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The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

‘Loopholes! Get your hot fresh loopholes, right here!’

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

‘We’re the Crust. We dodge taxes so you don’t have to.’

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I guess the Republican Party is older than we thought.

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I don’t have conflicted feelings on nukes. Do you have conflicted feelings on nukes?

Perhaps the Crust has conflicted feelings on nukes … but, then, they have conflicted feelings on anything that was invented after 1900.

Perhaps if someone developed a nuclear-powered high-speed commuter train, they’d get over it.

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Well. There it is.

Read it.

What’s racist about a Russian waving a banana at a soccer player?

I’ll tell you: I don’t know.

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We find out that the four had snuck into Libya from Egypt without visas. These idiots put themselves in the middle of an African civil war without visas.

Well, you know ‘journalists’ — they think they’re bulletproof.

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Many people are realizing that random phone calls are just not considered polite any more. They’re somewhat interruptive and can be annoying. What strikes me as really interesting is that this isn’t a case of just the “younger generation” feeling this way — but it’s actually true of many older people as well.

I’ve always hated people just calling me up and wanting to talk, unless it’s some time-dependent thing (e.g. ‘I’ll be in your neighborhood this morning, let’s have lunch’). It always suggests to me the attitude, ‘Whatever you’re doing isn’t as important as talking to me.’ Perhaps we ought to re-establish the concept of the ‘at-home’, e.g. ‘I’ll be at-home on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., if you want to call and just talk, that’s the time to do it.’ But I suppose that would take more social coordination than we can handle in this impulse-dominated culture. It would be very convenient, though, for people who can’t cope with e-mail.

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The world’s worst YouTube video as seen through the eyes of a metrosexual English major. Theme: ‘Taking nothing and spinning it out to 1700 words.’ Epitaph:

Dana Vachon is a writer living in Manhattan, followable on Twitter.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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1. Even it New York, people have standards.
2. Especially in New York, Americans will sue anybody about anything.

Are wiser than most people’s considered opinions.

They say that records are made to be broken. President George W. Bush set a record by adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt over the course of his eight years in office. But Barack Obama has already beaten that record with $4.4 trillion in just his first three years in office.

What a guy. Go, Barry!

The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be “materialistic” and “greedy” to want to keep what you have earned. But it is “idealistic” to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.

Yeah, well, some animals are more equal than others.

When the Federal Reserve cites statistics to claim that there is not much evidence of inflation, we need to keep in mind that the statistics they rely on exclude food and energy prices. The cost of living is no sweat if you can do without electricity and food.

Sounds like a plan.

Even if it could be proved that judges who are making rulings that go counter to the written law produce better results in those particular cases than following the letter of the law would have, that does not make society better off. When laws become unreliable and judges unpredictable, lawsuits become a bonanza for charlatans, who can force honest people to settle out of court, for fear of what some judge might do.

This is the business plan of every personal injury lawyer in the United States.

The Other McCain is on the cutting edge of an emerging public health issue.

We at the Institute appreciate the evident desire of women to contribute to men’s cardiovascular health by providing larger breasts for the purposes of therapeutic staring. However, it is my concern that men seeking treatment might mistakenly stare at these silicone-adulterated fakies, believing themselves to be receiving a large therapeutic dosage, and thereby in actuality under-dose themselves. This could put men at serious risk of cardiac trauma.

Your health is our chief priority.

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Boston is taking to technology to help fix its bumpy pothole problem. One new tactics in the war against troublesome roads is an upcoming Android app.

Street Bump uses the device’s GPS and accelerometer in tandem to detect, locate and report potholes as you drive. The developers claim it’ll be sensitive enough to identify even small cracks and divots before they evolve into dangerous potholes.

It comes from the New Urban Mechanics, the software engineers who bring civic innovation to Boston through apps and software. In 2009, it developed the Citizens Connect app for iPhone which allows the public to report issues like graffiti, vandalism and potholes using the camera and GPS. You’ll even get a push notification when the problem’s been fixed.

