The Many Faces of US Politics...

[screenexile]

Can't believe nobody has picked up on this . . .

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/michele-bachmann-wants-to-take-100000-irish-jobs-back-to-the-us-212238-Aug2011/

THE US PRESIDENTIAL candidate Michele Bachmann has said she wants 100,000 jobs that American companies have created in Ireland to be brought back to the United States.

The Republican congresswoman, a favourite of the Tea Party movement, was speaking this weekend at an event in Florida where she gave what the New York times described as her most detailed speech yet about her plans for the economy were she to win the election next year.

As Bachmann looked to outline ways in which to address America's currently high-level of unemployment, she pointed to the example of Ireland.

She said:

    There are over 600 American companies that have gone to Ireland because of the tax rate. Over 100,000 jobs. I want those 100,000 jobs back in the United States.

Bachmann believed her country's current economic policies were exiling corporations to countries like Ireland, the National Journal reports, and believed one way of creating jobs was tempting them back.

IDA Ireland has confirmed to TheJournal.ie that, according to its annual report for 2010, there are 491 IDA client companies of US origin in Ireland which employ exactly 99,772 people.

It's not the first time Bachmann has invoked Ireland in her speeches.

She claims to have visited our shores in 2007, meeting US soldiers and military officials, a claim that blogger Maman Poulet appears to have discredited.

Bachmann has emerged as one of the frontrunners to secure the Republican Party's nomination to face Barack Obama in the presidential election next year, after she recently won the Iowa straw poll, an early test of voter sentiment in the key early caucus state.

However her campaign has been hit by comments she is alleged to have made in a lecture that she gave in 2004 in which she said that being gay "is part of Satan" whilst she has had to play down issues surrounding chronic migraines she is said to suffer from.

Is this what you've got to take on Obama TO?? Dear lord Obama was able to find himself an Irish Grandad to help seal the Irish Vote yet this buck eejit wants to get rid of them all in one fell swoop.

Also does she know anything about Business? How are US companies supposed to trade in the Global Economy being solely based in the US? Surely anyone hoping to crack the European Market needs some kind of base there!! How can Google or Microsoft provide Tech Support to Paris or Berlin from Portland or San Francisco.

If she was going to pick on somebody would she not have been better served by alienating the Chinese whose Economy is still growing and is more of a threat to the US than fecking Ireland. I would imagine the 100,000 jobs US companies provide in Ireland would be dwarfed by the number that are outsourced or located in China.

Looks like 4 more years if this is the kind of weak idiot the Republicans are trumpeting!!

[Tyrones own]

Can't believe nobody has picked up on this . . .

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/michele-bachmann-wants-to-take-100000-irish-jobs-back-to-the-us-212238-Aug2011/

THE US PRESIDENTIAL candidate Michele Bachmann has said she wants 100,000 jobs that American companies have created in Ireland to be brought back to the United States.

The Republican congresswoman, a favourite of the Tea Party movement, was speaking this weekend at an event in Florida where she gave what the New York times described as her most detailed speech yet about her plans for the economy were she to win the election next year.

As Bachmann looked to outline ways in which to address America's currently high-level of unemployment, she pointed to the example of Ireland.

She said:

    There are over 600 American companies that have gone to Ireland because of the tax rate. Over 100,000 jobs. I want those 100,000 jobs back in the United States.

Bachmann believed her country's current economic policies were exiling corporations to countries like Ireland, the National Journal reports, and believed one way of creating jobs was tempting them back.

IDA Ireland has confirmed to TheJournal.ie that, according to its annual report for 2010, there are 491 IDA client companies of US origin in Ireland which employ exactly 99,772 people.

It's not the first time Bachmann has invoked Ireland in her speeches.

She claims to have visited our shores in 2007, meeting US soldiers and military officials, a claim that blogger Maman Poulet appears to have discredited.

Bachmann has emerged as one of the frontrunners to secure the Republican Party's nomination to face Barack Obama in the presidential election next year, after she recently won the Iowa straw poll, an early test of voter sentiment in the key early caucus state.

However her campaign has been hit by comments she is alleged to have made in a lecture that she gave in 2004 in which she said that being gay "is part of Satan" whilst she has had to play down issues surrounding chronic migraines she is said to suffer from.

