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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (651626)	4/17/2012 10:53:56 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1582684

That is about the dumbest excuse for a "study" I've ever seen. Idiots doing it. Compared to what their taxes would have been if their 2007 tax rates were applied to their 2010 income, we estimate that these eight companies saved a combined $11.2 billion on $120 billion in reported 2010 profits. If we assume that the entire reduction was due to their lobbying, the return on investment would be 2,069%. Of course, this is probably not the case. Without a detailed analysis of these companies’ taxes, it would be impossible to tell why their rates fell. But we can observe that it is very unlikely that the eight companies that lobbied the most between 2007 and 2009 all would have seen such significant drops in their tax rates by random chance alone. Statistically, the likelihood of the eight firms that ran up the biggest lobbying tabs all lowering their reported tax rates by chance alone is just under one percent (assuming we take the overall probability of an individual company lowering its taxes at 55 percent). Moreover, only 19 of the nation’s 200 highest earning companies reduced their tax rate by more than seven percentage points. Within this universe of companies, the likelihood of six of the Big Eight lowering their rates by at least seven percentage points purely by random chance is less than 1 in 100,000. Without a detailed analysis of these companies’ taxes, it would be impossible to tell why their rates fell. Exactly. Taxation is complicated business. You can't just run a simple linear regression and make any conclusion, WHATSOEVER. This is just stupid.

To: puborectalis who wrote (651626)	4/17/2012 12:54:06 PM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1582684

ALEC backpedals, drops social agenda By Steve Benen - Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:23 PM EDT After years of relative anonymity, the political ground shifted under the American Legislative Exchange Council's feet when George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Fairly quickly, Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law became the focus of national security, as did the shadowy group that helped write the law and push it through the legislature. The ensuing controversy has been less than kind to ALEC, with the organization losing several major corporate sponsors, and the group's larger legislative agenda getting the spotlight for the first time. With the pressure intensifying, ALEC announced this morning that it's "sharpening" its "focus" to cover economic issues exclusively. That's a nice way of saying it's giving up on social agenda altogether. ALEC Chairman David Frizzell issued a statement earlier on behalf of the group's Legislative Board of Directors: "Today we are redoubling our efforts on the economic front, a priority that has been the hallmark of our organization for decades. Fostering the exchange of pro-growth, solutions-oriented ideas is precisely why ALEC exists. "To that end, our legislative board last week unanimously agreed to further our work on policies that will help spur innovation and competitiveness across the country. "We are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus. "We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy." In this case, "non-economic issues" is a pretty broad category -- ALEC will now no longer work with the NRA on gun laws, for example, and the group's efforts to create voting restrictions will also apparently come to an end. Of course, ALEC's interest in economic issues isn't exactly narrow. As Scott Keyes noted, "a short list of ostensibly economic measures ALEC has supported in the past" includes measures related to union busting, repealing minimum-wage laws, and touting "the many benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment," among other things. Still, for ALEC's progressive critics, today marks a fairly significant and unexpected victory.

To: puborectalis who wrote (651626)	4/17/2012 1:00:37 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1582684

The top eight companies that spent the most on federal lobbying from 2007 to 2009 all saw their reported tax rates decrease from 2007 to 2010, according to a new analysis released Monday by the Sunlight Foundation. The report notes that these top eight firms spent $540 million on lobbying from 2007 to 2009. They filed 332 lobbying reports that mentioned taxes and named 491 different tax bills in those reports. The top eight companies that spent the most on lobbying were Exxon Mobil, Verizon Communications, General Electric, AT&T, Altria, Amgen, Northrop Grumman and Boeing. Exxon Mobil spent the most, some $81.92 million from 2007 to 2009. The guys at Boeing are the worst. They are running scams all over the place. This past December a bunch of Russian engineers coming to Seattle were stopped by immigration. These engineers were on a visa that allows someone to do some training in the US. However, when interviewed by immigration, one of the engineers admitted that they were here to work. At a time when unemployment is high in the US, Boeing was bringing in outside engineers because they could save a few bucks and pay them less. These international corps could give two craps about this country and its people. And yet the Rs love them to death. Typical.