Many Americans are working well past the age of retirement. Dr. Robert Butler, founding director of the National Institute on Aging and CEO of the International Longevity Center, talks about why people choose to keep working. Butler says work gives older people’s lives meaning, control and an income.
Dean’s Madison Visit
Moving into his speech, Dean talked about his work trying to build the Democratic Party across the country, noting a stop in Mississippi. He said that the Dems need to fight in all states, particularly in the Mississippis and Kansases, not just in the Wisconsins and Michigans.
An early theme was fiscal responsibility, with Dean stating that the Democratic platform “looks like a 1970s Republican Party platform” with regards to balanced budgets. He emphatically stated one of his regular points – “you can’t trust a Republican with your money” – repeating that they “borrow and spend” and “borrow and waste.”
Tax law Lobbying: A Powerful Look at the Details
On Monday, Accenture lobbyists Richard Grafmeyer and John Talisman met top tax counsels for Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, and Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Accenture lobbyists spoke yesterday with Montana Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Finance panel. The two have also met with aides to Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, Republican of California.
Mr. Grafmeyer, who once worked as a top Republican tax counsel on Capitol Hill, and Mr. Talisman, a former senior Democratic tax advisor at the Treasury, have met success: All but Mr. Rangel have agreed to include new language for Accenture in the technical-corrections bill that could be introduced by week’s end. “Clearly, this is not considered fair…in a time of war for people to be looking to avoid taxes,” Mr. Rangel said. Mr. Rangel and his staff have refused to participate in discussions on the provision.
Once introduced, the technical-corrections bill is expected to sail through Congress. That would represent a victory for a company that was portrayed as a corporate bad-boy on Capitol Hill as recently as last year.
I wonder who, if anyone speaks for the taxpayers in these closed door meetings! Mullins did an excellent job digging up the details on this.
Consumer Directed Health Care Eclipsing Managed Care?
Managed care, whatever its prospects for running Medicare better, is facing gradual eclipse in the private sector by the new strategy of consumer-directed health care, based on tax-free health savings accounts, enacted in the same 2003 Bush-promoted law that gave us giant subsidies for the managed-care business. In a new report, McKinsey likens the arrival of HSAs to the creation of 401(k)s in the 1980s, an opportunity that largely bypassed traditional banks and pension managers and was captured by mutual fund firms like Fidelity and Vanguard.
Secret History of IRS Criminal Investigations Published
Via TaxProf: The Memory Hole; 75 Years of IRS Criminal Investigation History, 1919-1994 (PDF)
Madison’s Free Weekly Circulation Analysis
Kristian Knutson pens an interesting look at the local newspaper rackspace wars.
Tufte in Madison
Presenting Data and Information: A One-Day Course Taught by Edward Tufte is in Madison August 8, 2005 ($320/person):
- “One visionary day….the insights of this class lead to new levels of understanding both for creators and viewers of visual displays.” WIRED
- “The Leonardo da Vinci of data.” THE NEW YORK TIMES
- The Fee includes Tufte’s three books: Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and the 15″ x 22″ Napoleon’s March poster
I attended his course in Chicago last year. Highly recommended. More on Edward Tufte.
Recent US System Tax Articles
The ongoing mess that is our tax code (the third link is fascinating from a taxpayer perspective):
- Lynnley Browning:
In late 1999, the Keeters put $188 million into an account at Deutsche Bank. The money, used in tandem with a $500 million loan from the bank, would be used to trade derivatives and options. The Keeters say they thought that they would make an unspecified return on their investment, pay back the loan, as well as generate $188 million in tax savings that could then be legitimately used to offset other gains.
But family members said that they discovered their shelter was not legal only when the I.R.S. began auditing some of their federal tax returns – prepared by KPMG, with the Blips deductions written in – for 2000 and 2001. - Tanina Rostain:
From the late 1990s into the next decade, KPMG devoted significant resources to developing and mass marketing hundreds of abusive tax shelters. These products were designed to enable their purchasers – typically high wealth individuals and Fortune 500 companies – to avoid paying taxes on the huge financial gains they enjoyed during the stock market boom. 135K PDF
- Louise Story:
“The tax court is seen as a place that a taxpayer ought to be able to go and get a fair shake, and the secrecy here, and the outcome in these cases, does raise the question as to whether they’re getting a fair shake,” said Alan B. Morrison, a senior lecturer at Stanford Law School, who wrote a supporting brief for the three taxpayers in the Supreme Court case.
The court’s secrecy, “confirmed now by a major change in a decision, is a big deal, and it’s not right,” he said.
One of Mr. Kanter’s lawyers, Richard H. Pildes, a professor at NYU School of Law, said the case reminded him of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the never-ending lawsuit in Charles Dickens’s novel “Bleak House.”
Whole Foods Marketing Strategy
But Whole Foods Market Inc. doesn’t pay for product placements or mentions on television shows. It has managed to make its brand name synonymous with healthy living, and grow its sales at a double-digit clip, while spending little on traditional advertising and marketing.
Consumers don’t see Whole Foods ads in their local papers, during daytime television shows or even in magazines.
While other food retailers spend heavily to draw shoppers, Whole Foods counts on its brand, its reputation and targeted community efforts to bring in customers.
Falling Behind in Broadband: Orwell’s FCC
Americans pay more for less broadband service than citizens of any other industrial country, and our take-up rate for fast Internet service is approaching Third World levels.
The reason? Lack of competition. Phone and cable networks, created under government control, have been made the private monopolies of corporate interests whose lobbyists dominate all capitals against the public interest.
David Isenberg has more.