Matt Birnbaum

Global Capital and the Nation State

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:54:44 -0400

As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this.

Google, Amazon, Starbucks, every other major corporation, and every big Wall Street bank, are sheltering as much of their U.S. profits abroad as they can, while telling Washington that lower corporate taxes are necessary in order to keep the U.S. “competitive.”

Baloney. The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible — and play off one country against another to keep their taxes down and subsidies up, thereby shifting more of the tax burden to ordinary people whose wages are already shrinking because companies are playing workers off against each other.

I’m in London for a few days, and all the talk here is about how Goldman Sachs just negotiated a sweetheart deal to settle a tax dispute with the British government; Google is manipulating its British sales to pay almost no taxes here by using its low-tax Ireland subsidiary (the chair of the Parliamentary committee investigating this has just called the do-no-evil firm “devious, calculating, and unethical”); Amazon has been found to route its British sales through a subsidiary in low-tax Luxembourg, and now receives more in subsidies from the British government than it pays here in taxes; Starbucks’ tax-avoidance strategy was so blatant British consumers began boycotting the firm until it reversed course.

Meanwhile, At a time when you’d expect nations to band together to gain bargaining power against global capital, the opposite is occurring: Xenophobia is breaking out all over.

Here in Britain, the UK Independence Party — which wants to get out of the European Union — is rapidly gaining ground, becoming the third most popular party in the country, according to a new poll for The Independent on Sunday. Almost one in five people plan to vote for it in the next general election. Ukip’s overall ratings have risen four points to 19 per cent in the past month, despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to wrest back control of the crucial debate over Britain’s relationship with the European Union.

Right-wing nationalist parties are gaining ground elsewhere in Europe as well. In the U.S., not only are Republicans sounding more nationalistic of late (anti-immigrant, anti-trade), but they continue to push “states rights” — as states increasingly battle against one another to give global companies ever larger tax breaks and subsidies.

Nothing could strengthen the hand of global capital more than such breakups.

theradofthefag: Fit me! Janice Dickinson in a fitting session...

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:39:42 -0400

theradofthefag:

Fit me!

Janice Dickinson in a fitting session with American Fashion Designer Michael Kors in New York City.

c. 1970s.
D.R.

Otis Redding “Tennessee Waltz”.

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:58:50 -0400

Otis Redding “Tennessee Waltz”.

dollah-dollah-bills-yall replied to your quote: You will do well to expand your business Maybe...

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:52:26 -0400

dollah-dollah-bills-yall replied to your quote: You will do well to expand your business

Maybe it’s telling you to finish another novel?

Yes, and I have to finish the last rewrites I went back and did on the first one too. I probably should be doing that fortune cookie or not haha

"You will do well to expand your business."

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:02:56 -0400

“You will do well to expand your business.”

- Chinese food leftovers fortune cookie.

tyleroakley: buzzfeed: George Takei responds to “traditional”...

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:09:33 -0400

tyleroakley:

buzzfeed:

George Takei responds to “traditional” marriage fans.

George Takei is flawfree.

"You are talented in many ways."

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:56:35 -0400

“You are talented in many ways.”

- Fortune cookie.

My buddy and I drove to the top of Cathedral Ledge after our...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:40:02 -0400

My buddy and I drove to the top of Cathedral Ledge after our hike today. Looks like it was a great day to hike, huh? Yeah well, on the Carter-Moriah Trail, it was in the 30s, windy, with a wintery mix of snow and hail. I’m not kidding. Neither of us were dressed for that— we both only had shorts on and no gloves or hats— see above for what the forecast was that we planned for— so we just summitted North Carter— a Peak neither of us had done before— and went back down the Imp Trail, skipping the other Carter mountains we’d planned on doing.

Also, you may notice two people sitting on the rock in the fourth picture. Those were rock climbers who climbed that big rock, and when I saw them, I felt a pang of jealousy, because they earned the view they were looking at, and I know what it’s like to earn my view, and it looks so much sweeter.

above-the-notches replied to your video: Cinderella, “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s… Yes,...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:31:29 -0400

above-the-notches replied to your video: Cinderella, “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s…

Yes, this was definitely cool at one time. All that hair! “Nobody’s Fool” was just on the radio today… such memories, although I was a bit older, and I admit, they were horrible in concert! It was still worth it!

Oh my God, “Nobody’s Fool”? I loved that one, and “Gypsy Road” too. And I can only imagine how bad they would’ve been in concert, considering how much partying they all did! My friends and I would all spend our allowance on all the Hair Bands’ cassette singles, but if any of us at that age had gone to a concert we probably would’ve been scarred for life hahaha

Cinderella, “Don’t Know What You Got (Till...

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:49:48 -0400

Cinderella, “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)”.

Heard this on the shuttle yesterday. You’re probably expecting some kind of explanation for what you’re seeing here. Why are the guys wearing the pants of modern model street style? Why is this a bizarro “Enjoy the Silence”? Was this really considered cool at one time? First off, I was 9 at the time, so I don’t know what to tell you. Second, are you telling me this isn’t cool now? And finally, the bassist has one of the best mullets ever. It’s like a palm tree of hair is sprouting out of his head. Just amazing.

