Category: Politics

2 Shipbuilders Get Big Breaks in New Tax Bill

Posted on by

As always, the rest of us get to pay. Evidently our senators, Russ Feingold (Yes) and Herb Kohl (“Present”) support these very narrow non populist measures. Edmund Andrews:

Under the bill, Navy shipbuilders would be allowed to once again defer paying most federal income taxes on a project until the contract was completed. Because it takes about five years to build an aircraft carrier and three years to build a destroyer, the shipyards would be able to delay their tax bills for years, allowing more opportunity to offset taxes against future losses.
….
“This provision takes dramatic steps to remedy the inequity of how naval shipbuilders pay their taxes,” Ms. Snowe said in a statement last week, just after House and Senate negotiators agreed to include the provision in a broader bill that would shower $140 billion in tax cuts across almost every segment of industry.
But critics said the provision would not create jobs, the stated intention of the tax bill, because employment at naval shipyards is determined almost entirely by federal spending on ships and submarines rather than by tax incentives.
“We’re not going to buy any more war boats if we give them a tax incentive,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal research group here that has long scrutinized corporate tax practices. “We’re going to buy more boats if the government decides we need more boats.”

Business School Professors “Pen” a note on the Economy to President Bush

Posted on by

An Open Letter to the President
These folks raise some useful points. The problem is not only with Bush. Interestingly, last week, Russ Feingold voted FOR one of the biggest tax giveaways…. (Kohl voted present).
The tax system is a complete mess and ripe for reform. Thinking of a solution, go read Mitch Kapor’s recent piece on our current political situation.

Power to the “Wired” People – Mitch Kapor

Posted on by

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a principal in OSAF (Open Source Applications Foundation) has written a piece on our current political process:

Our nation is founded on the principle of self-government — a government “of, by, and for the people” in the words of Abraham Lincoln — but we know in our gut that this ideal is in such peril today that we have to ask whether self-government is even a meaningful concept in 2004 as it was to the Greeks who invented democracy 2,500 years ago.
Greek and Roman traditions inspired the Founding Fathers when they framed the Constitution and brought democracy into the modern world. But if you could reanimate Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton in present-day Washington, they would be horrified. They would find a system both corrupt and dysfunctional, one that has 13 lobbyists for every representative, in which money buys undue influence and the real deals are made out of sight of the American public.
Now, it’s easy to look at this process and blame the politicians. They are certainly culpable. But let’s look at the other end of the Washington purse strings. Who buys the politicians? It’s the corporations who would rather game the system than create something of value in a competitive marketplace.

Famed Aerospace Designer Burt Rutan on the Government’s Role in Technology Development

Posted on by


Leonard David:

?And we?re sitting there amazed throughout the 1960s. We were amazed because our country was going from Walt Disney and von Braun talking about it?all the way to a plan to land a man on the Moon?Wow!?
The right to dream
But as a kid back then, Rutan continued, the right to dream of going to the Moon or into space was reserved for only ?professional astronauts? ? an enormously dangerous and expensive undertaking.
Over the decades, Rutan said, despite the promise of the Space Shuttle to lower costs of getting to space, a kid?s hope of personal access to space in their lifetime remained in limbo.
?Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It?s more expensive?not less?a horrible mistake,? Rutan said. ?They knew it right away. And they?ve spent billions?arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake?trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is?it?s the government trying to do it.?

I believe Rutan is correct. Government should generally provide incentives for private industry to address problems that we as a society believe need attention. Examples include: broadband (true 2 way), education, energy and space exploration.

Democratic Plan to Reduce Property Taxes

Posted on by

Steven Walters:

The Assembly’s Democratic leader says he will offer a plan next year to exempt the first $100,000 of an owner-occupied home’s value from property taxes for public schools.
The change would lower property taxes on the average home by about $950 a year, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Rep. James Kreuser (D-Kenosha) said his plan to amend the Wisconsin Constitution could not become law until 2007, at the earliest.
Still, he said, it would be better than Republicans’ plans to limit property tax bills for the next three years, while they try to rewrite the constitution to control state and local government spending.

Meanwhile, Avrum Lank says that a Tax Foundation study ranks Wisconsin 41st out of 50 states in business tax climate.

Did then AG Jim Doyle Leave $ on the table in the Microsoft Case?

Posted on by

Wisconsin participated with a number of states in the Microsoft anti-trust trial. The state DOJ, under then Attorney General and now Governor Jim Doyle settled the case.
Robert X. Cringely wonders if Wisconsin and other states left money on the table, given the the latest court documents that were unsealed by Judge Frederick Motz in Burst.com’s suit against Microsoft.
John Lettice:

These files paint a picture of Microsoft document handling procedures which destroyed the very emails that were likely to be most relevant to several antitrust actions, Burst’s included. According to Burst’s lawyers Microsoft’s status as “a defendant in major antitrust cases since at least 1995” means that it has a duty to preserve potentially relevant evidence. But “Microsoft adopted policies that, to put it mildly, encouraged document destruction from 1995 forward.”