricing strategies. We know what various countries’ tax authorities around the world (including the US) will accept as intercompany pricing for goods and services without being subject to punitive costs.
Transfer pricing is one way to shift income earned in the US to companies owned in foreign countries where it is taxed at a lower rate.

Cross Border Transaction Analysis | We can provide tax planning with respect to a US company’s acquisition of a foreign company or a foreign company’s acquisition of a US company to optimize their tax position. Alternatively, we can reorganize a US company’s foreign activities/structure or a foreign company’s US business activities/structure to obtain significant tax savings.

Captive Insurance Company Tax Structuring | Proper planning can help ensure deductibility of premium payments and ensure the most tax efficiency out an offshore captive insurance company.

“Double Dip” Financing Structure/Super Holding Company Structure | Optimize a company’s interest deductions to obtain two deductions (one in the US and one in a foreign jurisdiction) and/or to shift income from a high taxed jurisdiction to a very low taxed jurisdiction to lower worldwide effective tax rate.

Offshore Intangible Holding Company | Companies that own and/or plan on developing various intangible assets for exploitation offshore can use this planning technique to lower their worldwide effective tax rate by “trapping” royalties in low taxed jurisdictions.

Okay? Got that? We are subsidizing companies who take jobs overseas and follow the letter of the law in order to maximize their profits – and in many cases, actually CHEAT the US taxpayers.

Why the hell do we work against our own interests here? Why does government work against the interests of most people in this country in order to benefit a very small slice of the top of the heap? And why, why, why do people BELIEVE that this incredible travesty of a tax code is IN THEIR BEST INTEREST?

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Sarah Palin & Spiritual Warfare

Let’s talk about unsavory association for a moment. Forget the Alaska secession and take a look at what the people she prays with believe. They believe that their prayer is responsible for death and destruction of those who are ‘against us’ – and who is that? How about Mother Theresa and Princess Diana? How about some poor woman that they decided was a witch?

These are the people that Palin credits with “praying her ” into power. They are hate-mongers. They are hateful people. They are, in words from my Christian past, false prophets seeking earthly power. They have been named heretical, been called out for using prayer as a weapon, been responsible for literal witch hunts that kill people and accused of trying to take over the world.

If this all sounds a little kooky to you, join the club. It sounds a little kooky to a whole lot of us. Unfortunately, kooky people kill and kooky people barricade your business and kooky people turn your neighborhood into hell and kooky people target your children for being unbelievers. And these kooky people are “praying” Sarah into power. If you pray, pray that they don’t succeed. If you think, vote for a message of hope, not fear.

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The McCain-Palin Mob

Just watch it. Hat-tip to Clarus Visum for this one: If ignorant hate was currency, one rally could bail everyone out. Can I have that on a t-shirt? Please?

CV also asks a question that’s been bubbling in my mind for days – are they trying to rile up some kook to kill Obama? Seriously? I think Palin, at least, is. And I think McCain is willfully closing his eyes to it.

mccain-palin mob, hate tactics

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We’ve heard just a little about Pastor Muthee – the Kenyan preacher who claims to have cleaned up a Kenyan town by ‘discovering’ a witch and driving her out of town. This is only one of four cities that this sect claims to have cleaned up by “Spiritual Warfare” – one of them here in the USA. This is a quote from Talk2action.org, where a lot of this is catalogued by various writers of the religious left along with a great deal of other information.

“In 1995, Mary mobilized a prayer network for Alaska’s prisons and began experiencing spiritual warfare as never before. She had received word that a witch had applied for a job as chaplain of the state’s prison system… Mary recalls, “As we continued to pray against the spirit of witchcraft, her incense altar caught on fire, her car engine blew up, she went blind in her left eye, and she was diagnosed with cancer.”

Ultimately, the witch fled to another state for medical treatment. Soon after, revival visited every prison in Alaska. At the women’s correctional facility in Anchorage alone, 55 of 60 inmates found Christ. “Ask largely,” Mary says. “Intercessory prayer is making a major difference in North America.”

The participants of this movement really do believe that their prayers are the cause of destruction of property and injury, or perhaps even the death, of others like Mother Theresa and Princess Diana. And they do clearly profess to believe that others will be forced to accept their beliefs or be destroyed.