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Hammered by the auto industry’s slump, Detroit saw its population plummet 25 per cent over the past decade, according to census data released on Tuesday that reflects the severity of an economic downturn in the only state whose population declined since 2000.

Needless to say, a blue state.

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Well, that’s a relief.

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Supporters of Bradley Manning stripped down to their skivvies outside the office of US Senator Dianne Feinstein to protest the treatment of the suspected WikiLeaker, who is being held in solitary confinement, often without being allowed to wear clothes.

I’m sure that’s the top item on Feinstein’s priority list.

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If there’s some non-stupid reason behind sending female reporters to cover a war in a Muslim country, I confess I don’t see what it is.

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“House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was briefly hospitalized today in Rome after she inexplicably came in contact with holy water in the foyer of St. Peter’s Cathedral.

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The original headline said ‘Anti-Semitism’ but I think that the German term for ‘Jew-hatred’ is more precise and reminds people of the historical link between the Muslim world and the National Socialists.

Last week the State Department issued an explicit condemnation of the naming of a square in a West Bank town for a female Palestinian terrorist the week before the sickening murder spree in Itamar. The JTA noted: “The statement was more definitive than one issued earlier in the week by a State Department official who said the Obama administration was seeking clarification on the matter.” Having received clarification, State Department spokesman Mark Toner added this pathetic formulation to the condemnation: “We underscore that all parties have an obligation to end any form of incitement.” Well, thanks.

It is not easy to keep up with the PA. On the same day that Toner made his statement, Palestinian Media Watch issued a bulletin pointing out a second tribute to a terrorist that broadcast on PA television at the same time that the square was named in honor of the lady murderer. “One week before the terror attack in Itamar, PA TV honored another accomplice to a suicide attack. Fahami Mashahara drove a suicide bomber to Gilo in Jerusalem in 2001 who killed 19 and injured more than a hundred. His daughter was invited to perform a song on PA TV.” The video is posted here. Palestinian Media Watch has documented the ongoing Palestinian Authority policy of glorifying terrorists as role models.

Read it.

Read it.

The top ten percent of American taxpayers pay more to the national government in taxes, both as a percentage of the total taxes collected and in proportion to their share of the national income, than upper-income taxpayers in any other developed country.

A very informative list.

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In most ways, Sarah McCarthy is your average high schooler. She has a job, college plans, but also a peculiar passion for a 16-year-old: She’s a vinyl junkie.

That’s right, analog. And none of that hipster new stuff or a USB-ready turntable from Urban Outfitters.

To this senior from Centreville, Md., there’s nothing like the raw crackle, the depth of sound, her delicate hand on diamond-tipped stylus to spin from the dusty stash of records she found in the basement of her grandfather _ yes, grandfather.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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The problem with the critiques is that the underlying assumptions are wrong. They are based on what has been called “the transmission belt theory” of regulation, which is that Congress sets forth a need and the parameters of a delegation to an expert agency. The agency then acts as the expert problem solver for Congress, analyzing the alternatives and decreeing the pro bono publico that our worthy solons would require if only they had the time. Regulatory analysis is a way to systematize and facilitate this pursuit.

Any resemblance between this model and the real world is strictly coincidental. Regulation is the continuation of political and budgetary wars by other means. Agencies are created because of a kernel of public need, and some concern for the public interest is usually somewhere in the mix of motives. But they are also captured by ideological and economic interests, which then use them to promote the ideology and the economic interests of the constituents.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

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The decision of a news reporter at the Washington Post to go to work for Vice President Obama as communications director is raising some eyebrows. Yahoo! News reports that the reporter “was still covering legislative battles and Biden’s role up until a few weeks ago.” A commenter at Politico suggests, “Her reporting on Biden was basically a ‘job tryout.'”

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Here is the catch. DOJ will only investigate bullying cases if the victim is considered protected under the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. In essence, only discrimination against a victim’s race, sex, national origin, disability, or religion will be considered by DOJ. The overweight straight white male who is verbally and/or physically harassed because of his size can consider himself invisible to the Justice Department.

