Are the Benghazi Attacks By GOP Senators McCain, Graham, and Ayotte About Getting Scott Brown Back to the Senate?

Let me start off by saying that Former UT Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman has more common sense to go with his foreign policy experience in today's world, then the Republican trio of Senators McCain (R-AZ), Graham (R-SC), and Ayotte (R-NH) put together who are ignoring the change of leadership in China as they continue to attack the UN Ambassador Susan Rice.  Why? This makes little sense until you realize that if Senator John Kerry was nominated and confirmed to be Secretary of State, then there would be an open Senate seat in Massachusetts.

Are their plans to have Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) who was defeated on Nov 6th, run for the Kerry Senate seat in a special election?  The Governor of MA can only appoint a temporary person to fill the seat until a special election is held  no fewer than 145 days, nor more than 160 days from the date of office vacancy.  With that scenario, the fog from the attacks on Rice by these three Senators is clearing.  Putting Party over Country is becoming a habit for the GOP in Congress.

Ambassador Jon Huntsman understands the leadership change in China has much more of an impact on the United States then the attacks in Benghazi.  Shame those three are ignoring the implications of new leadership in China:

For Huntsman, the debate over who massaged what talking points and when is a distraction. While not downplaying the deaths in Benghazi, he noted that there have been other foreign policy developments in the past month that have also demanded attention. 

"I heard endless chatter about Benghazi during the last several weeks and not a bit about the leadership changes in China," said Huntsman. "Now I needn't tell you which over the longer term is going to impact us as people. You've got once-per-decade leadership changes in China, whose economic and security policies will have a profound impact on the next generation of Americans."

Do I think this trio and other Republicans in the Senate would ignore what has happened in China with the change of leadership to keep attacking Susan Rice for their agenda to get Brown back in the Senate?  Absolutely!  Their attacks are so far over the top the three have become an embarrassment to the oaths they took as US Senators:

Oath of OfficeI do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. 

The three have put Party over Country which we are seeing from a lot of Republicans in Congress today which is beyond disgusting.  When it comes to foreign affairs, their continual attacks are harmful to how the United States is perceived in other countries.  Looks like the attacks on Rice are being done by these three  in order to get their way for Kerry to be named Secretary of State.  The three Senators come across as mean spirited and hateful against Rice.  The three know full well she did not write the talking points she used from the intelligence community when she went on television to explain what was known at the time about Benghazi.  When UN Ambassador Rice and the Acting CIA Chief briefed the three yesterday, that wasn't good enough for them as they are continuing to attack.

If I was Obama, I would never put anyone in my Administration in the position of talking to those three Senators ever again.  As soon as the briefing by Rice was over, the three ran to the microphone complaining about what she said.  Does Ayotte know how dumb she sounds to be parroting McCain and Graham when she is a freshman Senator?  Guess they had to have someone as Sen Lieberman (I-CT) broke with McCain and Graham to support Rice on her comments.

It has become more obvious that the three have an agenda because Senator Lieberman (I-CT) is perfectly fine with the explanations.  The logical conclusion is the three bullies are doing this for a reason, and I would still be willing to bet it is pure politics to get Senator Kerry to become Secretary of State and Scott Brown back to the Senate. More and more people are saying the same thing after yesterday.  IMO many people didn't want to think this was the case, so they didn't say much.  Yesterday's remarks by the three GOP Senators immediately after their briefing by Rice finally brought out the concept that it was all about Kerry to State and Brown back to the Senate.  Cannot believe after being gone for almost a week from this blog that Benghazi is even an issue.

Don't know what planet McCain, Graham, and Ayotte are living on, but the people of MA are not stupid.  They see what is happening by the three.  I would peg Brown being elected in a special election to the Senate as slim to none.