The Mary referred to is Mary Glazier, a self-professed Spiritual Warrior who claims a special prayer bond with Sarah Palin. Is it true? Is any of this true? I don’t know – but I think I’m far more afraid of this woman if she believes these things than I could ever be of Obama’s supposed radical terrorist ties.

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It is my understanding the numbers on wall street today are due to the increase of unemployment figures,people that have been living off of their credit card lines can not get credit even with credit lines so these folks now have joined the unemployment roll seeking work to bring a pay check in to pay their bills.

This is the reasoning posted today by one of the most vocal Republican conservatives over at the mylot site. It was attached to several paragraphs of praise for the great war hero John McCain and Caribou Barbie and slurs against Barack HUSEIN Obama, along with the obligatory slam that it’s all the fault of the commie conspiracy called acorn because they forced the government to buy houses for people who couldn’t afford them.

I’m not sure what the hell she’s been sniffing but I know that she’s not sniffing it alone. Does it scare anyone else that people like this can vote? It scares the hell out of me. We’re doomed.

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McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

Um… what?? We’re giving Barbie training wheels for the debates?

Okay, to be fair, there was this paragraph a little further on in the article:

McCain advisers said they were only somewhat concerned about Ms. Palin’s debating skills compared with those of Mr. Biden, who has served six terms in the Senate, or about his chances of tripping her up. Instead, they say, they wanted Ms. Palin to have opportunities to present Mr. McCain’s positions, rather than spending time talking about her experience or playing defense.

Apart from the fact that I believe we have a legitimate reason for being concerned about Palin being left with the keys if grampa croaks, and thus have every right to be asking her questions about her abilities and qualifications, I’m just totally boggled at the concept that anyone feels the need to spot Sarah some slack. She thinks she’s fully qualified – she never questioned whether or not she was. If she’s ready to play with the big kids, then let her loose. If she needs training wheels, she’s not ready. It’s that simple.

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I won’t even talk about the ads for Federal Debt Relief System which charges “subscribers”, already heavily in debt, several hundred dollars a month for “legal services”. Those “legal services” are as shady as the site on which they’re advertised. They consist largely of telling the client to stop communicating immediately with any credit collection agency, and then write to the agency to demand that they cease and desist all collection attempts until they can prove that the creditor incurred a debt with that specific credit collection agency. It’s a sleazy, slimy trick that’s based on a discredited loophole, and it doesn’t work any longer because creditors were onto it.

Even better – oh, let me show you:

See that story about the cancer cure tagged with the flashing BREAKING NEWS arrow? It’s an affiliate ad that links to a sensationalist sales letter (ask me about sales letters – I’m an expert on them) offering a free e-newsletter delivered directly to your mailbox. It’s put out by the Health Sciences Institute of Maryland, a group of alternative health practitioners. Now, let me put in my disclaimer here – I am incredibly open-minded about alternative health theory. I believe in nutritional health, I believe that there are benefits to herbs and to massage and to yoga and to many other things that we don’t understand yet. I also believe that there are those who seriously exploit our credibility and the desperation of those who are seeking a cure for various ailments. What I found on the Health Sciences Institute site was a mission statement that sounds heroic, and links to special reports with names like Drive out toxins (colon cleansing at a special introductory rate of $19.95 – but of course, you need to keep using it so… ), Boost your immunity (a “special report” about ‘immunological defenses’ for $9.95), Goodbye to arthritis (glucosamine and chondroitin with another “special report” for $19.95)..

This “free press for a free people” is no more than a shill for the most reprehensible of affiliate marketing scum – the ones that prey on gullible, uneducated, desperate people to make money. It’s disgusting. And it’s no surprise that they support the right-wing and float the most ridiculous lies of the campaign.

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It’s like watching a slow-motion scene from a horror movie, knowing what’s coming, seeing the zippers in the costume and still… still… not being able to look away. It’s like watching a couple of eight-year-olds debate economics and foreign policy – except that it’s excusable and understandable when eight-year-olds quote their parents as the ultimate authority. When it’s adults debating about presidential candidates, it’s scary stuff. We have one person who consistently quotes ‘news’ from YouTube mashups of candidates’s speeches and interviews as ‘reliable’ and ‘credible’ sources. Others routinely cobble together posts that are nothing more than repeated gossip of the most vile kind.

