A lot of dkos participants got a nice email today, from Chris Bowers, with a pitch for cash contributions from the organizers of the growth industry that is dkos. Chris was crowing about how kosian online activism won a great victory over one little bit of the corporatocracy. To wit, the claimed effects of millions of our little voices echoing down the halls of power, shouting our outrage, resulting in recently adopted Treasury rules that are supposedly going to "crack down on corporate inversions." (Did I hear that certain US corporate interests, not able to take advantage of this particular feature of "fully legal" capitalism, kleptocracy-style, also used their deep pockets and lobbyists to resist the trend, so they would not be outbid in the race to the bottom?)
Those archly named "inversions" are scams whereby nominally US corporations (like Burger King and major pharmaceutical outfits) buy into or agree to be merged into or acquired by, still other corporate persons existing under the laws of other nations. Thereby re-constituting their personhood in a foreign land and, among other tricks, being able to bring home to the US, relieved of many taxes otherwise payable, huge amounts of cash that have been "stranded" by the Evil Grasping Guv'ment's demands that would tax the profits, the "income" of corporate activities that otherwise would be recognized as taxable under US law. And also to otherwise escape the strictures of US regulatory law. Not that after generations of heavy lobbying and regulatory capture, US law is so very burdensome, but they have to find SOMEthing among the C-suite activities to reward with those huge paychecks. Other than conniving at moving the Trans-Pacific Partnership along the Fast Track, or end-running around the stalled Keystone XL pipeline and all the other stuff that has us progressives snorting but still swallowing the toxic sludge of various "externalities" that well-lobbied corps can force us to eat.
"Obama cracks down on inversions!" Sounds like a triumph for progressivism, right? Well, maybe this reality-based community ought to read the fine print. The "business community" sure has, as spelled out in less absolute terms by, among other sources, the Wall Street Journal:
Obama Administration Issues New Rules to Combat Tax Inversions --
Actions Intended to Make Inversions Harder to Accomplish, Less Profitable
The Treasury Department tightened tax rules Monday to deter U.S. companies from moving their legal headquarters to lower-tax countries, part of a White House effort to slow a wave of so-called corporate inversions that effectively reduce federal revenues....
In an inversion, an American company reincorporates for tax purposes in a tax-friendlier [neoLiberal] country such as the U.K. or Ireland, typically while maintaining much of their operations in the U.S. Most recent inversions sprang from mergers of a U.S. firm with a smaller foreign firm after regulatory steps taken during President Barack Obama's first term curbed other types of inversions.
The Treasury rules will make it harder for companies that invert to use cash accumulating abroad—a big draw in recent deals. In addition, the government has made it more difficult to complete these overseas mergers. The new guidelines could impact a number of pending mergers and acquisitions, including Medtronic Inc. MDT +0.20% 's proposed acquisition of Irish medical-device maker Covidien PLC; Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. SLXP -1.28% 's acquisition of a division of Italy's Cosmo Pharmaceuticals SpA; and Mylan Inc. MYL +0.13% 's pending deal for Abbott Laboratories overseas generics business. It could also interfere with the merger of fruit grower Chiquita Brands International Inc. CQB +1.01% and Fyffes PLC.
A Medtronic spokesman said the company is "studying Treasury's actions."
Less clear is how it would impact Burger King Worldwide Inc. BKW -0.18% 's proposed acquisition of Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Hortons Inc., THI.T +0.12% a deal that was designed to move the new corporate headquarters to Canada. A Burger King spokesman declined to comment.
That deal is structured somewhat differently, and experts disagree whether it would be affected by the new government rules. Most agree the rule changes aren't likely to end inversions altogether.
http://online.wsj.com/... Big win?
And I guess dkos can crow about being involved in the collective claim of stopping the appointment of Michael Boggs to the federal judiciary, "Not enough votes." One for us, but how well have the "conservatives" done over the decades, packing fellow-travelers into not only all levels of the court system and prosecutors' offices, but also so many of the regulatory agencies again at all levels? And how well have "we" done, stopping those appointments for life in good behavior or under civil service (sic) rules, or putting our own people (individuals who don't then just turn to the folks with the money and say "You want that decision super-sized?") into the slots?
So once again, as with the Affordable Care (sic) Act, we ordinary people are supposed to be all realistic about the oppressive politics of the legislative sausage factory, and be happy that we got such crumbs as were dropped for us off the table that we were not represented at when the deals are being done by Hopers and Changers.
It even seems to me that several recent "victories" on social issues were much more acquiescence by the people with the conservative clout than some "overcoming" by progressive forces. First, when it comes to pot, there's a huge number of "conservatives" with their "values" who toke, or whose kids who might get busted bad if they get caught, and some even who know the benefits of medical marijuana from experience or from their loved ones' experience. And as to gay rights and marriage, there's a residuum of our own Taliban types for whom this is non-negotiable, but as with closet potheads among the Reds, there's kind of unarguably a large number of LGBT people who are of the Red persuasion, and who might benefit from the rights they have heretofore so miserably denied to others -- good reason to slide away from that "family values" hypocrisy. Less a win for progressivism, than a willing agreement by those who have ruled up to the present that they will grudgingly go along...
And of course we are all, us brave Americans, all on the same team once again, just like in the good old days of Weapons of Mass Destruction, all cheerleading for and invested in bombing the shit out of ISISILIQ or whatever, to do something about something or other to keep the latest boogeyman from snaking under our beds. And what, other than bringing a few aid workers home for treatment, are "we" doing about the Ebola outbreak, that a few are now warning might be another mass plague (I started to say "Black Death," but then around here, that might draw donuts for political insensitivity, the virus mostly affecting Africans at this point...)
I'll send my $7 to Mr. Bowers, but not in the realistic expectation that it's going to do much more than help the dkos organization continue to grow away from what it sort of inclined toward in the beginning, with maybe a bit of marginal chewing away at the Blob of Oligarchy that is eating the planet, let alone the increasingly husked-out place that we still want to think of as a "nation" blessed with Liberty'n'Freedom (tm), under some beneficent if chimaerical Rule of Law.
Obama's done with us, and there are not too many pols who need our progressive help so much that they feel they have to do any favors for us ordinary people who don't, after all, pay to play at the scale that actually counts. Elections matter at this point, since we have not gone as far down the path of failed Empire as late Rome, but those elections. as in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, matter pretty much only to provide a patina of legitimacy to the real power structure -- a structure whose members could not give a rat's ass about a place increasingly loaded with needy and impoverished people and with fast-shrinking extractable resources. The Blessed People live their Large Lives mostly altogether elsewhere, or at least in the upper stories of the urban rain forests.
Seven bucks is about what I can afford, on my fixed SS and VA disability income, and in theory it should be able to add up to Something Big. Real world? Lacking the kind of selfless organizational principles of, say, a Dr. Martin Luther King? No way. No way at all.