So if you get beaten up at that inner-city school to which you’ve been bused in pursuit of ‘diversity’, you’re on your own. Your parents’ tax dollars at work.

“We can only take action where we have legal authority,” wrote DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa in a December 2010 e-mail to The Washington Times Water Cooler.

Love that name. Wonder how many affirmative-action check-boxes they were able to tick off when they hired her? Maybe she’s partially-black, as well; double points for that.

The Justice Department’s anti-bullying initiative is tantamount to bringing hate crime legislation to the public school system.

Yet another hint to avoid the government factory school system.

Right now, CNN is expanding its coverage of the Libyan situation by interviewing … Bernard Henri-Levi.

Yeah, when there’s a war on, the first guy I want to hear from is a French ‘writer & philosopher’.

The talent pool from which CNN recruits is getting more and more shallow as we watch….

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The fact that the homosexual agenda is ‘Freedom for me but not for thee’ is not really news, but this is a useful reminder.

“Exodus’ message is hateful and bigoted. They claim to offer ‘freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ’ and use scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) life to recruit clients.”

Well, then, don’t download the app. It is, after all, free. Duh.

“They endorse the use of so-called ‘reparative therapy’ to ‘change’ the sexual orientation of their clients, despite the fact that this form of ‘therapy’ has been rejected by every major professional medical organisation, including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Counseling Association.”

And, of course, unless a form of therapy is accepted by these credentialing organizations, it can’t possibly work.

I can’t think of any prior historical situation in which there has been such a sustained and determined campaign to force normal people to accept abnormal people as somehow normal. I suspect that all it will accomplish is a backlash that will be worse than any inconvenience they now suffer. (Yes, I said ‘inconvenience’. When it comes to ‘affirmative action’, gay is the new black.) Hope they’re happy with that.

Read it.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner has been quoted as expressing some concerns about President Barack Obama’s war against Libya. “Before any further military commitments are made, the administration must do a better job of communicating to the American people and to Congress about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.”

What’s remarkable about such a comment is how Boehner takes it for granted that the President of the United States can go to war by his own decision, while the Congress waits passively for the President’s explanation for his decision. Notice that no one inside or outside the Congress is saying anything about the fact that the Constitution of the United States clearly grants to the Congress the power to declare war. What this means, of course, is that that part of the Constitution has been set aside. In effect, the power to declare war has become a prerogative of the President.

Ross Douthat piles on.

In its month-long crab walk toward a military confrontation with Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Obama administration has delivered a clinic in the liberal way of war.

In its opening phase, at least, our war in Libya looks like the beau ideal of a liberal internationalist intervention. It was blessed by the United Nations Security Council. It was endorsed by the Arab League. It was pushed by the diplomats at Hillary Clinton’s State Department, rather than the military men at Robert Gates’s Pentagon. Its humanitarian purpose is much clearer than its connection to American national security. And it was initiated not by the U.S. Marines or the Air Force, but by the fighter jets of the French Republic.

But there are major problems with this approach to war as well. Because liberal wars depend on constant consensus-building within the (so-called) international community, they tend to be fought by committee, at a glacial pace, and with a caution that shades into tactical incompetence. And because their connection to the national interest is often tangential at best, they’re often fought with one hand behind our back and an eye on the exits, rather than with the full commitment that victory can require.

The Other McCain is having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have with our new President, George W. Obama.

First it was Michael Moore and now they’re all piling on. Ralph Nader says Obama should be impeached for war crimes, Josh Marshall says the president’s Libya policy is “a mess, poorly conceived, ginned up by folks with their own weird agendas,” and Andrew Sullivan . . .

Yeah, my heart breaks for Andrew Sullivan.

Pass the popcorn.

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Sunday’s breaking business story is the announcement that unionized AT&T will be buying union-free T-Mobile for $39 billion. With 42,000 mostly union-free employees, German-owned T-Mobile has long been a target of the red-shirted Communications Workers of America. Now, as the mostly unionized AT&T Mobility has agreed to allow the CWA to unionize its employees without secret-ballot elections (via neutrality and card-check), the red-shirted union bosses are seeing the green that will likely come from T-Mobile’s employees.