The sad part of all this is that these posters are not confined to one side. While the largest number of those barely intelligible, rabid posts tend to be from conservatives blindly cut-and-pasting articles from the most conservative right scare publications they can find, there are plenty of Democrat supporters that are just as bad. The blind acceptance of anything they read on their favorite media-trash sites scares the ever-lovin’ shit out of me.

The total lack of critical thinking and examination of what they’re reading is frightening. This is something that we need to be teaching our kids in school. They need to understand how to recognize spin, how to discern facts from propaganda, how to see when they are being deliberately misled by sensationalism. We’re hurt on two fronts by this – on the one hand, the sensational right media can post all the unchecked speculative garbage that they want and the right-brained sheep swallow it whole and repeat it at the top of their lungs. On the other hand, the sensational left media posts all the sensational garbage they can find without substantiating any of it, where the left-brained sheep latch onto it and repost it on their blogs and the right screams that the liberal media is crucifying their candidates and the only news that they can trust is Fox News (can I just tell you that I’d die laughing at that if I weren’t so close to crying about it?)

The truth is we shouldn’t be so surprised about the popularity of the McCain/Palin ticket. Remember the scene in Sweet Home Alabama where Reese Witherspoon hauls off and slugs Candice Bergen, hollering “Don’t you ever talk to my mama that way!” and the entire wedding breaks out in applause?  It was the triumph of small-town values over big city polish. It was the guy standing up to say “My quarterback can beat up your honor student”. It’s the resentment of Joe Ordinary bubbling over in the face of one too many elitist snob telling him he’s too dumb to manage his own money.

That’s the sentiment that we’re seeing in action in this campaign. Sarah is the champion of hockey, mom and apple pie. The plucky little PTA mom single-handedly swept out corruption in her little town, then moved on to the big city to do the same thing – now she’s going to get all those smarty-pants college professors and community organizers who think they know better than us how we should be running our lives. Barack Obama is the quintessential “elite”, born in a state most of us only dream of visiting, a cosmopolitan world citizen, well-educated, editor of the Harvard Review, well-spoken and proposing that if the U.S. is a world leader, then it’s time we started leading responsibly instead of playing bully. When little Miss Sarah started tossing off snide jibes at Barack and the Democratic party, she spoke to the high school kid in all of us. She reached out and embraced the side of us that resents the boss and the slick-talking guy that got the promotion we deserved. The only thing better (in their minds) than watching Palin take sly digs at Obama would be seeing her haul off and punch Hilary.

Unfortunatley for us, Miss Sarah is not Reese Witherspoon and this is not a movie script. The folks writing HER lines are not slick Hollywood writers who’ll deliver us a happily ever after ending. They’re the same writers that have managed to destroy every bit of good will that the U.S. had with most of the rest of the world. They’ve made us a laughingstock with most of the civilized world who can’t believe what they’re seeing, and they’ve written policies that allowed financial giants to gut our economy with little to no oversight.

The real joke is on us. Sarah Palin is a small-town hustler with a taste for big-city power and greed. She’s not Daisy Duke, she’s Boss Hogg with a little extra shrewdness. She’s the epitome of the small-town politician who rose to power by ruthless exercise of power and native cunning. And while that may fly in a little town (and despite it’s physical size, the state of Alaska is a small town in many ways), on the international stage she’s a little guppy trying to swim with the sharks.

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One of the things I’ve found consistently amusing with this blog is how people find us. For a while, anything from a search engine came from some variation of “airbrushed pictures of vaginas” or “unretouched pictures of vaginas”. Lately, the hits we get are from searches for “walmart school ads” or some variation of that. We get hits on ‘mom blogs political’ and ‘blogging mom’ and ‘my mother’s blog’ – which occasionally make me wonder if someone is really looking for their mother’s blog. But tonight’s search phrase really made me do a double take it was secret messages in Walmart t-shirts. So I did what any curious blog owner would do – I Googled it. And found:

Walmart Promotes Promiscuity about Walmart selling panties that read “Who needs credit cards..” on the front and “…when you’ve got Santa” on the back.