If you use circular reasoning, everything is easy to explain. However,if you do not accept the premise that, e.g Schniederman and a career DOJ prosecutor who was entrusted with the DOMA case are stupid weak people, easily suborned by baubles or that the Administration is willing to invest enormous energy in pretending to do something (for what goal, nobody knows), then it seems like gibberish.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/01/schneiderman-on-the-mortgage-industry-investigation.html?u tm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

My data for the effective tax rate was the Obama administration.

The tax haven part of the tax dodge has nothing to do with "outsourcing US jobs overseas". Its simply a financial manipulation where the US company establishes a subsidiary in a tax haven. The tax haven subsidiary raises money. The US corporation borrows that money from its own subsidiary. It then pays interest to the tax haven subsidiary on the loan, which is a pre-tax expense, and the income received by the tax haven subsidiary at or close to tax free.

Sure its a tax dodge, but it is the same tax dodge whether the project that is financed is located in the US or overseas. Indeed, if you closed the financial manipulation tax haven loophole, but left the credit in place for a place where the company engage in substantial value added, that's when the tax credit on the activity taking place overseas would begin to have a substantial differential impact.

And the fiscal impact of the changes proposed again this year is supposed to be $190b over ten years.

US corporate tax receipts have dropped from 4% of GDP in the 60's to under 2.5% of GDP in this last decade. $19b/year is only around 0.1% to 0.2% of a $14T~$19T economy.

Meanwhile, while the policy of "cutting tax credits for US companies that ship American jobs overseas" is in the stump speech, with zero chance of being supported by the 60 Senator supermajority required under the present gross abuse of the filibuster, three more aggressively neoliberal "free trade" agreements for unfettered corporate wealth transfers across national borders have been passed into law with the President actively lobbying for them.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

But the location of a holding company has very little connection with the location of employment.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

I'm making the argument that we're long past the border when a lot more needs to be done. Now is the time for an unfathomable amount to be done, and he has the support of the majority of the US to do it.

No one is claiming he hasn't also made some small but necessary steps. I don't know if the mercury standards have any teeth or not, perhaps it will make some difference, i don't know.

But he hasn't stopped coal leases, he hasn't stopped mountain top removal, and the EPA still has not teeth.

And of course windpower was a recipient of the renewable portion of the stimulus, which helped the industry from completely stopping after 2009, when it only dropped 50% in new capacity, from 10 gigs to 5+ gigs. That windpower in the US returned to 9 gigs this year is only because the industry cut margins to zero or minus. That means not just Vestas, but GE and Siemens as well as the second tier companies.

You may well wish to find strength in that Obama has done some things, which he has. But that's in the context you might not be seeing the intensity of the problem.

And that windpower in the US was finally reestablished under Bush, first in Texas and then in the nation. Bush may be an unpunished war criminal (i won't get into Obama's decision not to resurrect the rule of law), but no renewable policies were effected by Obama any stronger than occurred under the oil president.

and the Gulf disaster changed things how?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

... under a Democratic House of Representatives: it would not pass today's House. Much of the original authorization of the investment in green energy by the DOD took place at the same time.

The mercury standards are a regulatory action, and entirely compatible with drill baby drill.

Its considering the power structure and how change could be accomplished that reveals that the "all of the above" strategy sounds far more impressive than it is in the reality of today's Congress.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

Alinsky had no patience for the New Left and would have had no patience for the magic pony progressives.

America isn't Russia in 1917 or China in 1946, and any violent head-on collision with the power structure will only ensure the mass suicide of the left and the probable triumph of domestic fascism. So you're not going to get instant nirvana -- or any nirvana, for that matter -- and you've got to ask yourself, "Short of that, what the hell can I do?" The only answer is to build up local power bases that can merge into a national power movement that will ultimately realize your goals. That takes time and hard work and all the tedium connected with hard work, which turns off a lot of today's rhetorical radicals

Saul Alinsky.

I don't think he ever sold himself as a savior and don't think anyone had the right to imagine he would be a savior in any case. But that's not what annoys me. What annoys me is (a)  the consistent derision of real accomplishment by people who are privileged enough not to have needed that accomplishment and (b) the advocacy of a kind of light weight cynicism as an evasion of political responsibility. For the first, solipsitic well off American "leftists" may not care that tomato pickers are getting  a few pennies more a pound for their work, but that's a poor reflection on their moral compass. Same goes for many other Obama administration accomplishments - which may not add up to a magic wonderland demanded by those who wanted to believe in the savior but actually help real human beings.  In particular, I have no respect for the "civil libertarians" who do not seem to care that for the first time in a very long time, the US government is acting to protect people who have been the victims of police and jail brutality.

For the second, deriding accomplishments of an incremental process is morally acceptable, at least to me, only from those who have some alternative to propose. The argument that it's all a fake and hopeless is an argument for the success of the far right.