From reading this article about Former Governor Huntsman on Benghazi and China, I am left with the reality that I am on his side of the Republican Party with others who are fed up with what we are seeing out of Republicans today especially on foreign policy.  If McCain, Graham, and Ayotte are trying to remain relevant, it is not working as they come across as arrogant and bullies against Susan Rice.  They are doing the Republican Party no favors and making a lot of us question why we are Republicans if this is an example of how they are going to act in the next Congress.

Huntsman has nailed in this article what many of us are thinking.  He has my vote if he decides to run for President again.  Former Governor and an Ambassador to China who is not afraid to work across the aisle sounds like a great candidate.  A lot of us have woken up after the election in 2012 that the GOP has gone too hard right and needs someone like Huntsman to keep the GOP from going down the path of the Whigs.

Jon Huntsman: Benghazi, Susan Rice Criticism Overblown
Posted: 11/27/2012 1:26 pm EST Updated: 11/27/2012 2:45 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on Monday urged lawmakers, including those in his own party, to temper their criticism of the administration's handling of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, said that it would have been nearly impossible for authorities to instantly obtain accurate intelligence about who was responsible for the September attack, which resulted in the death of four officials. Because of that, he said, recent criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for not immediately declaring the attack an act of terror was either politically motivated or misplaced. 

"The issue of Benghazi, I think you can attribute to the fog of war, more than anything else," Huntsman said in an interview with The Huffington Post. "When you're in a wartime setting and you have an attack like that -- let's face it. No one is prepared for an attack like that. There is, as Robert McNamara used to say, there is a fog of war. And it takes awhile to sort through the details. And it doesn't do a whole lot of good for the political class to point fingers before you even know what was behind it. And you're not going to know that [immediately]." 

In offering up his assessment, Huntsman became the rare Republican to downplay the boiling controversy surrounding the matter. Rice went to Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss her post-attack talking points with aggrieved Republican lawmakers. Early reaction suggested that she ran into a proverbial buzzsaw. 

(snip) 

Since then, it has become clearer that a terrorist faction in the country, believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda, was responsible for the attack. Graham, Ayotte, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have suggested that Rice deliberately changed her talking points for the political benefit of the president. But a steady stream of evidence has pointed to a more benign explanation: that the intelligence community was not immediately comfortable calling the attack an act of terrorism and couched its language accordingly. 

"In the course of the meeting, we explained that the talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: there was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi," Rice said in a statement. "While we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case, the intelligence assessment has evolved." 

Rice added that there was no intention to "mislead the American people at any stage in this process."

(snip) 

Speaking from his home in Washington D.C., Huntsman called this a moment of unique, historic possibilities in U.S.-China relations. The new leader of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, has more political flexibility than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and he comes into office at a moment of acute pressure for both economic and domestic political reform, Huntsman noted. 

Calling for regular head-of-state negotiations between the U.S. and China and a toning down of some of the political rhetoric -- "You can't just designate them a currency manipulator without reverberations recurring on the other end," he said -- the former ambassador outlined the obstacles ahead. 

The goal for the Obama administration, he argued, is "helping China understand that in being on the world stage, there are greater expectations of the role that they will play. It is helping them understand that a weapon obtained by the Iranian government would result in tremendous instability in the region that would upend their raw material supply line. Sometimes it is walking them through things they never had to consider before because they're new to the world stage."

Excerpt:  Read the comments of McCain, Graham, and Ayotte at Huffington Post

How the US Takes the Gold After the Olympics Versus How Corporations are Treated

If there was one paragraph in the article that jumped out at me, it is this one which I bolded:

Currently, a company that invests in America has to pay immediate U.S. taxes on its profits from that investment. But if the company instead invests and creates jobs overseas through a foreign subsidiary, it does not have to pay U.S. taxes on its overseas profits until those profits are brought back to the United States, if they ever are. Yet even though companies do not have to pay U.S. taxes on their overseas profits today, they still get to take deductions today on their U.S. tax returns for all of the expenses that support their overseas investment.

