TampaYankee

IMO Juan is no big loss to NPR but a big gain for Fox. I knew of Juan 35 years ago as a talking head on weekly DC/PBS Poltics gabfests. Back then he was mediocre at best and hasn't improved one iota IMO. Thus no big loss for NPR. Others may differ in opinion. However, having a high profile black journalist on the Fox payroll permits Fox to continue the sham 'fair and balanced' now enriched with the melodrama of 'a black journalist censored by the liberal elite media'. It has worked out very well for Juan too, with that new Fox contract. Good for him. He is finally getting paid commensurate with the benefit he brings to Fox.

Sweden looks like a lot of fun.

I'll vote without much enthusiasm. I voted in every Presidential election since 1972 with the exception of 2000. Neither candidate was worth the effort, I thought mistakenly. I learned better within 2 short years. I don't recall ever missing an off-year election. There is no way I would vote Republican this year and after what they have done to the country in the last ten years and how they have put Party before Country, I can't imagine ever voting for them in the remainder of this lifetime. Ten years ago I would have never imagined I'd take that stance.

In fairness, I suspect that many other customers had a great time with Pierre. Not all of us are looking for the same experience. The best example I can give for that is that over the years very few dancers at Stock ever did anything for me other than bore me to death. Yet they were/are very popular with many many customers. Just a difference in desires and expectations. Now the waiters were a different issue -- some very hot guys.

Sure. In the interest of moving on I won't respond publicly to any further comments or questions about the topic including the above.

I'll be ready in a minute... uhnnnn, uhnnnnn, uhnnnnn.....I'm close... uhnnnn, uhnnnnn...

Where do you find the graphics you come up with? I don't expect secrets to be revealed. I just stand (or sit) in awe at your amazing contributions. Now that is my avatar.

Oz, some may say that you have learned how to play the system. I suspect differently. I suspect that you have bought the system. Your total past remunierations probably have tripped some trigger that caused you to be appointed a Member of the Board. The cheeseburger is a puzzle though.

He was employed by NPR as analyst (talking head) but he did not represent NPR as an intstution on Fox. NPR had pressured Fox to make sure there was no confusion. Many of these 'talking heads' work for more than one news outlet. Most dont care if their analyst is identified with outlet A while appearing on outlet B. Sort of free advertising. NPR did object to highlighting that connection on Fox appearances. Yes, it is true that he does have the right to his opinion and that it can get him fired. I had the same restrictions on my employment. If my actions or expressions ever cast a shadow on my employer it was grounds for dismissal. I'm sure NPR adopted the view that these remarks cast a shadow on his objectivity, real or apparent, that impaired his contributions to their broadcasts. You or others may disagree but it is their decision. Such happens not infrequently. Fox fired some talking heads for not toeing the line with sufficient ardor. Nothing new. One case invovled Eric Burns who used to host one of the Saturday shows about happendings in the press the previous week. He was dismissed without comment at contract renewal time. His transgression it seemed to me was that he tried to be too even handed. Neil Gabler the true liberal on the panel got the ax unceremoniously. A little time later another panelists on the show, GW professor Jane Alexander I believe her name was, was not renewed. She was the moderate sometimes-contrarion on the otherwise coservative panel. No one argued that Fox couldn't fire them for speaking their mind which did not fit into the mold Fox wanted for the show.

I suspected that you'd take meat anywhere you can get it. I hear LG has a beef stick that is right up your alley. :P

I share your enthusiasm for Pierre's porn career. He is much better suited for porn than for dancing based on my personal experiences with him. He was a hot twink but his head really wasn't there IMO, just the money. I think he has done well in porn and I wish him all the best with this and in general.

I appreciate your viewpoint and believe it has merit in many instances. However, I do feel it unacceptable that a public accusation that the site/admins support blackmail should go unaddressed in public. That just cannot be swept under the carpet for behind the scenes treatment IMO. The time to do that was before the public accusation was made but we were never informed of the concern.

