DragonI

Why Mike Pence Is Lining Trump’s Pockets With Taxpayer Dollars

The point isn’t the money; it’s the complicity.

nymag.com|Jonathan Chait

President Trump had a suggestion for Mike Pence: Rather than stay in Dublin during his meetings there with European officials, why not bring his entire family and security entourage to the Trump International Golf Club in Doonbeg, on the other side of the country? Pence, of course, agreed.

Pence’s European trip has become a vehicle to transfer American tax dollars into Trump’s pockets. But the direct impact of this minor grift pales beside the much larger consequence of suborning the vice-president’s participation in Trump’s corruption.

James Comey, who has faced off with organized crime, observed that Trump’s leadership style eerily follows La Cosa Nostra. “The — the loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant center of everything, it’s all about how do you serve the boss, what’s in the boss’ interests,” he recalled.

One of the key tools used by organized crime bosses is to implicate their underlings. It’s hard to trust your flunkies until they have actively collaborated in your crimes. Once they have done so, they have demonstrated their willingness to violate the law on your behalf, and surrendered any claim to innocence.

Stop Trump

Trump is coming to Britain. 13 July. Resist.

www.stoptrump.org.uk

Donald Trump is coming to the UK on 13 July. Hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country will join forces to show that his rhetoric of hate and divisiveness isn’t accepted here

“Donald Trump likes to pose as an international tough guy, but it looks like he’s too scared to face protesters in London. If true, this is already a huge victory for protesters.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their outrage and opposition to his racism, Islamophobia, sexism, warmongering and climate change denial, and are ready to march together against Trump when he visits. It looks like Central London will be at a standstill on Friday 13th July.”,  Stand Up To Trump (SUTT).

• how much will Google bring back to America?
• how much of the repatriated money will go into jobs?

• Alphabet’s Google (GOOG, GOOGL) moved $19.2B to a Bermuda shell company in 2016 to save $3.7B in taxes, according to regulatory filings from the Netherlands.
• Why would the Netherlands report on Bermuda money? Google used two tax avoidance structures called the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”
• Google shifted revenue from an Irish subsidiary to a Dutch company with no employees and on to a Bermuda location owned by an Ireland-registered company.
• Google moved 7% more through this structure in 2016 than the prior year. Google’s global effective tax rate was 19.3%.
• Ireland closed the “Double Irish” portion of the structure in 2015, but companies already using it could continue until the end of 2020.
• Regulators around the world have pressured Google to pay more taxes. The recently passed U.S. tax law provides a one-time, 15.5% repatriation tax rate for companies moving cash back home.  
• Google spokesman’s statement to Bloomberg: “We pay all the taxes due and comply with the tax laws in every country we operate in around the world. We remain committed to helping grow the online ecosystem.”  
• Previously: Ireland closer to collecting Apple taxes (Nov. 21, 2017)
• Previously: France wants to make a tax deal with Google ahead of appeal(July 24, 2017)

• Google held $60.7 billion overseas at the end of 2016 on which it hadn’t yet paid U.S. income taxes or “foreign withholding taxes,” the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The Paradise Papers Make the Republican Tax Plan Look Insane

The bill would give huge tax breaks to the superrich and reward corporations hoarding assets abroad, just like those implicated in the latest massive leak.

www.vice.com

Incredibly, America is embarking on a tax rewrite that could benefit many of the same people and entities exposed in the Paradise Papers. 

Corporations get a huge gift in the GOP bill too, with the nominal corporate tax rate dropping from 35 percent to 20 percent.

But what US corporations pay in taxes doesn't include the estimated two-thirds of corporate income held in offshore tax havens. Republicans want to give companies hiding a supermajority of their money another nearly 50 percent reduction on what they bother to show the government.

But it's even worse than that. Under the proposal, the United States would shift to a "territorial" tax system. Instead of corporations registered in the US paying tax on all overseas profits, they would only be taxed in the country where money is earned. This may sound reasonable, but it creates serious incentives to creatively shift profits into low-tax countries.

That's exactly what Apple, a legendary tax evader, is accused of doing in the Paradise Papers. After being pressured by US authorities on shifting assets like patents and trademarks to low-tax Irish "ghost companies," Apple parked profits in Jersey, a small island in the English Channel that doesn't charge corporate tax.

Apple currently holds $236 billion offshore, according to the New York Times, part of an estimated $2.6 trillion in foreign profits stashed abroad by US corporations. Under the current system, money that isn't "repatriated" into America can legally avoid taxation. To switch to the territorial system, the GOP tax bill deems those funds repatriated, but charges a skinny 12 percent tax on profits held in cash, and just 5 percent on invested profits (most corporate earnings are invested; corporations don't commonly stick cash in drawers). This would save corporations $500 billion, according to the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition. And corporations have eight years to bring the money over, dragging out the time available to shelter income.

