[Articles of Interest] Socialist Pigs (Animal Farm) in Congress

Senate Democrats Deny Specter Committee Seniority

By Paul Kane (Washington Post)
The Senate dealt a blow tonight to Sen. Arlen Specter's hold on seniority in several key committees, a week after the Pennsylvanian's party switch placed Democrats on the precipice of a 60-seat majority.

In a unanimous voice vote, the Senate approved a resolution that added Specter to the Democratic side of the dais on the five committees on which he serves, an expected move that gives Democrats larger margins on key panels such as Judiciary and Appropriations.

But Democrats placed Specter in one of the two most junior slots on each of the five committees for the remainder of this Congress, which goes through December 2010. Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter's seniority claim at the committee level only after the midterm elections next year.

"This is all going to be negotiated next Congress," Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said tonight.

Specter's office declined to comment.

Without any assurance of seniority, Specter loses a major weapon in his campaign to win reelection in 2010: the ability to claim that his nearly 30 years of Senate service places him in key positions to benefit his constituents.

Tonight's committee resolution, quickly read on the Senate floor by Reid himself, contradicts Specter's assertion last Tuesday when he publicly announced his move from the Republican side of the aisle. He told reporters that he retained his seniority both in the overall chamber and in the committees on which he serves. Specter said that becoming chairman of the Appropriations Committee was a personal goal of his, one that would be within reach if he were granted his seniority on the panel and placed as the third-most senior Democrat there.

Specter, if granted seniority, would also be next in line to chair the Judiciary Committee behind the current chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

Without that seniority, though, Specter, 79, would not even hold an appropriations subcommittee chairmanship in 2011, a critical foothold Specter has used in the past to disperse billions of dollars to Pennsylvania.

When Supreme Court nomination hearings are held later this summer, Specter will be the last senator to ask questions of the eventual nominee -- a dramatically lower profile than in 2005 and 2006, when he chaired the committee and ran the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Democrats could decide after the 2010 midterms to reward Specter for his move by granting him seniority on committees, but recent precedent has not been kind to such situations. In 2002, for instance, Frank Lautenberg came out of retirement to bail out New Jersey Democrats, agreeing to run in place of the ethically disgraced incumbent, Robert G. Torricelli (D). Lautenberg won a seat that was once thought to be out of reach. But despite his 18 years of prior Senate service, Democrats relegated him to the most junior positions on committees.

Specter, after 43 years as an active Republican, will have to prove his Democratic loyalty over the next 20 months to his colleagues in order to win their support for his seniority. That effort has gotten off to a rocky start following an interview he gave with the New York Times Magazine, to be published this Sunday.

Specter joked about how Norm Coleman could possibly win his legal contest and reclaim his Minnesota Senate seat, assuring there would still be at least one Jewish Republican in the chamber. Specter backtracked from those comments in an interview with Congressional Quarterly today,

"In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates," he told CQ. "I'm ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I've made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke."

By Post Editor |  May 5, 2009; 9:08 PM ET

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[Articles of Interest] Obama's trade war & crimes of theft

Play Video ABC News  – Obama Cracks Down on Tax Code

• Slideshow:President Barack Obama
• Play Video Video:Trading on Obama's Tax Plan CNBC

AP – President Barack Obama speaks about tax reform in the Grand Foyer of the White House in Washington, Monday, …

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 8 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised sternly on Monday to crack down on companies "that ship jobs overseas" and duck U.S. taxes with offshore havens. It won't be easy. Democrats have been fighting — and losing — this battle since John F. Kennedy made a similar proposal in 1961. Obama's proposal to close tax loopholes was a reliable applause line during the presidential campaign, but it got a lukewarm response Monday from Capitol Hill.

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the plan needed further study, even though similar ideas have been around for years.

The president's plan would limit the ability of U.S. companies to defer paying U.S. taxes on overseas profits. At the same time, Obama would step up efforts to go after evaders who abuse offshore tax shelters.

Obama said his plan would raise $210 billion over the next 10 years, though no tax increases would go into effect until 2011. That's an average of $21 billion a year, less than a 2 percent nick in a federal budget deficit that is projected to hit $1.2 trillion in 2010.