Love him or hate him, he certainly expanded the interest of open porn. He took on the Post Office and Federal and States laws with regard to exposing pubic hair in OTC porn. He won too, not that he was the only soldier in that war. But he was a high profile soldier.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia NPR, formerly National Public Radio,[1][2] is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States of America.[3] Just like broadcast and cable TV and radio are influenced by advertisers, NPR is influenced by private funding sources. I suspect they have been threatened with loss of contributions over Juan at Fox for sometime. This no doubt was the straw that broke the camel's back. No he was on Fox in his paid role as an analyst. Fox was forbidden from representing Juan's NPR affiliation on Fox shows. Sure he is entitled, just like the Geico spokesman that voiced his thoughts about Fox and lost his job over it. Any program or business driven by advertisers/ratings or customers is subject to pressure from those sources. It is easier to replace a spokesman than big advertisers or lots of customers. He has no consitutional guarantee of keeping his job. The First Ammendment applies only to government restricting speech. Almost no one seems to appreciate that fine detail of the law.

I don't regret my response. I do regret that that onefiger raised the issue in the way he did but that wasn't my choice. I do regret that. There is no reason for anyone to expect a bracing retort unless they repeated trashtalk the site/admins and then piss on them in public without any prior voicing of concerns, which it turns out was based on false information. However, newcomers don't have insight in the site history. On the other hand, no one should believe that they can come here and repeatedly trashtalk with impunity the the site or members. Oz was born with the personality to handle 'problem' members. Me, I turn my cheek, repeatedly if necessary, until it goes one step too far. I then speak my mind, plainly. But the issue is more than that I believe. I remember the old days at HooBoys where he caught hell for his posts about escorts, travelling etc. It surprised me at the time and I discussed it with him. Eventually, he just withdrew from posting except for near-emergency issues like his latest misplaced laptop or hard-drive-crash impact on reviews. Some people just don't like the hall monitor in the play yard, much less entering into the play. Not all but some. My omnipresence here no doubt is offputting to some lurkers. Like it or not I represent an authority figure for reviews and posts. Some are not comfortable with authority figures around. Alernatively, Oz is the site travel agent with many great stories and experiences to share -- just a lighter presence, more fun and less threatening to some -- certainly to me. All attempts to grow the forums have met only with limited success -- much better but still limited. I don't know what else to do other than pare back the presence of the hall monitor figure. I have discussed with Oz tapering back my participation in hopes it would improve the comfort level for some lurkers. This was the motivation behind Oz's post above about not overreacting to or misinterpreting the admins participation. He would like to have his cake and eat it too -- that is my continued posts and lurkers not feeling intimidated. They are mutually exlusive propositions IMO. Townie, thanks for sharing your views and insights. They are much appreciated. We would also appreciate your other many reasons for this community not growing, here or privately. We always value member input.

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes By Jesse Drucker - Oct 21, 2010 6:00 AM ET Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. “It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.” See full horror story here: http://www.maleescortreview.com/forum/index.php?/topic/5510-google-tax-evasion-scheme-costs-us-billions/

Juan Williams FIRED: NPR Sacks Analyst Over Fox News Muslim Comments Huffington Post | Jack Mirkinson First Posted: 10-21-10 12:31 AM | Updated: 10-21-10 10:22 AM NPR announced late on Wednesday night that it has terminated the contract of longtime analyst Juan Williams over his comments on Fox News that, when he is on a plane with Muslims, "I get nervous." NPR's media reporter David Folkenflik broke the news on Twitter. Williams' comments came during a discussion with Bill O'Reilly on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor." O'Reilly asked Williams if he had been in the wrong during his now-infamous appearance on "The View" last week. (There, O'Reilly's statement that "Muslims killed us on 9/11" caused Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg to walk off the set in anger.) Williams replied that he thought O'Reilly had, in fact, been right. He continued: "I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." See more of the story at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/21/juan-williams-fired-npr_n_770901.html

Your tax code at work ballooning the deficit while the Repulicans continue their chorus of crying wolf.