Is this what you've got to take on Obama TO?? Dear lord Obama was able to find himself an Irish Grandad to help seal the Irish Vote yet this buck eejit wants to get rid of them all in one fell swoop.

Also does she know anything about Business? How are US companies supposed to trade in the Global Economy being solely based in the US? Surely anyone hoping to crack the European Market needs some kind of base there!! How can Google or Microsoft provide Tech Support to Paris or Berlin from Portland or San Francisco.

If she was going to pick on somebody would she not have been better served by alienating the Chinese whose Economy is still growing and is more of a threat to the US than fecking Ireland. I would imagine the 100,000 jobs US companies provide in Ireland would be dwarfed by the number that are outsourced or located in China.

Looks like 4 more years if this is the kind of weak idiot the Republicans are trumpeting!!

Its that kind of pandering to lobbyists that has us where we are in this Country.
I believe it was the Corp tax rates she was referring to and anyway, perhaps like
myself, she's sick and tired of funding/supporting/carrying Countries that hate us 

[screenexile]

Can't believe nobody has picked up on this . . .

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/michele-bachmann-wants-to-take-100000-irish-jobs-back-to-the-us-212238-Aug2011/

THE US PRESIDENTIAL candidate Michele Bachmann has said she wants 100,000 jobs that American companies have created in Ireland to be brought back to the United States.

The Republican congresswoman, a favourite of the Tea Party movement, was speaking this weekend at an event in Florida where she gave what the New York times described as her most detailed speech yet about her plans for the economy were she to win the election next year.

As Bachmann looked to outline ways in which to address America's currently high-level of unemployment, she pointed to the example of Ireland.

She said:

    There are over 600 American companies that have gone to Ireland because of the tax rate. Over 100,000 jobs. I want those 100,000 jobs back in the United States.

Bachmann believed her country's current economic policies were exiling corporations to countries like Ireland, the National Journal reports, and believed one way of creating jobs was tempting them back.

IDA Ireland has confirmed to TheJournal.ie that, according to its annual report for 2010, there are 491 IDA client companies of US origin in Ireland which employ exactly 99,772 people.

It's not the first time Bachmann has invoked Ireland in her speeches.

She claims to have visited our shores in 2007, meeting US soldiers and military officials, a claim that blogger Maman Poulet appears to have discredited.

Bachmann has emerged as one of the frontrunners to secure the Republican Party's nomination to face Barack Obama in the presidential election next year, after she recently won the Iowa straw poll, an early test of voter sentiment in the key early caucus state.

However her campaign has been hit by comments she is alleged to have made in a lecture that she gave in 2004 in which she said that being gay "is part of Satan" whilst she has had to play down issues surrounding chronic migraines she is said to suffer from.

Is this what you've got to take on Obama TO?? Dear lord Obama was able to find himself an Irish Grandad to help seal the Irish Vote yet this buck eejit wants to get rid of them all in one fell swoop.

Also does she know anything about Business? How are US companies supposed to trade in the Global Economy being solely based in the US? Surely anyone hoping to crack the European Market needs some kind of base there!! How can Google or Microsoft provide Tech Support to Paris or Berlin from Portland or San Francisco.

If she was going to pick on somebody would she not have been better served by alienating the Chinese whose Economy is still growing and is more of a threat to the US than fecking Ireland. I would imagine the 100,000 jobs US companies provide in Ireland would be dwarfed by the number that are outsourced or located in China.

Looks like 4 more years if this is the kind of weak idiot the Republicans are trumpeting!!

Its that kind of pandering to lobbyists that has us where we are in this Country.
I believe it was the Corp tax rates she was referring to and anyway, perhaps like
myself, she's sick and tired of funding/supporting/carrying Countries that hate us 

Yes because the last Republican President didn't go to the Far East to "support" a Country that hates you?!!

It wasn't just the Corp Tax rates she was referring to. These companies need a European base and does she honestly expect that should America drop their Corporation Tax rate to the level of Ireland that suddenly 100,000 jobs will spring up out of nowhere from Ireland?!! She's delusional and a halfwit like the rest of the Gombeens in the Tea Party... another Sarah Pailin!!

