In happier times, the firm had been celebrated as a harbinger of the future. The political connections it enjoyed were the fruit not only of well-placed contributions but of a self-imposed ideological mission: It was going to deliver cheap energy in amazing ways. Top executives had dismissed accounting irregularities. The normal rules, it was said, did not apply.
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Solyndracracy
Assploding hypocrisy. (NYP) — This one’s truly, uh. . . rich: Billionaire Warren Buffett says folks like him should have to pay more taxes — but it turns out his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t paid what it’s already owed for years. That’s right: As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson notes, the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002. “We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years. . . within the next 12 months,” the firm’s annual report says. It also cites outstanding tax issues for 2005 through 2009. Obvious question: If Buffett really thinks he and his “mega-rich friends” should pay higher taxes, why doesn’t his firm fork over what it already owes under current rates? Likely answer: He cares more about shilling for President Obama — who’s practically made socking “millionaires and billionaires” his re-election theme song — than about kicking in more himself. Buffett’s free to back Obama, of course. And if his firm wants to keep its tax bill low, well, that’s its right, too. But it would be nice if this “pro-tax-hike” tycoon were a bit more honest about it. Start, for example, with his grossly disingenuous recent claim that, as he wrote in The New York Times, he paid only 17 percent of his income last year to the government — even as many working stiffs who make far less than him coughed up higher percentages. Fact is, unlike most other folks, Warren Buffett gets most of his income from dividends and capital gains, which are nominally taxed at 15 percent. Keep reading…
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Obama-Loving Billionaire Warren Buffet’s Firm Hasn’t Been Paying Its Tax Bill For Years…
Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the sterling U.S. credit rating for the first time. The move came even though the Treasury Department said that it had found a math error in the firm’s calculations of deficit projections, according to a person familiar with the matter. S&P decided to lower the
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S&P Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating to AA+
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] Just short commentary on a bunch of random stories. First, we see that we have killed one of Qdaffy’s* sons . Good, may he roast in flames, but um, then I guess we have to kill Qdaffy, too, right? Otherwise there will be a terrorist reprisal, right? Boy it’s a good thing that Obama went into this war with the consent of the American people and of Congress as he himself said was constitutionally required. Oh that’s right, he didn’t. Sigh. Also allegedly we hit a school for disabled children and an orphanage . Um, color me skeptical. To hear these dictators talk all we hit is their orphanages, baby milk factories and so on. It’s terrible if it happened and we should regret our mistake, but I won’t buy it until it’s confirmed after the dictator is gone. ——————————— Fox News calls in an expert who says, yeah, the layering in the birth certificate is not a sign of forgery. I’m not an expert, but it sounds pretty plausible. (And to put in the usual disclaimer, I am not a birther. I believe Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president and woefully over his head.) ——————————— I agree with pretty much everything Eugene Volokh writes, here . He is talking about a case in Pennsylvania where a Muslim man dies and his will demands the division of some of his assets according to Sharia law. I don’t mean he divided it up himself according to his religious principles. I mean his will said the assets in question “should be divided according to Islamic Laws and Sharia.” So the court does it and gives twice as much to his sons as his daughters. Volokh argues that if the man wanted to divide it that way himself that would have been okay. Its sexist and wrong, but it’s his property and it’s his right. But on the other hand our courts should not be in the business of interpreting the “correct” meaning of a holy book, or the contents of a faith. And yeah, I pretty much agree with all of that. Still you should read the whole thing. ——————————— Meanwhile you might have heard that King and Spaulding, a law firm hired to represent the House of Representatives, withdrew from representation of the House in the DOMA litigation. Well, first Ed Whelan does a good job pointing out that this action was unethical under the Rules of Professional Conduct. Meaning they could actually get in ethical trouble over this. But for much more fun, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has decided to fire King and Spaulding over this. And actually his argument for doing so goes beyond tit-for-tat: [I]t is crucial for us to be able to trust and rely on the fact that our outside counsel will not desert Virginia due to pressure by an outside group or groups. Virginia seeks firms of commitment, courage, strength and toughness, and unfortunately, what the world has learned of King & Spalding, is that your firm utterly lacks those qualities. Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark. You can read the whole letter here , which is continually harsh. Cuccinelli points out, for instance, that the firm has no trouble representing terrorists, but apparently not supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act. Hey, King and Spaulding, did you know that the terrorists would like to see every gay person murdered? So if you drop everyone who is not perfectly politically correct on gay rights… And of course Professor Jacobson has more thoughts. ——————————— *Qdaffy is how I have chosen to spell the name of the dictator running Libya right now, because 1) it is mocking him and 2) it seems to be about as good a spelling as any. [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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Some Quick Takes
Good evening (it’s still Monday night for those of us in the west at least). Let’s start off tonight by remembering when Barack Obama and the democrats complained about so-called domestic spying under the Bush administration? Well, a team of organizations went after the FBI for watching possibly terrorist Islamic organizations. The FBI responded by saying they don’t need to already believe an organization is breaking the law in order to begin preliminary spying on that organization. Now I’ll be blunt: I think this IPS news service is bunk. But it makes me laugh to remember that using modern technology to gather information about terrorists was supposedly a horrible thing when George Bush did it, but now that Barack Obama is using actual live, in-person spies you have to go to radical fringe groups to find out it’s even happening and see the progressive outrage. Wouldn’t it be easier, safer, and more respectful of our rights just to tap the phones of foreign terrorists, than to send people into houses of worship on false pretenses? Moving on to more actions that would be screamed out as a gross disrespect of the Bill of Rights if Bush did it, but since Obama’s doing it you don’t hear a word from the left: the FTC wants to control speech online . According to Reason, we have to hope that the FTC will show forbearance and not use the power it’s claiming to its fullest extent. Hmm, where have we heard that before? In a great disappointment to some, iOS jailbreaks have been newly affirmed to be legal under the DMCA, but the leading iOS jailbreak developers are choosing not to break version 4.0.2 , essentially allowing Apple’s new fixes to win out, and give Apple the control over the platform the firm seeks. Just another case of having the right to do something, but without the something being the right thing to do. One last item tonight: Facebook’s already been under a great deal of pressure and criticism for failing to respect the community, but the firm is yet deciding to go after an organization of teachers to shut it down , siccing a team of corporate lawyers after them, rather than find some benevolent way to fix it while looking like the good guys. Apparently Facebook thinks they can do what they want with your data and that they need to own the word book despite its long history in the English language. I can’t conceive of how this is the right move when Google is surely going to make another run at promoting Google Buzz when possible.
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Tech at Night: FBI, Facebook, FTC, Free Speech, Apple