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes By Jesse Drucker - Oct 21, 2010 6:00 AM ET Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda. Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. “It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.” The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent. Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The method takes advantage of Irish tax law to legally shuttle profits into and out of subsidiaries there, largely escaping the country’s 12.5 percent income tax. (See an interactive graphic on Google’s tax strategy here.) The earnings wind up in island havens that levy no corporate income taxes at all. Companies that use the Double Irish arrangement avoid taxes at home and abroad as the U.S. government struggles to close a projected $1.4 trillion budget gap and European Union countries face a collective projected deficit of 868 billion euros. Countless Companies Google, the third-largest U.S. technology company by market capitalization, hasn’t been accused of breaking tax laws. “Google’s practices are very similar to those at countless other global companies operating across a wide range of industries,” said Jane Penner, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View, California-based company. Penner declined to address the particulars of its tax strategies. Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, is preparing a structure similar to Google’s that will send earnings from Ireland to the Cayman Islands, according to the company’s filings in Ireland and the Caymans and to a person familiar with its plans. A spokesman for the Palo Alto, California-based company declined to comment. Transfer Pricing The tactics of Google and Facebook depend on “transfer pricing,” paper transactions among corporate subsidiaries that allow for allocating income to tax havens while attributing expenses to higher-tax countries. Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue, according to Kimberly A. Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. U.S. Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, and other politicians say the 35 percent U.S. statutory rate is too high relative to foreign countries. International income-shifting, which helped cut Google’s overall effective tax rate to 22.2 percent last year, shows one way that loopholes undermine that top U.S. rate. Two thousand U.S. companies paid a median effective cash rate of 28.3 percent in federal, state and foreign income taxes in a 2005 study by academics at the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina. The combined national-local statutory rate is 34.4 percent in France, 30.2 percent in Germany and 39.5 percent in Japan, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Double Irish As a strategy for limiting taxes, the Double Irish method is “very common at the moment, particularly with companies with intellectual property,” said Richard Murphy, director of U.K.- based Tax Research LLP. Murphy, who has worked on similar transactions, estimates that hundreds of multinationals use some version of the method. The high corporate tax rate in the U.S. motivates companies to move activities and related income to lower-tax countries, said Irving H. Plotkin, a senior managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s national tax practice in Boston. He delivered a presentation in Washington, D.C. this year titled “Transfer Pricing is Not a Four Letter Word.” “A company’s obligation to its shareholders is to try to minimize its taxes and all costs, but to do so legally,” Plotkin said in an interview. Boosting Earnings Google’s transfer pricing contributed to international tax benefits that boosted its earnings by 26 percent last year, company filings show. Based on a rough analysis, if the company paid taxes at the 35 percent rate on all its earnings, its share price might be reduced by about $100, said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida. He recommends buying Google stock, which closed yesterday at $607.98. The company, which tells employees “don’t be evil” in its code of conduct, has cut its effective tax rate abroad more than its peers in the technology sector: Apple Inc., the maker of the iPhone; Microsoft, the largest software company; International Business Machines Corp., the biggest computer-services provider; and Oracle Corp., the second-biggest software company. Those companies reported rates that ranged between 4.5 percent and 25.8 percent for 2007 through 2009. Google is “flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they’re perpetrating evil under our noses,” said Abraham J. Briloff, a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College in New York who has examined Google’s tax disclosures. “Who is it that paid for the underlying concept on which they built these billions of dollars of revenues?” Briloff said. “It was paid for by the United States citizenry.” Taxpayer Funding The U.S. National Science Foundation funded the mid-1990s research at Stanford University that helped lead to Google’s creation. Taxpayers also paid for a scholarship for the company’s cofounder, Sergey Brin, while he worked on that research. Google now has a stock market value of $194.2 billion. Google’s annual reports from 2007 to 2009 ascribe a cumulative $3.1 billion tax savings to the “foreign rate differential.” Such entries typically describe how much tax U.S. companies save from profits earned overseas. In February, the Obama administration proposed measures to curb shifting profits offshore, part of a package intended to raise $12 billion a year over the coming decade. While the key proposals largely haven’t advanced in Congress, the IRS said in April it would devote additional agents and lawyers to focus on five large transfer pricing arrangements. Arm’s Length Income shifting commonly begins when companies like Google sell or license the foreign rights to intellectual property developed in the U.S. to a subsidiary in a low-tax country. That means foreign profits based on the technology get attributed to the offshore unit, not the parent. Under U.S. tax rules, subsidiaries must pay “arm’s length” prices for the rights -- or the amount an unrelated company would. Because the payments contribute to taxable income, the parent company has an incentive to set them as low as possible. Cutting the foreign subsidiary’s expenses effectively shifts profits overseas. After three years of negotiations, Google received approval from the IRS in 2006 for