Not to mention that T-Mobile users can watch their service plunge into the toilet, as happened to me when the Old AT&T was bought by Cingular.

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Well, it used to . Now? Not so much.

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Four men launched a horrific attack on a teacher in which they slashed his face and left him with a fractured skull because they did not approve of him teaching religion to Muslim girls.

Akmol Hussein, 26, Sheikh Rashid, 27, Azad Hussain, 25, and Simon Alam, 19, attacked Gary Smith with a Stanley knife, an iron rod and a block of cement.

Mr Smith, who is head of religious education at Central Foundation Girls’ School in Bow, east London, also suffered a fractured skull.

Welcome to Londonistan, kuffr.

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An Austrian member of the European Parliament has resigned after being exposed in a newspaper sting for taking £87,000 a year in a “cash for laws” scandal.

In America, they would name a road or a courthouse after you – if you were a Democrat.

Today I turn the thermostats from HEAT to COOL, where they will remain until November. (What, you were expecting September? This is Dallas, homeboy.)

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We appear to be at war with Libya. (Well, what would you call 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles taking out air defense installations? For a hint, ask the people at Pearl Harbor.)

Funny thing, I don’t recall the Congress making any kind of declaration about that. Nor to I recall any mention of Libyans invading the United States, or making mischief with American citizens or property. I guess that’s not required any more.

Now, ask yourself: What if a Republican President had done this?

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It’s been a rough year. First came the firing of a black man, Juan Williams, by extremely white liberals for a frank and innocent remark deemed to be racist according to extremely white liberals’ interpretation of racism.

As last week’s “sting”-slash-luncheon attests, NPR’s motto should be, “Frankly, we don’t care for much of the public.”

Especially that, that “Middle America.”

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Of course, it all depends on why you’re in college.

If you want a degree as a milestone on the way to wealth, that’s a very mixed record. It often helps, but it’s not necessary if you’re sufficiently motivated (as the article points out).

Certain fields are based on credentialism — if you want it as a ticket into government or academia, it’s a required base to touch — not just a degree, but high grades and recommendations from your teachers.

If you just want it as an intellectual playground, backed up by an appropriate trust fund, it’s a lot of fun.

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The most unsung birthday in American business and technological history this year may be the 50th anniversary of the Xerox 914 photocopier. Although it was introduced at New York’s Sherry-Netherland Hotel on September 16, 1959, commercial models were not available until March 1960. The first machine, delivered to a Pennsylvania metal-fastener maker, weighed nearly 650 pounds. It needed a carpenter to uncrate it, an employee with “key operator” training, and its own 20-amp circuit. In an episode of Mad Men, set in 1962, the arrival of the hulking 914 helps get Peggy Olson her own office, after she tells her boss, “It’s hard to do business and be credible when I’m sharing with a Xerox machine.”

Anne Applebaum points out some inconvenient truth.

If you don’t live in this country all of the time, and I don’t, here is what you notice when you come home: Americans — with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession and, above all, their addiction to government spending programs — demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world. They don’t simply want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is prevented, or that they are fully compensated in the event something goes wrong. And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too.

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The problem, however, is that the same 90% of all economists also missed the last crises, and the one before that as well, and before that, and so on. In fact, their record of being able to diagnose and treat economic problems is about zero. And their prescriptions always seem to be counterproductive: the recommendations to limit government always make it grow, their advice on limiting taxation always makes it more, their prescriptions on growing the economy only leads to the illusory growth of bubbles, etc. Put it this way: If your doctor had this same track record of diagnosing and treating disease, you’d be dead by now.

The Other McCain points out a curiousity (with video).

A suspicious similarity between Obama’s speech announcing U.S. strikes against Libya and George W. Bush’s speech announcing the Afghanistan invasion….

