We don't hear enough about this anymore, but around 320 Fortune 500 corporations still hold some $2.6 trillion in offshore profits, thus avoiding some $750 billion in taxes. They earn this money here, but they stuff it over there, to avoid paying for roads and bridges and police officers and firefighters here. And this 10% tax amnesty I keep hearing about is no way to get better behavior out of them.
WIRED talks to three Republican House Reps (out of 15) who voted against S.J.Res. 34, the anti-online privacy bill. They all make strong cases, though Mr. McClintock says "government...restricts competition," when actually government allows big corporations to restrict competition; there's a big difference. In any case, one must conclude that the Republicans who voted to trash the privacy rules are not conservatives -- they're reactionaries, or right-wingers, or morons, or what you will.
So what else is wrong with Congress's repeal of FCC internet privacy rules? according to Georgetown law professor Paul Ohm, it "could result in the greatest legislative expansion of the FBI’s surveillance power since 2001’s Patriot Act." S.J.Res. 34 doesn't grant the FBI any new powers, but it enables the FBI to ask for much, much more information associated with an IP address -- since ISPs will be collecting so much more of it now. All to enable corporate Republican sugar-daddies.
The incomparable David Dayen describes "how pharmacy benefit managers morphed from processors to predators." Pharmacy benefit managing corporations act as go-between between drug manufacturers and pharmacists -- and have amassed so much power (at least partly through consolidation into near-monopolies everywhere but North Dakota) that they have no interest in getting a good deal for customers, but only for themselves, and that means higher drug prices for all of us. The good news? Actual bipartisan groups in Congress want to rein them in. The bad news? Our Glorious Elites only care about the "bipartisanship" that nobody actually wants and does nobody any good.
Finally, Pennsylvania state Senator/gubernatorial hopeful, in discussing climate change, says "the Earth moves closer to the sun every year" and wonders if the increase in population causes an increase in body heat that accounts for climate change. Anything to get fossil fuel corporations off the hook! If you're thinking Mr. Wagner just misunderstood the whole concept of an elliptical orbit, remember: it's not "stupid or evil," because stupid is evil.
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