Tim Cook Says If You Can Afford Nice Coffee You Can Buy a $1,000 Phone

The iPhone X costs more than any phone Apple has ever sold, starting at $1,000 a pop. But Apple expects people will buy truckloads of them anyways, according to the company’s earnings release today, and CEO Tim Cook seems to believe you can afford one, too, because if you break a monthly payment plan down, it’s “less than a coffee a day at one of those expensive coffee places.”

gizmodo.com|Harrison Weber

And Cook is right. A fully-loaded iPhone X will cost you about $56 a month through Apple’s upgrade program, and that breaks down to less than two bucks a day. 

But by Cook’s logic, why not charge $2,000 for a phone? That’s less than four bucks a day—the price I pay for a small latte in New York. Don’t get me started on the premium I pay for iced drinks, or the $1 extra I have to pay for goddamn soy.

Wind, rain, and wildfire: the wrath Hurricane Ophelia brought to Europe

How a tropical storm pummeling Ireland and the UK is making wildfires in Spain and Portugal worse.

www.vox.com|Umair Irfan

#Ophelia is now a major hurricane - the farthest east (26.6°W) an Atlantic major hurricane has existed on record.

On Monday, Ireland was hunkering down as the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia were unleashing the worst weather the Emerald Isle has seen in 50 years.

So far, three are reported dead and wind gusts have topped 100 mph. Ireland’s electrical network operator reported that 360,000 people have lost power and that it may take upward of 10 days to get the lights back on for some. The country is also experiencing a massive storm surge that has topped coastal barriers.

Weirdly, farther south, Ophelia’s storm winds are whipping up not rain but wildfires in Portugal and Spain, which have killed 30 people so far. Strong winds from the storm quickly spread flames that ignited over the weekend along the Iberian coast.

These fires join dozens of other blazes across the Mediterranean region, adding to an already devastating fire season in Europe fueled by a hot, dry summer. Wildfires earlier this summer killed 62 people in Portugal.

Ireland votes to stop investing public money in fossil fuels

It'd be the the first country to officially cut ties with coal and oil.

www.engadget.com

Ireland just took a big step toward cutting coal and oil out of the picture. Its Parliament has passed a bill that stops the country from investing in fossil fuels as part of an €8 billion ($8.6 billion) government fund. The measure still has to clear a review before it becomes law, but it would make Ireland the first nation to completely eliminate public funding for fossil fuel sources. Even countries that have committed to ditching non-renewable energy, like Iceland, can't quite make that claim. The closest is Norway, which ditched some of its investments back in 2015.

Barry became the first doctor in the British Empire to perform a successful cesarean operation. It was one of many major medical contributions the Irish surgeon accomplished for the British military, from enforcing stricter standards for hygiene, improving the diet of sick patients, to popularizing a plant-based treatment for syphilis and gonorrhea. Barry served around the globe, eventually earning the title of Inspector General, the second most senior medical position in the British Army.

Born in 1789 in Merchant’s Quay, Cork, Ireland to a grocer father, Margaret Ann Bulkley was a sociable and outgoing child. As a young girl, she once wrote of her desire for “a sword and a pair of colours [military uniform].”

Her mother sought the help of her older brother in London, the famed Irish artist James Barry. The artist had a difficult personality, however, and was not welcoming to his sister’s family when they arrived in London. Yet Barry introduced Margaret to his elite circle of friends, some of whom offered her teaching and mentorship. Margaret did not have the social standing to marry well, but her family hoped she could study to become a teacher or governess.  

While mentoring his new charge, the Venezuelan general and revolutionary Francisco Miranda became impressed by Bulkley’s intelligence. He was the first friend of Barry’s to encourage Bulkley to take on the persona of a man to enter the male-dominated field of medicine. After Margaret graduated from medical school, he reasoned, Bulkley could shed this disguise and practice freely as a woman doctor in Venezuela. Miranda proposed she use her medical skills in his revolutionary efforts in Caracas, Venezuela.

In 1806, her uncle James Barry passed away and left his fortune to the family. In turn, Bulkley assumed Barry’s name and used the money to finance three years of medical studies at the University of Edinburgh beginning in December 1809.

It wasn’t until after Barry’s death in 1865, that the doctor’s secret was finally discovered.

During the Crimean War (1854–1856), he got into an argument with Florence Nightingale.[8] After Barry's death Nightingale wrote that:

"I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst of quite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute . . . After he was dead, I was told that (Barry) was a woman . . . I should say that (Barry) was the most hardened creature I ever met."[19]

The Inside Story of Apple's $14 Billion Tax Bill

The iPhone came out in 2007. So why was Apple still paying taxes like it was 1990?

www.bloomberg.com

Governor Jerry Brown quipped that he had thought Apple “was a California company,” but according to tax returns, “they’re really an Irish company.”