Massive Offshore Tax Giveaway

As mentioned here, I, too, would like the 5.25% tax rate that our good Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl supported (to repatriate foreign profits via a one year tax break). Timothy Aeppel looks at the results:

But it’s far from clear whether the spending has spurred the job growth that backers of the break touted.
A law signed by President Bush shortly before the 2004 election allows companies to transfer profit from overseas operations back to the U.S. this year at a special low tax rate of 5.25%. Businesses often keep such funds outside the country in part to avoid paying taxes in the U.S., where the effective rate on repatriated profit for many companies is normally closer to 25%. Backers said the measure would provide an incentive to companies to invest those funds in U.S. operations.
Most companies using the break have offered only broad outlines for how they intend to use their windfall. For the most part, they say they are using the bulk of the money for tasks such as paying down debt and meeting payrolls. Direct job creation rarely appears on the list.
Some companies are even bringing home piles of cash while continuing to downsize. Colgate-Palmolive Co., of New York, said in July that it planned to repatriate $800 million, at a time when the company also is pursuing plans to shut a third of its factories and eliminate roughly 12% of its work force, or 4,450 people, over four years.

Oil Shale: Back to the Future

Living in Denver during the mid 1980’s, I learned quite a bit about that era’s oil shale collapse. Paul Foy takes a look at the growing interest in this potential 1 trillion barrel reserve (4X Saudi Arabia’s holdings):

Shell believes it can make its technique economical as long as crude oil stays above $30 a barrel, but it is five years away from proving the technology or deciding whether to build a commercial-scale operation, said Terry O’Connor, a company vice president for external and regulatory affairs.
Outside Vernal, Utah, officials with Oil-Tech Inc. say they have perfected an older technology of baking oil from shale in a furnace and wants government approval to mine 1,600 acres of state land plus access to 30,000 tons of shale left outside an abandoned mine on federal land.

Your DNA or Else! (Feingold & Kohl are on this Senate Comittee)

Declan McCullagh:

The Violence Against Women Act may be about to do violence to Americans’ right to privacy.
A U.S. Senate committee (Judiciary, which includes both Wisconsin Senators: Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl – contact them on this issue!) has adopted an amendment to the VAWA legislation that would add the DNA of anyone detained by the cops to a federal DNA database called “CODIS.”
Note that it doesn’t require that you’re convicted of a crime or even formally arrested on suspicion of committing one. Mere detention — might a routine traffic stop eventually qualify? — will be sufficient for CODISification. (Current law only authorizes blood or saliva swabs and entry into CODIS for people convicted of a crime.)

Senator Kohl is up for re-election in 2006. I think Kathleen Falk would make an excellent candidate!

Anthropologists Help Explain Consumer Behavior

:

Instead of poking around tribal villages in Papua New Guinea or Amazonian rain forests, cultural anthropologists are invading suburbs and cities to find out how people use products while eating meals, working in the office, and even while driving. “We live in a culture where knowing your customers one by one as individuals is more important than ever before,” said Ross Goldstein, a researcher with the BRS Group. “Large mass demographic trends are no longer as predictive as they once were because the marketplace is too diversified.”