Lost revenue isn't the only problem, Obama says. He contends the current system gives companies an incentive to invest overseas rather than creating jobs in the U.S.

"It's a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, N.Y.," Obama said Monday.

The business community argues the deferral system helps them compete against foreign companies that pay taxes only in the countries where they generate profits.

The bottom line?

"Nobody should miss the fact that this is about revenue," said Raymond Wiacek, head of the tax practice at the law firm Jones Day. "These companies have the money, and the U.S. government needs the money."

Obama also proposed a package of disclosure and enforcement measures designed to make it harder for financial institutions to help wealthy individuals evade taxes in overseas accounts. Obama said the government is hiring nearly 800 new IRS agents to enforce the tax code.

"I want to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world," Obama said at a White House announcement. "But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens."

Obama's plan would impose billions of dollars in new taxes on many of the nation's largest corporations, including Google, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Johnson & Johnson, tax experts said. But it falls well short of the broad overhaul of the tax system that will probably have to wait until at least next year — after Congress deals with health care and energy.

In exchange for the increased taxes some companies would have to pay, Obama agreed to make permanent a research tax credit that would provide firms about $75 billion in breaks over the next 10 years. The credit currently is to expire at the end of the year.

Obama has widespread support in Congress to crack down on tax evaders who illegally hide assets in tax havens. But he faces stiff opposition — even within his own party — to increasing taxes on the legal transactions of U.S. multinational companies.

"To the extent the president continues on the road of cracking down on tax abuse, he can count on my support," said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "But if he's using tax shelters as a stalking horse to raise taxes on corporations at the cost of U.S. jobs, he'll lose me."

A coalition of business groups has already stepped up lobbying efforts to kill attempts to increase taxes on overseas profits, saying it would make American companies less competitive.

"We're talking about American jobs at American companies and their ability to compete overseas," said John J. Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable.

At issue is the way the U.S. taxes the overseas profits of American companies. Under current law, American corporations with subsidiaries in foreign countries can defer paying U.S. taxes on the profits of those subsidiaries until the money is transferred back to this country.

If companies leave the money overseas, where corporate tax rates in most countries are lower than in the U.S., they can avoid American taxes on those profits indefinitely. If the money is brought to the U.S., corporations can subtract foreign taxes already paid.

The U.S. has a top corporate income tax rate of 35 percent, which is among the highest in the developed world. However, most corporate income is taxed at much lower rates because of deductions and credits.

In 2004, large corporations paid an average effective tax rate of 25.2 percent on domestic income, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. For foreign income, the effective U.S. tax rate was about 4 percent, the report said. That figure does not include taxes paid to foreign countries.

Obama's plan would:

_Prevent companies from writing off domestic expenses that help generate profits abroad — until those profits are returned to the U.S. and subjected to American taxes. For instance, administrative tasks performed in New York for a London office would not be tax deductible in the United States.

_Prohibit companies from receiving foreign tax credits on income that is not subject to U.S. taxes.

_End a provision that lets U.S. companies legally shift income from one foreign subsidiary to another, making the taxes they owe to the United States "disappear."

Former President Kennedy failed to end the tax deferral system in 1961, despite telling Congress the U.S. could no longer afford it. The system also survived overhaul efforts in the 1970s and 1980s.

Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, proposed a similar measure to limit the deductions of U.S. multinationals in 2007. But Rangel, a Democrat from New York, tied his proposal to lowering the overall corporate tax rate.

On Monday, he welcomed Obama's plan.

"For too long, our tax laws have rewarded companies that invest and keep their money overseas and turned a blind eye to the use of tax havens by the wealthy," Rangel said.

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[Articles of Interest] Iraq Bombs May Slow U.S. Pullout as Splits Fuel Fresh Violence

By Caroline Alexander and Daniel Williams

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- The recent spate of bombings in Iraq means U.S. officials may have to keep troops there longer than they planned, and Iraqis may have to live with a higher level of violence than they wish.

American military officials say they are now reconsidering plans to withdraw troops from all cities in Iraq by the end of June in the wake of car and suicide bombings that killed 191 people in Baghdad between April 23 and April 29.

And analysts say it is likely that violence will continue to plague many parts of Iraq still beset by insurgency and al- Qaeda terrorism, even if the level doesn’t return to its peak at the height of sectarian violence three years ago.