its transfer pricing arrangement, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The IRS gave its consent in a secret pact known as an advanced pricing agreement. Google wouldn’t discuss the price set under the arrangement, which licensed the rights to its search and advertising technology and other intangible property for Europe, the Middle East and Africa to a unit called Google Ireland Holdings, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dublin Office That licensee in turn owns Google Ireland Limited, which employs almost 2,000 people in a silvery glass office building in central Dublin, a block from the city’s Grand Canal. The Dublin subsidiary sells advertising globally and was credited by Google with 88 percent of its $12.5 billion in non-U.S. sales in 2009. Allocating the revenue to Ireland helps Google avoid income taxes in the U.S., where most of its technology was developed. The arrangement also reduces the company’s liabilities in relatively high-tax European countries where many of its customers are located. The profits don’t stay with the Dublin subsidiary, which reported pretax income of less than 1 percent of sales in 2008, according to Irish records. That’s largely because it paid $5.4 billion in royalties to Google Ireland Holdings, which has its “effective centre of management” in Bermuda, according to company filings. Law Firm Directors This Bermuda-managed entity is owned by a pair of Google subsidiaries that list as their directors two attorneys and a manager at Conyers Dill & Pearman, a Hamilton, Bermuda law firm. Tax planners call such an arrangement a Double Irish because it relies on two Irish companies. One pays royalties to use intellectual property, generating expenses that reduce Irish taxable income. The second collects the royalties in a tax haven like Bermuda, avoiding Irish taxes. To steer clear of an Irish withholding tax, payments from Google’s Dublin unit don’t go directly to Bermuda. A brief detour to the Netherlands avoids that liability, because Irish tax law exempts certain royalties to companies in other EU- member nations. The fees first go to a Dutch unit, Google Netherlands Holdings B.V., which pays out about 99.8 percent of what it collects to the Bermuda entity, company filings show. The Amsterdam-based subsidiary lists no employees. The Dutch Sandwich Inserting the Netherlands stopover between two other units gives rise to the “Dutch Sandwich” nickname. “The sandwich leaves no tax behind to taste,” said Murphy of Tax Research LLP. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has also used a Double Irish structure, according to company filings overseas. Forest Laboratories Inc., maker of the antidepressant Lexapro, does as well, Bloomberg News reported in May. The New York-based drug manufacturer claims that most of its profits are earned overseas even though its sales are almost entirely in the U.S. Forest later disclosed that its transfer pricing was being audited by the IRS. Since the 1960s, Ireland has pursued a strategy of offering tax incentives to attract multinationals. A lesser-appreciated aspect of Ireland’s appeal is that it allows companies to shift income out of the country with minimal tax consequences, said Jim Stewart, a senior lecturer in finance at Trinity College’s school of business in Dublin. Getting Profits Out “You accumulate profits within Ireland, but then you get them out of the country relatively easily,” Stewart said. “And you do it by using Bermuda.” Eoin Dorgan, a spokesman for the Irish Department of Finance, declined to comment on Google’s strategies specifically. “Ireland always seeks to ensure that the profits charged in Ireland fully reflect the functions, assets and risks located here by multinational groups,” he said. Once Google’s non-U.S. profits hit Bermuda, they become difficult to track. The subsidiary managed there changed its legal form of organization in 2006 to become a so-called unlimited liability company. Under Irish rules, that means it’s not required to disclose such financial information as income statements or balance sheets. “Sticking an unlimited company in the group structure has become more common in Ireland, largely to prevent disclosure,” Stewart said. Deferred Indefinitely Technically, multinationals that shift profits overseas are deferring U.S. income taxes, not avoiding them permanently. The deferral lasts until companies decide to bring the earnings back to the U.S. In practice, they rarely repatriate significant portions, thus avoiding the taxes indefinitely, said Michelle Hanlon, an accounting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. U.S. policy makers, meanwhile, have taken halting steps to address concerns about transfer pricing. In 2009, the Treasury Department proposed levying taxes on certain payments between U.S. companies’ foreign subsidiaries. Treasury officials, who estimated the policy change would raise $86.5 billion in new revenue over the next decade, dropped it after Congress and Treasury were lobbied by companies, including manufacturing and media conglomerate General Electric Co., health-product maker Johnson & Johnson and coffee giant Starbucks Corp., according to federal disclosures compiled by the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics. Administration Concerned While the administration “remains concerned” about potential abuses, officials decided “to defer consideration of how to reform those rules until they can be studied more broadly,” said Sandra Salstrom, a Treasury spokeswoman. The White House still proposes to tax excessive profits of offshore subsidiaries as a curb on income shifting, she said. The rules for transfer pricing should be replaced with a system that allocates profits among countries the way most U.S. states with a corporate income tax do -- based on such aspects as sales or number of employees in each jurisdiction, said Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, director of the international tax program at the University of Michigan Law School. “The system is broken and I think it needs to be scrapped,” said Avi-Yonah, also a special counsel at law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington D.C. “Companies are getting away with murder.” See additional stories about corporate tax avoidance: To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Drucker in New York at jdrucker4@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net. See original article at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

