Czar Party

[Gaspar]

A few interesting things I noted today:
   1.   Kenneth Feinberg is to be named President Obama's new "Pay Czar" to determine executive pay.  Of course this will start only with companies receiving bailout money.

   2.   The Obama administration and IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman are assembling a program to require individual taxes be prepared by government licensed preparers.  TurboTax and preparing your own simple form will be a thing of the past.

   3.   Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer has pledged to move jobs offshore if Obama's tax plan is enacted. "It makes U.S. jobs more expensive ... We're better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S."  (Who is John Galt?)

   4.   Cameron Davis has been appointed "Great Lakes Czar" and given control over $20 billion dollars to battle invasive species, polluted harbors, and sewage overflows in the great lakes.


LOL. . .We have more Czars than the Romanov's now at 20+.  I can't keep up there's a new one every day.  Sure beats chain of command I guess.  Allows the President to supersede any agency he wants. 

Oh Change has arrived.

[dbacks fan]

[FOTD]

Come now. The "czar" tag on appointments started under Nixon or Reagan.

Get over it.....

[USRufnex]

1.  http://washingtonindependent.com/45878/a-policeman-for-executive-pay

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have been extremely lenient about limiting executive compensation for firms accepting bailout cash. The original bailout bill, unveiled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in September, contained almost no conditions on executive pay at all. Congress intervened to apply some limits, but the loopholes remained enormous.

In January, the House passed a bill to close some of those loopholes, but the Senate ignored the bill.

A month later Obama, along with his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, announced their own executive pay limits, though those guidelines also were pocked with holes. The reason for the leniency, a Treasury release argued at the time, was "to strike the correct balance between the need for strict monitoring and accountability on executive pay and the need for financial institutions to fully function and attract the talent pool that will maximize the chances of financial recovery." The message was clear: The White House feared that severe restrictions on executive pay, even for firms kept afloat only on the waterwings of billions of federal dollars, would scare away the "talent pool" that had run the companies into the ground — employees deemed vital to the recovery.

More recently, the Senate succeeded in passing another law limiting some executive bonuses to a third of compensation. It's this law that the administration apparently feels is too punitive, despite the fact that Treausry officials watered it down before it was passed. And of course none of these efforts have done much to limit executive pay, as reports have indicated.

So this is the landscape that Feinberg is soon to encounter. Think about that the next time you're feeling bitter about your job.

2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124413351661785565.html

"I applaud the IRS in their efforts to require tax-preparer certification," said John Hewitt, chief executive of Liberty Tax Services, the third-largest U.S. tax-preparation firm. "It certainly hasn't hindered us in Oregon and California," he said of two states that regulate tax preparers.

H&R Block, the largest tax-preparation firm, also said it welcomed the IRS announcement.

Scott Schneeberger, an analyst with investment firm Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., wrote in a Thursday research note that the IRS initiative is "significantly positive" for the big tax-preparation firms.

"As the larger preparers are already more closely monitored than the large, highly fragmented population of mom & pop preparers, the larger companies have been seeking increased regulation and oversight of the broader industry," Mr. Schneeberger wrote.

Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.) said low-income taxpayers are often taken advantage of by "fly-by-night'' tax preparers who set up shop in storefronts, only to go out of business after tax season. "If they have problems, they cannot be located,'' said Mr. Lewis, who is chairman of the oversight subcommittee. "We're going to find a way to deal with it.''

In 2006, the Government Accountability Office found errors in an investigation of chain tax preparers. Out of 19 visits where GAO investigators posed as taxpayers, five preparers' work resulted in incorrect refunds of about $2,000, while errors in two cases cost the taxpayers $1,500.

From 2006 through 2008, the IRS initiated more than 600 investigations of fraud among tax preparers. During that time, 356 tax preparers were convicted, with more than 80% of them sentenced to prison, home confinement or electronic monitoring.

3.  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAKluP7yIwJY

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. "Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates," the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Ireland Subsidiary

Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn't have to claim the income in the United States.

"What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate," Bosworth said. "Relative to where they are now, the administration's proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part."

4.  He will coordinate efforts of about a dozen federal agencies working on the administration's Great Lakes project, which deals with issues such as invasive species, polluted harbors, sewage overflows and degraded wildlife habitat.

The Bush administration oversaw development of a wide-ranging strategy for protecting and restoring the lakes that was presented in December 2005, but little funding was provided afterward. Legislation to carry out the plan has been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate.

During the campaign last year, Obama pledged $5 billion over a decade toward implementing the plan. His proposed 2010 budget seeks $475 million in new spending on the lakes.

Obama also promised to appoint a management "czar" and settled on Davis, a 23-year veteran of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, previously known as the Lake Michigan Federation. The group advocates for improving water quality and land use, conservation, habitat recovery and clean energy.

Thanks, Gas.

I learned:

1.  The Senate is passing laws that are more restrictive on executive pay/compensation than what the Obama administration is comfortable with... which will set the dems up for failure in the midterm elections (especially if they do what professional sports owners already do: propose a "salary cap")...
2.  Mom-and-Pop tax preparers don't have to be licensed... and the federal govt. may follow the example of Oregon and California.
3.  Microsoft only pays an effective corporate tax rate of 26%.
4.  Federal funds are being used to clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay. (Obama honors one of his campaign promises).

Four more reasons why I voted for "comrade" Obama...  

Who is John Galt?


"And then I read this: 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of s#!t I'm never reading again!"