Today's WTF Moment Brought to You By Sen Barbara Boxer (D-CA).....

Geithner Rejects Sen. Barbara Boxer's Proposal for Tax Holiday for Corporations' Offshore Profits
By rwilkins on February 11, 2011 3:00 PM | Permalink |

Lawmakers in Congress have been discussing a second tax holiday for U.S. corporations' offshore tax profits, after having sworn that the first such holiday, enacted in 2004, would be a one-time event.

Typically, when multinational U.S. corporations bring overseas profits back to the United States (when they "repatriate" offshore profits) they have to pay U.S. corporate income taxes. The statutory tax rate for corporate income is 35 percent, although corporations of course use many breaks and loopholes to lower their effective rate.

The tax holiday that was enacted in 2004 allowed companies to repatriate their profits and pay taxes at a rate of just 5.25 percent (that is, almost nothing).

The biggest problem is that if Congress shows that it is willing to repeat this "one-time" tax holiday, then corporations will actually have an incentive to shift profits, and perhaps even operations and jobs, offshore. Corporations could then simply wait for the next "one-time" tax holiday to bring those profits back to the U.S.

One of the lawmakers pushing the proposal is the ostensibly progressive Senator Barbara Boxer of California.

The administration decided that the adults needed to intervene. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made a public statement this week that the administration does not support the idea. However, even Geithner's statement did include an alarming caveat when he said, "We are not going to look at a [tax] holiday outside the context of comprehensive reform." (Emphasis added.)

Proponents of a tax holiday insist that companies use the money they bring back to the U.S. to create jobs, but data from the last time Congress allowed multinationals to bring back foreign profits at a very low tax rate indicates that the cash primarily ended up in the hands of shareholders through dividends and stock redemptions.

(no subject)

I am completely shocked.............



Fox News Insider: "Stuff Is Just Made Up"
Eric Boehlert | Thursday 10 February 2011



Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”
Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.
“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.
“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”
( Da News )