Democrats simply hate big oil and are oblivious to the windfall profits of their pals in tech which dwarf those of the oil industry

 

For all you haters out there, here are the top 10 LGBT-friendly companies

Google

Microsoft

H E B

Lululemon

Deloitte

Bath & Body Works

Progressive Insurance

IBM

Walt Disney Co.

Apple

 

Story. 

He's making a list, checking it twice . . .

I'll bet it didn't taste very good after that

Bill Gates drove at high speed through the dessert.

The Muppets' version of Luther's Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (January 1543)

Christina Warren of Microsoft mistaken for a white person

Vox details the Hillary triple players who didn't just lobby or donate to her foundation, but also enriched her and Bill personally

Here:

The latest episode in the Clinton money saga is different than the others because it involves the clear, direct personal enrichment of Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, by people who have a lot of money at stake in the outcome of government decisions. ... Together, Hillary and Bill Clinton cleared $25 million on the lecture circuit over the last 16 months, according to a Hillary Clinton's personal financial disclosure required of presidential candidates. ... Corning's in good company in padding the Clinton family bank account after lobbying the State Department and donating to the foundation. Qualcomm and salesforce.com did that, too. ... And Microsoft, the American Institute of Architects, AT&T, SAP America, Oracle and Telefonica all paid Bill Clinton six-figure sums to speak as Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork for her presidential campaign. And that list, which includes Clinton Foundation donors, is hardly the end of it. There's a solid set of companies and associations that had nothing to do with the foundation but lobbied State while Clinton was there and then paid for her to speak to them. Xerox, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in addition to Corning, all lobbied Clinton's department on trade matters and then invited her to earn an easy check.

Privatizing The US Postal Service Is A Bad Idea On Mail Fraud And Privacy Grounds

Michael Hiltzik for The LA Times does a pretty good job of presenting the reasons why we shouldn't privatize the US Postal Service, but unfortunately misses an important one: mail fraud statutes come in real handy for felony convictions and long prison sentences for some of society's worst actors.

He draws this comparison on privacy:

Law enforcement can't open your mail without a judge's say-so, and any private individual who tries could face a long sojourn as an involuntary guest of the feds.

But laws governing the sanctity of your email are in their infancy. Actually, that's a gross overstatement: They're positively fetal. Government agencies may not need any warrant at all to read some of your emails. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and anyone else whose system carries your email can read your messages at whim, with no consequences.

Read his full argument here.

Corporate Cash Reaches New Record Yet Corporate Borrowing is at Staggering Levels

Corporate cash reached a new record of $1.9 trillion in Q1 according to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds report. The figure is referenced in discussions here and here, among other places.

But what rarely seems to get mentioned in these sorts of discussions is the debt side of the equation involving all this corporate cash. To cite the growth in cash as evidence that corporations don't need a tax cut and aren't investing simply misses the larger reality which helps explain the phenomenon.

John Carney here points out among many other important considerations that corporations are behaving out of fear just like individuals had when they increased their savings in the wake of the recent financial crisis. Many businesses experienced first hand just how difficult times can be without sufficient liquidity in a situation where no one is lending. Increasing cash should be viewed in part as insuring against a repetition of a similar lending lock up in future. 

Other more extenuating circumstances should also be considered when evaluating the issue of corporate cash. One is Federal Reserve induced low interest rates.

David Zeiler calls attention here to the fact that the current low cost of borrowing is too attractive for corporations not to lock in before QEII ends and the cost of borrowing inevitably rises:

The amount of debt companies have issued this year is staggering. As of May 18, companies with investment-grade ratings had issued $392 billion of bonds, an increase of 30% over the same period last year.

Another consideration is related also to formal government policy, namely that much corporate cash may simply be too unattractive to use for tax reasons:

"Many tech companies have looked to raise capital in the [U.S. debt] market over the past year, for a multiple of reasons, including acquisitions, the maturing of businesses and the inability to tap offshore cash without tax consequences," Keith Harman, a managing director in debt capital markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch told Reuters.

The issue of offshore cash is a significant one. For many companies, offshore money accounts for the bulk of their cash. About 46% of Google's cash is overseas; 90% of Cisco's and virtually all of Microsoft's.

Because of a reluctance to pay the 35% U.S. corporate tax on that money, that cash remains offshore and unavailable for many uses, such as stock buybacks and infrastructure investment. (Microsoft used some of its offshore cash to buy Luxembourg-based Skype earlier this month.)

This suggests that repatriating corporate cash should be a fundamental goal of tax reform in the US. That would mean making it more attractive to keep it here by reducing corporate tax rates.

Come to think of it, why stop there? Why not patriate everyone's cash in the world to America as a matter of formal government policy?

The more cash, the better.