If space were no problem along with a bit of literary license.. 'The Latest Dish -- Hot or Not'

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Temporarily Upheld By Appeals Court LISA LEFF | 10/20/10 10:46 PM | AP SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily granted the U.S. government's request for a freeze on a judge's order requiring the military to allow openly gay troops. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructed lawyers for the gay rights group that brought the lawsuit successfully challenging the "don't ask, don't tell" policy to file arguments in response by Monday. The judges would then decide whether to extend the temporary stay while it considers the government's appeal of U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips' ruling that the policy was unconstitutional. It was unclear what effect the temporary freeze would have on the Pentagon, which has already informed recruiters to accept openly gay recruits and has suspended discharge proceedings for gay service members. Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said "for the reasons stated in the government's submission, we believe a stay is appropriate." She declined to say whether the Defense Department would roll back its guidance to military lawyers and recruiters that they must abide by last week's injunction. It has been assumed, however, that the Pentagon would revert to its previous policy of "don't ask, don't tell" if a stay were to be granted throughout the appeals process. The White House referred questions to the Justice Department. Alisa Finelli, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, declined to comment Wednesday. President Barack Obama said last week that the Clinton-era law "will end on my watch" but added that "It has to be done in a way that is orderly, because we are involved in a war right now." He said he supports repeal of the policy, but only after careful review and an act of Congress. A lawyer for the Log Cabin Republicans said the group was disappointed, but called it a minor setback. The group, which brought its lawsuit in 2004, argues that forcing gays in uniform to remain silent about their personal lives violates their First Amendment rights and that the military's reluctance to end the policy was based on unfounded fears, not facts. "We hope that the 9th Circuit will recognize the inherent contradiction in the government's arguments for a longer stay in light of eight full days of non-enforcement with no 'enormous consequences,'" said Alexander Nicholson, a gay veteran who also was a plaintiff in the Log Cabin lawsuit. The 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" rule says gays may serve but only if they keep secret their sexual orientation. Government lawyers argue that striking down the policy and ordering the Pentagon to immediately allow openly gay service members could harm troop morale and unit cohesion when the military is fighting two wars. The brief order was signed by the three 9th Circuit judges hearing emergency motions this month: Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain and Stephen S. Trott, who were appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and William A. Fletcher, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. __ Associated Press writers Julie Watson in San Diego, and Anne Flaherty in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report. See original article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/dont-ask-dont-tell-tempor_n_770737.html

I don't know Oz, sometimes a day just turns to shit for no apparent reason.

I say "10 newest forum topics". Seems more 'normal' to me though less forum lingo. FWIW As for how you pronounce tomahto... it matters little as long as the vodka is decent and the celery erect with a good snap to it. Which brings up another subject. I love guys with erections that can be released under tension to slap against the lower abdomen with a resounding thud. Perfect working equipment. Stream of consciousness worked for James Joyce. Thought I'd give it a try.

It is impossible to eat 25 grams/day unless you are a cow. I know. Takes supplements. The only problem with supplements is that they taste like grass or wrose.

I used to be a card-carrying capitalist.I had stocks and bonds. I watched CNBC, Mad Money and Cavuto and his ilk, monitoring the market. I dont watch any of them anymore. It is a big scam with the big guys scamming the little guys and fat cats looking to stuff their already obscene coffers with more ill-begotten obscene profits. I still have stocks and bonds. I cannot unload them by contractual obligation. Where would I put the money if I did? I'm still a capitalist but not so zealous. I dont trust shills which means just about every talking head in the business world, Suze Orman excluded. I believe in small business. I believe in manufacturing like Ford and GM. I believe in making a fair profit by making and selling something of value or providing a valuable service at a fair price. I do not believe in business that gets by on cons or makes it's money on blatant gambling with high risk rollers using the money of others. I dont believe in business that makes its money through tax write-offs by moving jobs offshore. Just call me an old-fashioned capitalist.