1) Overseas Tax Concessions
"Tax arrangements offered Apple in 1991 and 2007 were illegal, allowing the Cupertino, California firm to pay annual tax rates of 0.005% to 1% on its European profits from 2003 to 2014." Those rates are much lower than Ireland's standard corporation tax rate -- already the second lowest in the European Union at 12.5%. [1]
"American companies have an estimated $2.4 trillion stashed overseas -- in principle, American and European regulators agree on the need to squash country-specific tax loopholes and provide multinationals clearer rules." "Even as big firms have stowed cash abroad, many have borrowed money in the U.S. debt markets at low interest rates. Unfortunately most use that debt to fund share buybacks that enrich mainly the wealthiest Americans, rather than invest in job- and growth-creating research and development." [2]
2) Corporate Profits and Taxes
Since 1952, corporate profits as a share of the economy have risen from 5.5% to 8.5%, while corporate tax revenues have dropped from 5.9% to 1.9%. Deferral of taxes paid on profits earned abroad will cost the U.S. Treasury $1.3 trillion over 10 years, according to the Americans for Tax Fairness and the EPI Chartbook.
Priority should be given to closing the gaping deferral loophole.
3) ATF at Distinct Disadvantage
"More than 10 million guns are made in the United States every year, and another 5 million are imported. That's on top of the estimated 350 million already in Americans' hands." "About 370,000 times a year, law enforcement agencies ask the ATF to help them track down the origins of a gun that's been trafficked or used in a crime." Furthermore, the ATF estimates that about 50,000 firearms are illegally smuggled across state lines ever line. Then consider that there are only 2,600 ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] special agents. [3]
Currently, the ATF is only allowed to provide specific trace information when a local law enforcement agency asks for it, and only for that particular jurisdiction. The majority of weapons used in crimes comes from a tiny percentage of the nation's gun dealers. [4]
4) For-Profits Educational Crash
In August 2016, citing failure of financial responsibility and federal fraud charges, the Department of Education tightened its oversight of ITT by requiring the school to boost its cash reserves. That ultimately led to its shuttering.
For-profit schools are facing a reckoning after years of meteoric growth. In 2009, for example, for-profit schools spent 17% of their budgets on instruction and 42% on marketing or investor payouts. Although for-profit schools are still a small part of the overall educational sector, from 2010 to 2012 they took more than a quarter of federal aid subsidies and represented nearly half of all defaults. [5]
5) North Korea's Testing and Hacking
In 2016 alone, North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and 20 missile tests, and analysts believe the nation has the ability and atomic material to test another nuke at any moment.
Yu Dong-Yeol,the director of the Korea Institute of Liberal Democracy in Seoul, told a defense security conference on July 7 that Pyongyang runs 6,800 professional hackers, engaged in fraud and blackmail; also, an online gambling ring generates annual revenue of $860 million. [6]
6) Latinos Drive U.S. Economic Growth
Although it seems hard to believe, the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative says that Latinos have launched small businesses at a pace more than 60 times that of their non-Latino counterparts. Also, according to the Stanford study, Latino-owned businesses employed 2.5 million workers, a number that has likely grown since the study. [7]
According to a 2016 Pew Research poll, 59% of Americans say immigrants strengthen the country, while 33% say immigrants are a burden. These findings diverge along partisan lines, with 78% of Democrats saying they strengthen the nation and just 35% of Republicans agreeing.
ADDENDUMS:
*In a letter to the September 5, 2016 The New Yorker, Sidney Brown and Vincent Iacojins say they were participants in the documentation of cases at Guantanamo and they can confirm that the psychological effects of indefinite detention are harmful and lasting.
*President Obama has now put more acreage under protection than any other president, though the bulk of it is underwater. "In the face of climate change and sea-level rise, even creatures living in the planet's newest, largest aqueous preserve may not be preserved; as conditions shift, they may be forced to swim and slither beyond the borders." [8]
*"Clinton's flaws aren't just smaller than Trump's, they are not on the same scale. It's as if the American Presidency might suffer the same fate as the NASA orbiter that was lost because someone mixed up metric and non-metric measurements." Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy found that last year Hillary Clinton received a far higher proportion of negative coverage than any other candidate. [9]
Footnotes
[1] Rana Feroghar, "Apple's $14.5 billion tax spot ..." Time, September 12-19, 2016.
[2]Ibid.
[3] Bryan Schatz, "Outgunned and Outmanned," Mother Jones, September/October 2016.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Rana Feroghar, "What comers after for-profit colleges ..." Time, September 26, 2016.
[6] Charlie Campbell, "Kim's Last Laugh," Time, September 26, 2016.
[7] Tessa Berenson, "How Latinos Drive America's Economic Growth," Time, September 26, 2016.
[8] Elizabeth Kolbert, "Into the Wild," The New Yorker, September 12, 2016.
[9] Amy Davidson, "Upholding Standards," The New Yorker, September 19, 2016.
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