{"id":10344,"date":"2013-05-24T03:18:08","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T10:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10344"},"modified":"2013-05-24T04:05:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T11:05:32","slug":"open-thread5242013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/24\/open-thread5242013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;5\/24\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m still on the weak and tired side, but I\u2019ve started to exercise by walking laps in the hallways inside to avoid the stairs to begin to rebuild my strength.&#160; I have another article today as well.&#160; That\u2019s two days in a row.&#160; Woooo Hoooo!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:58 (average 4:20) :-(&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-05-24-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/front.moveon.org\/this-is-the-one-video-that-conservatives-hope-you-dont-click-on-today\/\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>This Is The One Video That Conservatives Hope You Don&#8217;t Click On Today<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ISdUqOW3XGc?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We need to pass this and expand it to include LGBT families.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/05\/21\/harry-reid-filibuster_n_3314798.html\" target=\"_blank\">Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>The likelihood of a knockdown fight over the filibuster this summer increased on Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled back a vote on the confirmation of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.<\/p>\n<p>Cordray is a contentious nominee because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/02\/01\/richard-cordray-cfpb_n_2599838.html\" target=\"_blank\">43 Republicans have demanded changes<\/a> to the structure of the CFPB before they will approve any nominee to run it. That means Republicans can deny Democrats the 60 votes needed to begin debate on a CFPB nominee. President Barack Obama gave Cordray a recess appointment in January 2012, which Republicans have challenged as illegal, citing a recent court case that invalidated other recess appointments. <\/p>\n<p>Reid indicated Tuesday that he would bring Cordray&#8217;s nomination to a vote in July, and a Senate Democratic aide said that vote will come at a time when Reid is ready to launch into a broader fight over all of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/04\/29\/obama-judicial-nominees_n_3156050.html\" target=\"_blank\">Obama&#8217;s stalled nominees<\/a>. The &quot;plan is to wait until immigration is complete before engaging in total all-out nom[ination] fight,&quot; said the aide.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Based on historical precedent, I fear it&#8217;s far more likely that Reid, the Nevada Leg Hound, will hump a few GOP legs begging for votes, whine, roll over, and play dead.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/23\/the-corporate-tax-dodge\/\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: \\<\/font>&#8230;A study by the Congressional Research Service found that subsidiaries of United States corporations operating in the top five tax havens (the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda, Switzerland and Luxembourg) generated 43 percent of their foreign profits in those countries in 2008, but had only 4 percent of their foreign employees and 7 percent of their foreign investment located there.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, it is a race to the bottom on the part of revenue-starved governments eager to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/22\/business\/global\/ireland-defends-attractive-tax-rates.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=2&amp;\" target=\"_blank\">attract<\/a> even a relatively small number of new jobs.<\/p>\n<p>As a consequence, the effective corporate tax rate in the United States <a href=\"http:\/\/research.stlouisfed.org\/fred2\/graph\/?g=aWA\" target=\"_blank\">fell<\/a> to 17.8 percent in 2012 from 42.5 percent in 1960, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis\u2026<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">In return for the privilege of doing business in the US, all corporations, foreign and domestic, should pay US tax at the prevailing rate on all income, regardless of where that income is accounted. To properly avoid double taxation they should also receive a 100% tax credit for all taxes paid to foreign governments on the same income. I see no other feasible way to take away their incentive to offshore US profit to evade US taxes.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"24Cartoon\" alt=\"24Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/24Cartoon1.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Now, if we can just get Congressional Republicans to believe it.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m still on the weak and tired side, but I\u2019ve started to exercise by walking laps in the hallways inside to avoid the stairs to begin to rebuild my strength.&#160; I have another article today as well.&#160; That\u2019s two days in a row.&#160; Woooo Hoooo! Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 4:58 (average 4:20) :-(&#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/24\/open-thread5242013\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}