In what could be a watershed moment for the price, provenance, and future of physical gold, not to mention the “stability” of the entire monetary regime based on rock solid, undisputed “faith and credit” in paper money, German Handelsblatt reports in an exclusive that the long suffering German gold, all official 3,396 tons of it, is about to be moved.
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Jay Carney tried to mock a reporter for asking a question he didn’t like. The reporter, in turn, mocked Carney, the White House spokesman, telling him, “I’m not going to indulge your West Wing fantasies.” Talk about a shill. The guy who applies for the job of mouthpiece to a dictator is a joke in himself.
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On this episode… Cops are caught vandalizing someone’s home, and an iPhone thief is caught…without the help of the police.
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This day in 1914, during the bloodiest war in human history, the soldiers from all sides stopped fighting and joined each other in singing songs and sharing food, drinks, and cigarettes. The peacetime would come to be known as the Christmas Truce. It lasted for about a week, and was reported on by the papers, starting on Dec 31 by the New York Times. Soon after, British papers followed, and the truce ended. The soldiers, for whatever reason, went back to killing each other for their masters. May today be a reminder to all who fight for the state that they have more in common with their enemies than they have differences. May peace prosper.
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TDP 005 US Torture Victim Seeks Intl Justice 2012-12-13
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Mr Schmidt’s comments risk inflaming the row over the amount of tax multinationals pay, after it emerged that Google funnelled $9.8bn of revenues from international subsidiaries into Bermuda last year in order to halve its tax bill.
Mr Schmidt’s comments risk inflaming the row over the amount of tax multinationals pay, after it emerged that Google funnelled $9.8bn (£6.07bn) of revenues from international subsidiaries into Bermuda last year in order to halve its tax bill.
However, Mr Schmidt defended the company’s legitimate tax arrangements. “We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways,” he told Bloomberg. “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate.”
“It’s called capitalism,” he said. “We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.”
In Britain Vince Cable was unimpressed by Mr Schmidt’s views. The Business Secretary told The Daily Telegraph: “It may well be [capitalism] but it’s certainly not the job of governments to accommodate it.”
A Californian pressure group called Consumer Watchdog wrote to the Senate’s Finance Committee demanding a hearing on Google’s “global tax avoidance strategies”.
Consumer Watchdog’s director John Simpson called for the Committee to schedule a time for Mr Schmidt and Google’s chief executive could “testify under oath and explain their company’s apparent abuse of the tax code to the detriment of all who play fairly.”
Mr Simpson urged the Senate to work with “other countries’ tax authorities” to “put an end to egregious loopholes that allow cynical exploitation by this generation’s Robber Barons.”
“Governments in Europe, many of which have ben targets of Google’s morally bankrupt tax policies, are actively seeking redress,” he wrote. “But this is not a problem that only impacts other countries’ revenues. Google’s tactics strike at the US Treasury as well, forcing the rest of us to make up for the Internet giant’s unwillingness to pay its fair share.”
He added: “What makes Google’s activities so reprehensible is its hypocritical assertion of its corporate motto, ‘Don’t Be Evil’.”
Documents filed last month in the Netherlands show that Britain is Google’s second biggest market generating 11pc of its sales, or $4.1bn last year.
But the company paid just £6m in corporation tax. Overall, Google paid a rate of 3.2pc on its overseas earnings, despite generating most of its revenues in high-tax jurdisdictions in Europe.
The company reportedly uses complex tax schemes called the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich, which take large royalty payments from international subsidiaries and pay tax in low rate regimes.
By channelling its revenues through Bermuda, Google avoided $2bn of global income levies last year.
The tax arrangements add fuel to accusations made by British MPs that Google and other firms including Starbucks and Amazon, have been “immorally” minimising its tax bills.
Matt Brittin, Google’s UK boss, said MPs were blaming companies for a system that they had designed. “Google plays by the rules set by politicians,” he said. “The only people who really have choices are politicians who set the tax rates.”