[Tyrones own]

And you're an ignoramus...set down the guardian there and read what I wrote again, slowly this time! Any half wit would know that someone like her with her view on immigration surely doesn't concern herself with what the Irish lobby in Washington thinks unlike the embarrassing empty suit throwing pint's into him in Ireland like he gives a fcuk and you gombeens lapping it up 

The liberal hate machine is gearing up nicely!

[Tyrones own]

How's about attacking the inept disaster that is 2011instead of what may or may not be in 2013

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/02/morning-bell-zero-new-jobs-in-america/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell#comments

[Tyrones own]

Can't believe none of ye picked up on this... actually I can 
Way to go Barrack 

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/white-house-backed-solar-solyndra-company-collapses/story?id=14420755

[heganboy]

That's an interesting opinion piece from the right wing "think tank" the heritage group.

How's about attacking the inept disaster that is 2011instead of what may or may not be in 2013

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/02/morning-bell-zero-new-jobs-in-america/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell#comments

[heganboy]

the top earning 25 CEOs in the US earn more than their companies pay in federal tax...

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/206539/20110831/25-top-ceos-earn-more-than-federal-income-tax-payments-in-2010.htm

Twenty-five of the nation's best paid chief executive officers earned more in salary and other compensation in 2010 than their companies' entire federal income tax expenses, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies.


General Electric, led by CEO Jeffrey Immelt, was the most profitable of the 25 U.S. corporations that paid more in CEO compensation than federal income taxes in 2010.

The report, titled "Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards For Tax Dodging", examined 100 publicly traded U.S. corporations with the highest-paid CEOs. It found that companies whose CEOs' compensation exceeded its reported tax expense in 2010 had average global profits of $1.9 billion.

Big-name companies such as General Electric Co., Verizon Communications Inc., Boeing Co. and Dow Chemical Co. were included in the list.

The group said its findings illustrate the need for an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. In particular, it shows how some of the country's most profitable organizations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying for corporate tax loopholes while also shifting profits to offshore locations to avoid the sting of the Internal Revenue Service.

"Instead of sharing responsibility for addressing our nation's fiscal challenges, corporations are rewarding CEOs for aggressive tax avoidance," said Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at IPS who co-authored the report.

General Electric, led by CEO Jeff Immelt, was the most lucrative of the 25 firms. The company, which ranked 14th among U.S. firms in global profitability, received a $3.3 billion tax refund, despite reporting $5.1 billion in U.S. pre-tax income.

Meanwhile, Stanley Black & Decker CEO John Lundgren was the highest paid executive on the list, raking in $32.6 million, while the company got a $75 million tax refund.

Lundgren received a 253 percent pay increase even though the March 2010 merger between Stanley Works and Black & Decker is expected to result in 4,000 layoffs. Moreover, 61 percent of the company's shareholders reportedly opposed company executive pay practices at the organization's most recent annual meeting.

To top it off, the report found that last year, S&P 500 CEO's collected $10.8 million in average compensation, a 27.8 percent increase from 2009. However, the gap between CEO and the average U.S. worker pay continued to rise, reaching 325-to-1 last year compared to 263-to-1 in 2009.

These corporations avoid hefty income tax payments through a variety of tax-avoidance techniques. While the report said some of the tax breaks can have redeeming social value - such as incentives that encourage green energy transitions - they only play a minor role in many of the companies' massive tax refunds.

One of the most popular tax-dodging strategies is the offshoring of corporate activity to "tax havens" in low or no-tax jurisdictions. Eighteen of the 25 firms highlighted in the study had 556 tax haven subsidiaries in the last year, which reportedly costs the federal treasury about $100 billion a year.

"These havens are speeding the transfer of wealth out of local communities and the global south into the bank accounts of the planet's wealthiest and most powerful," the report stated.

The prevalence of such accounting games has severely lowered the corporate share of federal revenue. In 1945, U.S. corporate income taxes added up to 35 percent of all federal government revenue, compared to 9 percent in 2011. Plus, the effective income tax rates for corporations have also plummeted. In 1952, it was 52.8 percent while in 2010 in was just 10.5 percent.