Sam Cooke, “Driftin’ Blues”.

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:00:27 -0400

Sam Cooke, “Driftin’ Blues”.

Picture I took today of the Memorial Bridge construction from a...

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:24:24 -0400

Picture I took today of the Memorial Bridge construction from a pier at Prescott Park.

Would You Want to Be Friends With Humbert Humbert?: A Forum on “Likeability”

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:39:55 -0400

newyorker:

Our Page-Turner blog asked a group of novelists how often the question of likeability has been posed about their characters: http://nyr.kr/16CpZCS

Illustration by Roman Muradov

Photo

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:38:17 -0400

I finished this last night. In the 1950s, the moral chaos our...

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:34:05 -0400

I finished this last night. In the 1950s, the moral chaos our hero David should have been facing, or the one society would have him face, is one that offers him a choice between the accepted romance between he and his girlfriend Hella, and the one society doesn’t want to accept between him and Giovanni. What Baldwin does though is takes that moral choice, makes it as hollow as it should be, and gives David the real moral dilemma: accept who he as a person, or not confront the fact that that person disgusts him because society tells him it should disgust him; and the hollow moral dilemma gives him an out— he can leave Giovanni for Hella under the auspices of wanting a “real life”, when we the reader know that isn’t true.

flavorpill: Get on your bike and ride!

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:17:47 -0400

flavorpill:

Get on your bike and ride!

Lita Ford, “Kiss Me Deadly”. Heard this on the...

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:34:09 -0400

Lita Ford, “Kiss Me Deadly”.

Heard this on the shuttle today. One of the best anthems of the Hair Band era.

Pyromaniacs on the Potomac: The Problem With Obama's Second Term

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:11:47 -0400

robertreich:

Six months into a second term and the Obama White House is on the defensive and floundering: Benghazi, the IRS’s investigations of right-wing groups, the Justice Department’s snooping into journalists’ phone records, Obamacare behind schedule, the Administration’s push for gun control ending in failure.

Should the blame fall mainly on congressional Republicans and their allies in the right-wing media, whose vitriolic attacks on Obama are unceasing?

After all, the only thing the GOP stands for – the sole mission that unites its warring factions — is an unwaivering determination to block anything the Administration seeks while distracting public attention from any larger issue.

But surely some of the seeming disarray is due to the President, whose insularity and aloofness make him an easy target, and whose eagerness to compromise and lack of focus continuously blurs his core message.

Is the central goal of his second term to achieve a grand bargain on the budget deficit? Or progress on gun control? Or restore jobs? Or reform the immigration laws? It is difficult to tell.

Vulnerabilities come with any Administration’s second term — when officials are exhausted, public support has worn thin, “A” teams have departed, the media are disenchanted, and all of the low-hanging fruit in a president’s agenda has already been picked.

I painfully recall Bill Clinton’s second term (I left before Monica). George W. Bush’s second term was marred by Iraq and a colossal failure on Social Security. Ronald Reagan’s, by the Iran-Contra scandal. Even FDR got mired in a so-called “court-packing” scheme that lost him public and congressional support.

Which is why it’s so important for a second-term White House to define itself — to give the public a clear sense of what it stands for, and how it intends to tackle the largest challenges facing the nation. And then to work hard on this core agenda without becoming overly distracted by the inevitable fires that have to be extinguished along the way.

Even if a president fails to achieve this larger objective, he will at least have established a predicate for the future, and given the public a larger goal around which to mobilize and organize.

Barack Obama is allowing the fires to dominate because he has not defined his core agenda. During the 2012 campaign it appeared to be restoring jobs, rebuilding the middle class, and reversing the scourge of widening inequality. Since then, though, the core has evaporated – leaving him and his administration vulnerable to every pyromaniac on the Potomac.

"I’ve grown up in the Himalayas — there’s no cash economy there. People are wealthy at zero dollars a..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:34:57 -0400

“I’ve grown up in the Himalayas — there’s no cash economy there. People are wealthy at zero dollars a day.
The point is that you need to have a clean stream. If your forest is intact and your stream is flowing and your knowledge is with you, and you can grow your food and you recognize the herbs that can cure you and you have mutuality of labor exchange, so that you come and work on my farm, and I come and work at your farm, why on earth would you need either dollars or rupees? On the other hand, if the water is commodified, if our seeds are commodified, if our medicine is monopolized, if there are no jobs. If the entire system is meant to merely be a source of profits for a handful of corporations, actually, you just have do your arithmetic, life becomes too expensive to buy. You can’t buy life. And now that they are trying to commoditize the very basis of life and own it and sell it back to us, basically the consequence is disposable people. Because for most people, then, life becomes unaffordable in any case, a life of that kind, even for those those who can afford it, is not life anymore.”

- Vandana Shiva (via la-hija-del-quinto-sol)

mechamelissa: butcherbilly: The Post-Punk / New Wave Super...

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:35:06 -0400

mechamelissa:

butcherbilly:

The Post-Punk / New Wave Super Friends by Butcher Billy

Who are your heroes?

RELEVANT TO ALL OF MY INTERESTS