Quote of the Day

“It is my belief, shared by many lawyers who have followed the legal battles over Guantanamo, that the president could have shut the prison down if he had really been determined to do so.  One reason the prisoners can’t get out is that the courts have essentially ruled that a president has an absolute right to imprison anyone he wants during a time of war — with no second-guessing from either of the other two branches of government.  by the same legal logic, a president can free any prisoner in a time of war.  Had the president taken that stance, there would undoubetdly have been a court fight.  but so what?  Aren’t some things worth fighting for?”

Joe Nocera, “Obama’s Gitmo Problem,” NYT

Thank You, SCOTUS

When the Supreme Court voted that Obamacare was constitutional, they also held that states didn’t have to expand Medicaid as the law intended.  About 25 states, with GOP governors or legislatures or both, have so far refused to expand Medicaid.

This leaves us with the bizarre anomaly that more prosperous people will be eligible for health insurance subsidies, while poorer people still won’t be able to get health insurance.

The NYT* points out that the head of a family of four making $14 an hour will qualify for subsidies, but someone making $10 an hour won’t be able to get any help at all.

This is what happens when the law is an ass, and one of our two major political parties hates poor people.

*  “States’ Policies on Health Care Exclude Poorest,” Robert Pear

How Apple Stops the IRS from Biting

From “Here Comes the Sun,” Joe Nocera, NYT:

“Among the many things Tim Cook apparently learned at the knee of Steve Jobs, during his long tenure as Apple’s No. 2, was how to create a ‘reality distortion field.’ Or so it would appear after watching Cook, now Apple’s chief executive, testify on Tuesday at a Senate hearing on the company’s tax avoidance schemes.

“Jobs was so persuasive that he could claim the sun was setting when it was actually rising, and everyone would nod in agreement. On Tuesday, despite the overwhelming evidence presented by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that Apple engaged in dubious tax avoidance gimmicks, Cook claimed that Apple never resorted to tax gimmickry. Even though the company appears to pay about ten percent of its pretax income in taxes — when the federal corporate tax rate is 35 percent — Cook said, ‘We pay all the taxes we owe — every single dollar.’ He added that Apple had never shifted any of its American profits to an offshore tax haven when, in fact, that is basically what it has done, routing tens of billions in pretax profits to a shell corporation in Ireland that exists solely to avoid taxes in the United States. He even said that the low taxes Apple pays overseas is on the profits of its overseas sales. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was a flat-out lie.

“In other words, Cook spent Tuesday claiming that the sun was setting when it was actually rising, and, predictably, by the time the hearing had ended, most of the senators were agreeing with him.

“Yet as documented both by The Times and the Senate subcommittee, Apple is as much an innovator in tax avoidance as it is in technology. Take, for instance, a scheme known as The Double Irish, which it largely invented and which many American companies have since replicated. This strategy, which was the primary focus of Tuesday’s hearing, involves setting up a shell subsidiary in an offshore tax haven — a k a Ireland — and transferring most of Apple’s intellectual property rights to the dummy subsidiary. The subsidiary, in turn, charges ‘royalties’ that allows it to capture billions of dollars in what otherwise would be taxable profits in the United States. In Ireland, according to Apple, it pays an astonishing 2 percent in taxes….”

Emphasis added.

How Many Sources in North Korea Do You Think We Have?

From “What was James Rosen thinking?”,  Jack Shafer, Reuters:

“Although [Fox News reporter James] Rosen’s story asserts that it is ‘withholding some details about the sources and methods…to avoid compromising sensitive overseas operations,’ the basic detail that the CIA has ‘sources inside North Korea’ privy to its future plans is very compromising stuff all by itself.

“Once the North Koreans read the story, they must have asked if the source of the intel was human or if their communications had been breached.  In any event, you can assume that the North Koreans commenced a leak probe that made the U. S. investigation look like the prosecution of a parking ticket.”

I can’t get all wee wee’d up about bumbling James Rosen, who makes Inspector Clouseau look like James Angleton.  If the Obama Administration had prosecuted him along with State Department moron Stephen Jin Woo Kim, I’d see the First Amendment threat here, but they didn’t.  I do mourn the loss of a source inside North Korea, because God knows they are few and far between, and probably now fewer and farther.

I’m with Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo on this one:

“They [DOJ] took a step I think they should not have taken.  But they did so putting together a case against a government employee who more or less in plain sight (thanks to Rosen, in part) leaked what looks to have been highly classified information about US spy networks overseas.  It’s difficult for me not to be more shocked by the self-interested preening of fellow journalists over a comically inept reporter and source than the arguable dangers this episode holds for press freedoms.  Indeed, I’ve failed.  I can’t.

I can’t either.

Rush Reassures

Rush Limbaugh says we don’t have to worry that President Obama will be impeached.

Not because he doesn’t deserve to be, but because “the American people are not going to tolerate the first black president being removed from office.”

Yes, Rush, we loves us those Kenyan Muslim Socialists.

It’s Early, But…

I know it’s early for 2014, but GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann is already running TV ads for her re-election campaign in Minnesota.

A new PPP poll shows her 2012 Dem opponent, Jim Graves, who plans to try again, ahead of Bachmann, 47 to 45.

Last time, Graves lost by only 5,000 votes, little more than 1% of the vote.  And last time, Bachmann wasn’t dealing with a blossoming campaign finance scandal from her 2012 presidential campaign.

Maybe Bachmann will go where she belongs, looking pretty and spouting crazy on Fox.

FBI Joins Bachmann Investigation

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is already under investigation by the Federal Elections Commission, the Office of Congressional Ethics, and the Iowa State Senate ethics committee for possible campaign finance violations in her 2012 presidential campaign.

Now the FBI is joining the party, which means possible criminal charges and penalties.

I want to see her gone from the House as much as, well, as much as she wants to see the Kenyan Muslim Communist gone from the White House.

I don’t care if she goes to jail, I just want her out of politics forever, replaced by someone a little brighter and a lot less crazy.  That would be just about anyone who lives in her district.

 

The GOP Will Save the Prez

From “Why the GOP thinks it could blow it,” Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, Politico:

“Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once:  fellow Republicans.

“Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate.  They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations — not rhetorical fury.”

Asking this group to put a sock in it?  Fuhgeddaboudit.  They don’t know from fact finding, they only know rhetorical fury. 

They Can’t Just Take the Gift

You’d think the Tea Party folks would just take the gift-wrapped IRS bias scandal and exploit it for all it’s worth, which is a lot actually.

But noooooooo, because they’re crazy, they have to over-reach.

Michele Bachmann is running around saying that because the IRS is involved in Obamacare (they will administer the monetary penalties for those who choose not to buy health insurance), the IRS is going to delay or deny health care itself to conservatives.  So they’re not just giving your group a hard time about getting a tax exemption, they’re going to kill you!

And so the tide turns back against them because they can’t resist one-upping the IRS on being outrageous.

Buried Under the “Scandal” Avalanche

There is some really good news out of Washington, if you look under the rocks of Benghazi, the IRS, and the AP.

The budget deficit is projected to drop to $642 billion for FY 2012, which ends on September 30.  That’s a whopping $200 billion less than the CBO estimated in February, when it adjusted the deficit downward to account for sequester spending cuts and 2012 tax increases.  This new projection comes strictly from higher-than-expected tax revenue.  This will be the first time the deficit has been under a trillion since 2009.

Things are so rosy that the deficit might be only a smidge over 2% of GDP by 2015, compared to more than 10% of GDP back in 2009.

In fact some economists, like Jared Bernstein, think the deficit may be coming down too quickly, keeping unemployment high.