Despite the extent and publicity of the federal government's financial woes, the report concluded there is no sign that the corporate tax system will truly be reformed anytime soon.  However, a previous IPS analysis found that reversing tax giveaways on corporations and the nation's wealthiest demographic could raise $4 trillion within the next decade and avert possible government shutdowns.

[heganboy]

Can't believe none of ye picked up on this... actually I can 
Way to go Barrack 

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/white-house-backed-solar-solyndra-company-collapses/story?id=14420755

TO, absolutely right, Barrack Obama just personally guaranteed (certainly not the US department of Energy) a loan for a tech company in the US that employed 1100 people that before the investment was made had an expected market cap of $2BN US.  (http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solyndras-estimated-market-cap-up-to-2b-report/)

The company has entered into chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in order to protect the Intellectual property it owns from creditors. There are many reasons given for this, a couple include that the Chinese competition it faces are completely state owned businesses that are run at a loss in order for the Chinese to own the solar market (at the expense of the US economy that you state you are so concerned about), another is that given the massive investment costs to produce solar power technology that the political pressure in the US to continue with backing oil companies at the expense of other technologies is worrying investors who feel that the the regulatory and political state of the US is stacked against any form of clean technology.

Or of course you could just skim the headlines and blame Obama for something that you think supports your political viewpoint...

[deiseach]

That's an interesting opinion piece from the right wing "think tank" the heritage group.

How's about attacking the inept disaster that is 2011instead of what may or may not be in 2013

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/02/morning-bell-zero-new-jobs-in-america/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell#comments

That'd be the same Heritage Foundation who once claimed that the Bush tax cuts would lead to the net creation of 1.6 million jobs

[Tyrones own]

That's an interesting opinion piece from the right wing "think tank" the heritage group.

How's about attacking the inept disaster that is 2011instead of what may or may not be in 2013

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/02/morning-bell-zero-new-jobs-in-america/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell#comments

That'd be the same Heritage Foundation who once claimed that the Bush tax cuts would lead to the net creation of 1.6 million jobs

That's all you've got    true to form... you have to go back to 2001 to find a reason to shoot
the messenger rather than focus on the current article highlighting just how much of an epic failure Obama has been and the further colossal damage he has caused this country 

What's funny is, I'm constantly hounded and insulted for what I may or may not read but the
realization hasn't seemed to sink in yet to the intellects on the board how it is that I've been right all along on this fraud and you lads were all oh so wrong 

[Eamonnca1]

That'd be the same Heritage Foundation who once claimed that the Bush tax cuts would lead to the net creation of 1.6 million jobs

http://www.youtube.com/embed/VcJohfS4vTQ

[Eamonnca1]

I'm constantly hounded and insulted for what I may or may not read

[Tyrones own]

I'm constantly hounded and insulted for what I may or may not read

...yet another empty vessel, echo chambered non-response rather than
face the music and explain how, with all of the "vastly superior" media outlets that you lads subscribe to... could have possibly gotten this clown oh so terribly wrong   

[deiseach]

That's all you've got    true to form... you have to go back to 2001 to find a reason to shoot
the messenger rather than focus on the current article highlighting just how much of an epic failure Obama has been and the further colossal damage he has caused this country 

What's funny is, I'm constantly hounded and insulted for what I may or may not read but the
realization hasn't seemed to sink in yet to the intellects on the board how it is that I've been right all along on this fraud and you lads were all oh so wrong 

You claim that people criticise you for things you haven't read. It'd be swell if you actually bothered reading what you are purporting to be responding to. The Heritage Foundation claimed in 2001 that cutting taxes would lead to 1.6 extra million jobs. They were utterly, profoundly, completely wrong. They're now claiming the same thing will work in 2011. These were the guys who Paul Ryan used to support his budget plan, a turn of events that caused people to actually check out what they had to say. This led to such widespread ridicule that they deleted the plan from their website and pretended it never existed. You call it shooting the messenger. I call it ignoring people who have a record in being utterly, profoundly, completely wrong.

And before say that I worship at the altar of Obama, I do not. I subscribe to Paul Krugman's philosophy on the current crisis, one that a) has been highly critical of Obama, and b) has consistently been correct in predicting the outcome of policy choices