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Society rewards extroverts. They get the job, the money, the girl (or boy), and the front page. Fortune 500 companies are run by 499 extroverts, plus Bill Gates. There are 435 extroverts in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate, two from each state. In fact, the only introvert in the District of Columbia is David Souter.

If “interpersonal skills” really means skills, then I can’t object, but I’m afraid that in the wrong hands it means something more like “interpersonal style”, and in particular it means the style of extroverts. I have the same concern about “communication skills.” People have different styles; if my style isn’t the same as yours, does that mean I lack skills?

As for teamwork, well, I’m sure there are some problems that are best solved with collaborative, active learning, but I am equally sure that there are problems you can’t solve with your mouth open.

Read it.

Not that anybody reads Augustine these days. But it’s interesting.

I am at present reading a Kindle e-book on the PC Kindle app. Every now and then I’ll run across an odd thing: a light grey dotted line under a passage, with the notation, e.g., ‘3 highlighters’. My wife, who owns a Kindle as I do not, informs me that this indicates that X other people who have purchased that title from Amazon have highlighted that passage. That kinda creeps me out.

And yet … Consider a textbook with that sort of indicator. One underline is probably bullshit. Twenty may indicate something significant; getting into the whole ‘wisdom of crowds’ notion. As an unwanted markup in my book, it’s a minor annoyance at worst; but, for those who whom such things are important, it represents a species of real-time involvement in a community, the group of all people who have read this particular title and found something in it worth highlighting. I’m going to have to think about that one.

And the question immediately arises: Who came up with the idea to add that particular ‘feature’ to the Kindle app, and why? And how did it survive the corporate bureaucracy that clots organizations the size of Amazon like kudzu? I’m going to have to think about that one, too.

Read it.

Imagine being at a dinner event and having your plate served with (plastic) cockroaches scattered over the food. Envision going to a hospital with a loved one only to be confronted with the hint that the hospital food is infested with bugs, flies, mold, and rat droppings. Pretty disgusting, right? Well, imagine how disgusting it is that these tacticss are due to a union’s efforts to unionize the “offending” company’s employees. At least, that’s the allegations being made by the French-owned company Sodexo.

Read it. And watch the video.

Below is a video of Amir Abdel Malik of the Muslims Students Association leading his audience in the pledge of allegiance. The Islamic pledge of allegiance, that is — don’t expect anything about liberty and justice for all in this one — the text is straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood oath.

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Although Christmas Island is just south of Indonesia, and is only 300 miles away from Jakarta as the crow flies, it is actually part of Australia. In recent years the island has become the preferred destination for immigrants from South Asia and Africa who want to gain entry into Australia and take advantage of the country’s generous asylum laws.

A favorite technique, particularly among Afghans, is to send an unaccompanied minor child on one of the boats to Christmas Island. The culture enrichers know that the law requires the expedited processing of underage refugees. Once the kid is in, he can contact the rest of his family, who will then be brought in under the “family reunification” rules. Everyone — Dad, Mum 1, Mum 2, eleventy children, Grandma, Grandpa — can then expect to be fed and housed at the expense of the Australian taxpayer.

The Other McCain enters into the Dystopia Watch game.

The cultural divide could not be more stark. The young lack all capacity to step back and view their lives from a distance. They tend toward the momentary: morally, mentally, sexually, professionally. The scope of their vision doesn’t really extend past the next SMS message on the phone.

This is the fruit of Progress. The opposite of liberty is dependency. These young idiots are secure in their faith that an exception will be found for any transgression. The Government God will never actually punish; an exception will always be found, or the violated rule ignored. The Government God is all mushy sentimentality, and always gives another subsidy. Justice is a capitalistic notion, carried out by the Satanic market. This is why the idolatrous, Satanic markets must be stripped of their capitalistic priests and made subservient to the Government God. Government God will re-distribute the seized goods of the capitalistic priests in accordance with notions of Real Lawful Justice.

Preach it, brother.

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Well, yeah, but who wears cuff links any more? These days, when you say ‘French cuffs’, most people think of Lady Gaga and some manacles.