Don't let reality get in the way of a profitable narrative.
Time And Time Again: While it appears the White House consul knew in April of the IRS targeting tea party 501(c)(4) applicants, the GOP knew about the added scrutiny last July.
Be Afraid: The Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee are 'discussing' (that is, floating a balloon to see if they can get away with) giving the president authority to ram both the Trans-Pacific trade pact and a similar EU measure through without discussion or a chance for the proletariat to realize the damage these deals will do. Why now and why quickly? Because they are such great deals we need them immediately... not.
Equal Justice: Joe McCarthy wannabe Rand Paul says there is a memo proving that the IRS targets those who oppose the president. Mind you he hasn't seen it, but he's sure it's out there. Somewhere. Meanwhile, the FBI has arrested AR Treasurer Martha Shoffner, a Democrat, “for extortion”, and is investigating Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann's campaign finances.
Apple Without A Country: Apple figured out that if they could pile up their profits in subsidiaries that simply do not have a tax residence, they wouldn't have to pay any taxes, any where. Close, they came close: In 2011 one of three such subsidiaries earned over $22 billion and paid just $10 million in taxes. Immoral, but more or less legal.
Pruning: The question “Is there a stock-market bubble?” should have been “Is there a stock market without a bubble?” And the answer to the question Is Every Market Rigged? depends on your definition of 'every'.
Recovery Room: The reason for-profit hospitals have these absurdly fictional 'price lists' that nobody actually pays is that it allows the hospitals to write off 'charity' operations and services against their taxable income at those hypothetical prices. And they charge those prices to the uninsured, being reasonably sure they will not collect the ridiculous amounts and will also get to write those 'losses' off.
Small Bits: There's a meme making the rounds right now claiming that there has been no global warming in the last decade and that the future ain't what it used to be – and in fact the future will not even rise to 2ºC above the background noise. The problem is that it is all misleading. The ground surface temperatures may not have risen (except they have, massively in the Arctic, etc. etc.), or not as much as expected because the deep oceans have warmed a great deal more than expected. And that's a heat sink that will give back its heat for a long, long time. Think of it as warming a radiator. It also cherry picks the date range for temperature sampling “over the past decade” and ignores the longer sweep of history. Recent and temporary changes in temperature variations are masking the real accumulation of heat due to the greenhouse effect of increased atmospheric CO2. Don't get too excited – global warming didn't go away, isn't going away. It is just going to get worse, worser and, eventually, worstest, which will be about 5ºC to 6ºC by the end of the century because greenhouse gas emissions are rising at a far higher rate than had been predicted , and even a skimpy 4ºC rise would be a disaster.
Porn O'Graph:Better and Better?
The Parting Shot:
Spring Rush
2 comments:
Apple. On Youtube there is one from "A Yankee At The Court Of King Arthur" with Bing Crosby and two others singing "I'm busy going nowhere". It is a great five minutes and perhaps relevant.
If they charge higher rates on services when they know they are not going to collect, and therefore, will write them off, they also have to record the higher income first, and then write it off.
But, it could be for optics because they can say, we have to charge higher fees because, "look at how much we have to write off".
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