“What we have now is that we are going back to where things were in 2004,” said Liam Anderson, a professor of political science at Wright State University in Ohio. “This is the way things are going to go, but it is difficult to see a full-scale resumption of the insurgency.”

Persistent violence creates a dilemma for President Barack Obama, who is counting on troop reductions in Iraq to permit him to beef up forces in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO troops are fighting al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Obama risks overseeing two unresolved wars with inadequate resources devoted to either.

The president has charged the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki with resolving conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over Sunni integration into the army and police, and between Kurds and Arabs over oil-rich land in the north.

Pressure

“Those are all issues that have not been settled the way they need to be settled,” Obama said in an April 29 press conference. “We’ve provided sufficient time for them to get that work done, but we’ve got to keep the pressure up, not just on the military side but on the diplomatic and development sides as well.”

Data compiled by Washington’s Brookings Institution from U.S. Defense Department reports show that the level of violence remains well below that of two years ago even with the recent attacks.

For example, Iraqi civilian deaths fell to 230 in February from a high of 3,500 in February 2007, then rose slightly to 260 in March, according to Brookings.

“Although you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, et cetera, remain very low relative to what was going on last year,” Obama said in the news conference.

Under an agreement struck last year between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, U.S. forces are to leave cities by June 30 and the entire country by the end of 2011. Obama has said that he will withdraw all but 50,000 U.S. soldiers by Aug. 2010.

Mosul Delay

The agreement allows for the withdrawal schedule to be altered by mutual consent. U.S. officers have pinpointed Mosul as one city where troops might have to remain longer because it is a bastion of a Sunni Muslim insurgency and al-Qaeda, the global terror network led by Osama bin Laden.

“The only city I would consider that might require an extended stay would be Mosul,” General Ray T. Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told the Dubai newspaper Khaleej Times in an interview published April 27.

Col. Gary Volesky, the senior commander in Mosul, said in an April 14 teleconference with Pentagon reporters that the city is “short” 5,000 police needed to occupy neighborhoods cleared of insurgents by combined American and Iraqi raids.

U.S. Troops Out

Some doubts have also been raised about the timing of a pullback from Baghdad, although Odierno told the newspaper that he “felt comfortable” for now with overall security in the capital even after the recent suicide bombings.

“If this continued over a longer period of time then we might have to take that into consideration,” he said.

So far Iraq has shown no public eagerness to delay withdrawals. “We believe that Iraqi security forces are more suited to this fight than foreign troops,” Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said in an April 30 interview.

He acknowledged that the security situation in Baghdad, Mosul and other places is being reviewed and that al-Qaeda hasn’t yet been “eradicated.”

Still, he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq. “There is a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and we would like to stick to the letter and spirit of the agreement,” he said, while attending an investment conference in London.

Obama plans to reduce the force in Iraq, currently at 135,000, by 12,000 within six months, Odierno told reporters in Baghdad on March 9.

‘Major Showdown’

Obama will need to keep enough troops in Iraq to exert some control over the situation as power struggles intensify during the course of the U.S. drawdown, Anderson said.

“I don’t see it is disintegrating rapidly, but a slow trend downwards as things become more and more fragmented,” he said. “We are heading for a major showdown for control of the state if the U.S. withdraws.”

Relations between Sunni Muslims and the central government, still dominated by representatives of the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, remain explosive.

Many Sunnis who initially fought the U.S. after the 2003 invasion have allied themselves with American forces against al- Qaeda in the past two years. Those Sunnis viewed al-Qaeda as excessively brutal and the Americans as a counterbalance to Shiite domination, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at New York’s Council on Foreign Relations.

Sunni Signal

Al-Maliki’s government hasn’t kept its pledge to integrate Sunni forces grouped in militias known as the Sons of Iraq and the Awakening Councils into the army and police forces, Biddle said. As a result, he said, some Sunnis now simply look the other way as al-Qaeda launches new attacks.

“The Sunni community shut al-Qaeda down,” Biddle said. “Now they have decided to send a signal about what could happen if the government doesn’t respect its promises and if the U.S. forces leave and abandon the Sunnis.”

