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Rand Paul on a rant

May 23, 2013

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations summoned Apple’s CEO to Washington, basically because Apple minimized its US tax obligations in ways that are legal under the US’ overly complex corporate tax code. It struck me as a fairly transparent bit of grand-standing; or what you should expect from the Congress, in other words.

Senate Subcommittee Accuses Apple of Tax Gimmicks

Apple avoids billions in U.S. taxes through creative, unique tax structures, and even negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2% with the Irish government, according to a report released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ahead of its Tuesday hearing featuring CEO Tim Cook.

Rand Paul took his colleagues to task for their investigation and rightly so.

Posted in Fear your government, US government | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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Nothing new under the sun

May 16, 2013
Update:Via Carpe Diem, I came across this image which fits here quite well. Leno-on-bad-old-days

Posted in Fear your government, US government | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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The 50 to 1 project

May 5, 2013

Here’s an interesting project at indiegogo to document "the true cost of ‘action’ on climate change" using the IPCC’s own figures.

Topher has raised about 20% of his $130,000 goal with 23 days left.

This project is being administered by the Lord Monckton Foundation (that web site appears to have been launched very recently). Lord Monckton, of course, is the self-described “high priest” of climate skepticism (PDF).

I think this is a good idea and is way over due. It’s easy to wish for everything when you never count the cost of anything.

Tip o’ the hat to sailor Jeff

Posted in AGW | Leave a Comment »

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Unpopular people

May 5, 2013

This is another video by the Australian who goes by Topher. It’s from his ‘Forbidden History’ series and talks about the costs and benefits of freedom of speech – particulary in Australia.

Anyone remember Semmelweis?

In February, I posted another clip from that series which was about taxes.

Posted in Whys & wherefores | Leave a Comment »

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What he said (2)

May 2, 2013

I lifted this short post from the always-worth-reading Coyote Blog.

Can’t Anyone be Consistent?

I am just floored that Conservatives, who very very recently argued that the act of one bad guy at Newtown should not be used to limit the rights of tens of millions of legal gun owners, are now arguing that the acts of two bad guys (Tsarnaev’s) SHOULD be used to limit the rights of tens of millions of peaceful immigrants.

Posted in US politics, Whys & wherefores | Leave a Comment »

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Probity for thee, but not for me

April 30, 2013

News from Techdirt:

Congress Quickly And Quietly Rolls Back Insider Trading Rules For Itself

In November of 2011, the TV show 60 Minutes did a big expose on insider trading within Congress. While everyone else is subject to basic insider trading rules, it turned out that members of Congress were exempt from the rules. [...] Of course, after that report came out and got lots of attention, Congress had to act, and within months they had passed the STOCK Act with overwhelming support in Congress to make insider trading laws that apply to everyone else finally apply to Congress and Congressional staffers as well. [...]

Of course, here we are in 2013 and, lo and behold, it is no longer an election year. And apparently some of the details of the ban on insider trading were beginning to chafe Congressional staffers, who found it hard to pad their income with some friendly trades on insider knowledge.

So… with very little fanfare, Congress quietly rolled back a big part of the law late last week. [...]

Because the best way to rebuild trust in Congress, apparently, is to roll back the fact that people there need to obey the same laws as everyone else. That won’t lead the public to think that Congress is corrupt. No, not at all.

Posted in US government | Leave a Comment »

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Sharing the awesome

April 27, 2013

Last fall I bought a new phone to check out Republic Wireless which was doing its beta roll out at the time. Since then, Republic has gone into full production mode and we’ve moved all the phones in our family to Republic.

Why? Well, because…

republic-wireless

The deal Republic offers is commitment-free service which includes all the voice, text and data you want to use. Pretty awesome — it was just the deal I’d been looking for the last couple of years. We reduced our household cellular bill by 50% when we switched to Republic plus we ended up with more services on all the phones.

The only downside to Republic’s deal is that you can only get the service on phones you buy from them. Those phones are Motorola Defy XTs, which are fully-featured Android smartphones. They’ve got good specs and they work great. I haven’t found an Android app that I can’t run on the Defy. But the Defy XT only comes in one size and it doesn’t have all the bells & whistles of a Samsung Galaxy S4 or an iPhone 5.

If you like the idea of full phone service at a great price with no contractual commitment (and you can live without the latest bells & whistles) then Republic’s deal can’t be beat.

Republic is offering incentives for new customer referrals. People I refer get a $19 credit – and so do I.

Check it out.

republic-wireless-2

(For more info about how Republic’s service works, here’s their What’s the catch? page.)

Posted in Administrivia | Leave a Comment »

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