Last week, Starbucks caved into public pressure and promised to pay £20m to the Treasury over the next two years. However the trigger more criticism of “optional” tax payments.
Stop the F-35 Coalition, a local group which has mobilized to persuade the Air Force not to base the next generation fighter/bomber at Burlington International Airport, took their campaign Wednesday to the Burlington office of senior U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy.
They were demanding he hold a public hearing on the basing question.
Leahy supports the basing of the plane at the airport.
As about 100 coalition supporters rallied outside, a smaller group visited the office to ask Leahy to convene a public hearing on the issue — so he “can hear from and respond to constituents regarding the F-35,” the group said in a prepared statement.
They were met by Leahy staffer John Tracy, who kept them in Leahy’s tiny waiting room, with a locked door and a bullet-proof window between them and the suite of offices.
Tracy told the group he would relay their concerns to Leahy. He refused to try to get Leahy on the phone, and he deflected their demands for a public hearing by saying the F-35A basing has already been discussed in public meetings.
The protest group included UVM Social Work professor Laurie Larson, who after leaving the anteroom described the meeting as “sad.”
“Basically,” she said of Tracy’s comments to the group, “he’s saying the Air Force makes the decision and (Leahy) is impotent to do anything about it.”
She said she feels Leahy’s seniority in the Senate would carry weight. . “He has a lot of cachet in D.C.,” she said, “and I think he could influence if the basing happens here.”
Responding to Tracy’s insistence that Leahy was working on the impending “fiscal cliff” national finance issues, she said, “The F-35 is the fiscal cliff. That’s the trade we’re making.”
The coalition said in written comments that Leahy’s support for the basing facilitates the need for “thousands of homes” to be added to the sound zone near the airport that the Federal Aviation Administration’s standards define as “unsuitable” for habitation.
The Stop the F-35 group is asking Leahy to add his voice to the opposition “in view of the devastating effects” the F-35 would bring to South Burlington, Winooski, Williston and parts of Burlington.
Leahy has not met with the South Burlington City Council, which voted in opposition to the basing, the coalition said, nor has he met with council Chairwoman Rosanne Greco, a retired Air Force colonel who has studied the Air Force’s environmental study on the basing, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. That report was issued last spring and its final version is now in preparation. It documented that the F-35A would result in increased aircraft noise and would affect additional thousands of individuals in surrounding communities.
The group said prior to the rally that it intended a peaceful protest and was not intending conduct that would lead to arrest to dramatize its views.
No police officers were present at the protest.
Nicole Citro, the South Burlington founder of Green Ribbons for the F-35, which supports the basing, said that from her perspective proponents for the basing outnumber opponents by “100 to 1.”
Citro said that as she has distributed “thousands” of green ribbons and spoken to many people about the plane, she has heard repeatedly “they are frustrated the vocal minority (opposing the plane) have been given so much attention.”
“The audacity and sense of entitlement these protesters display is astounding,” she said in a message to the Free Press. “I guess they are just ignoring that fact that a majority of this community have already voiced their support for these planes.”
She said that opponents have discounted petitions for the plane circulated by support groups which gathered close to 11,000 signatures because many signers don’t live near the airport. “The last time I checked,” she wrote, “it is the Vermont Air National Guard not the Chittenden County Air National Guard. We say ‘I am Vermont Strong’ it is because when something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. We all sleep under the blanket of protection the Guard provides and all of us will be affected, economically and otherwise, if the base closes.”
In a statement released late in the afternoon, Leahy didn’t acknowledge that protesters had gone to his office. He said that eight “public meetings and forums” on the F-35A have taken place this year in Chittenden County, and he said he and others in the congressional delegation have “facilitated communication” of Vermonters with the Air Force. He said he has also responded to questions about the basing.
He added: “Protecting the American people is the reason we have a fleet of fighter jets, as we saw on and after 9/11, when Vermont-based F-16s defended the airspace over New York and Washington, Burlington,” he continued, “is ideally situated for training and is just a short flight to the Atlantic Ocean for supersonic training, and these operational considerations are a key to the Air Force’s choice.”