A conflict is also looming between Kurds, who make up 20 percent of Iraq’s population, and Sunni Arabs, another 20 percent, over control of oil-rich parts of the north. The Kurds possess their own militia and have expanded control beyond their far northeastern autonomous zone into areas near the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

A “heavy U.S. footprint” will be needed in at least Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk, which is the hub of northern oil production, said Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It will take lots of effort to prevent local flare-ups.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Williams in Cairo at dwilliams41@bloomberg.net; Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 3, 2009 17:48 EDT

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PC Socialism - Swine flu name change? Flu genes spell pig - Government Healthcare??

AP – A farmer wash pigs at a pig farm in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Thursday, April 30, 2009. Indonesia, …

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – 58 mins ago

WASHINGTON – No matter what you call it, leading experts say the virus that is scaring the world is pretty much all pig. So while the U.S. government and now the World Health Organization are taking the swine out of "swine flu," the experts who track the genetic heritage of the virus say this: If it is genetically mostly porcine and its parents are pig viruses, it smells like swine flu to them.

Six of the eight genetic segments of this virus strain are purely swine flu and the other two segments are bird and human, but have lived in swine for the past decade, says Dr. Raul Rabadan, a professor of computational biology at Columbia University.

A preliminary analysis shows that the closest genetic parents are swine flu strains from North America and Eurasia, Rabadan wrote in a scientific posting in a European surveillance network.

"Scientifically this is a swine virus," said top virologist Dr. Richard Webby, a researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Webby is director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds. He documented the spread a decade ago of one of the parent viruses of this strain in scientific papers.

"It's clearly swine," said Henry Niman, president of Recombinomics, a Pittsburgh company that tracks how viruses evolve. "It's a flu virus from a swine, there's no other name to call it."

Dr. Edwin D. Kilbourne, the father of the 1976 swine flu vaccine and a retired professor at New York Medical College in Valhalla, called the idea of changing the name an "absurd position."

The name swine flu has specific meaning when it comes to stimulating antibodies in the body and shouldn't be tinkered with, said Kilbourne, 88.

That's not what government health officials say.

"We have no idea where it came from," said Michael Shaw, associate director for laboratory science for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Everybody's calling it swine flu, but the better term is 'swine-like.' It's like viruses we have seen in pigs, it's not something we know was in pigs."

On Wednesday, U.S. officials not only started calling the virus 2009 H1N1 after two of its genetic markers, but Dr. Anthony Fauci the National Institutes of Health corrected reporters for calling it swine flu. Then on Thursday, the WHO said it would stop using the name swine flu because it was misleading and triggering the slaughter of pigs in some countries.

Another reason the U.S. government wants to ditch the swine label is that many people are afraid to eat pork, hurting the $97 billion U.S. pork industry. Even the experts who point to the swine genetic origins of the virus agree that people can't get the disease from food or handling pork, even raw.

"Calling this swine flu, when to date there has been no connection between animals and humans, has the potential to cause confusion," Chris Novak, chief executive officer of the National Pork Board, said in a news release.

One top flu expert, doesn't like the swine flu name either, but for a different reason. Traditional swine flu doesn't spread easily among people, although this one does now, said Dr. Paul Glezen, a flu epidemiologist at Baylor University.

Columbia's Rabadan said sometimes when he talks to other scientists, he uses the name "swine" or the name "Mexican flu." And that name only adds another case of political incorrectness.

Mexico Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said it's wrong to call it "North American flu" and flatly rejects the idea of calling it "Mexican flu." He pointed to WHO information that the swine genes in the virus are from Europe and Asia. Rabadan and others say four of the six pure swine genetic markers are North American.

"I don't think it's fair for someone to blame Mexico for this. You can't blame any country; you can't blame a person or an institution. The recombination of genes in the virus is something that happens naturally," Mexico's chief epidemiologist, Miguel Angel Lezana said Wednesday.

And while the U.S. government and WHO are dropping "swine flu" as the name, someone hasn't told their Webmasters.

On Thursday afternoon, the phrase "swine flu" was still in the Internet addresses for the WHO, Homeland Security and CDC pages on the disease and the question-and-answer page on the U.S. government's pandemic flu Web site.

___

Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in Atlanta and reporters Rita Beamish in San Mateo, Calif., and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.

(Can't wait for government healthcare!!!)

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