Let me get this straight.  If a company uses its foreign subsidiary to invest and create more overseas jobs, they do not pay US taxes on profits unless they bring those profits back to the United States but they can take an income tax deduction for expenses of that foreign subsidiary immediately off their taxes.  That means they can park the profits in their Cayman Island accounts for years and never have to pay a US tax on the profits while at the same time taking a deduction each year for expenses.

Will someone please tell me why this loophole exists in the tax laws because IMHO it is wrong and favors those companies who send jobs and work overseas.  Is this another thing Romney is hiding with his tax returns?  He keeps saying he paid all taxes required but most regular people would not understand someone not paying tax in the United States but taking off deductions for that entity.  I am one of them.  Think it is reprehensible that this loophole even exists.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced a bill earlier this week that would exempt Olympians from taxes on their winnings but looks like the bill is not getting traction.  The reason given -- no lobbying efforts to get it passed.  IOTW no matter how good a bill is, you have to get the lobbyists behind the bill in order to get it passed?  Yet some people will attack you when you say there are a lot of bought and paid for members of Congress from both parties.

Why is the IRS taxing our Olympic Athletes who earn medals?  That should be a no brainer with all the work and dedication they have put in over the years that their medals and winnings should be tax exempt.
Something is really wrong with a tax system that goes after US medal winners yet allows corporations doing business overseas to pay no tax on their profits as long as they keep them in offshore accounts but can take deductions off of the income tax for that same entity.

Talk about a screwed up system -- the IRS rules and regulations over the years have led to this mess but the one thing you have seen over the years is changes in the Tax Code have continued to  favor the wealthy and their investments while the Middle Class is fed a bone or two to keep them quiet and think they were given a really good deal.  Is this why the big donors went to Romney and the Super PACs because they know he will do nothing to change the Tax Code -- same with most Republicans in the Congress?  This is all beginning to make sense starting with why Romney won't release his income tax returns.  He is correct that most Americans wouldn't understand them.  The fallout would hurt him but will guarantee you it would also hurt Republican members of Congress who push low tax rates for all including the wealthy.

The mantra of today is tax the Olympic athletes but don't tax the profits of the wealthy making money overseas.  Maybe it is time our Olympic athletes to open Cayman accounts!

How the IRS Takes the Gold After the OlympicsBy Ross Kenneth Urken
Posted 4:00PM 08/03/12 Posted under: Taxes

Team USA's biggest winner of the London Olympic Games may be the IRS. 

Our Olympic medalists will rake in handsome rewards for representing their country, but they will also have to give a chunk back to Uncle Sam in taxes, notes the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation. 

Under U.S. tax law, they must include the value of their Olympic medals and prizes in their taxable income. The precious metal in the medals is worth about $675 for gold, $385 for silver and under $5 for bronze. But medalists take in handsome cash prizes, too: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. 

Assuming they're paying the top U.S. tax rate of 35%, that means Olympians would have to shell out $8,750 for winning gold, $5,250 for silver and $3,500 for bronze. 

The British government has waived its right to tax Olympians' winnings, and the ATRF -- research arm for Grover Norquist's ultra-conservative anti-tax group, Americans for Tax Reform -- is publicly taking issue with the idea that U.S. citizens earning money abroad should have to pay U.S. taxes on it, according to Ryan Ellis, tax policy director for the ATR. U.S. policy differs from that of the majority of the world's countries, which don't tax their citizens for income earned abroad. 

(snip) 

With increasing globalization and opportunities to earn abroad, that extra tax bite could actually become a disincentive to people returning to the U.S. to contribute to the domestic economy, Ellis suggests. 

Already, Ellis says, many corporations with subsidiaries in foreign countries shy away from bringing their profits back to the U.S. because to do so would mean paying U.S. taxes on them. 

"You don't have to pay the second tax to the IRS until you actually bring the money back here," Ellis said. "If you leave it overseas, the tax is deferred indefinitely. Our current system incentivizes people to stay overseas." 

But Corporations Aren't People

A closer look at this argument reveals a fairly obvious apples-to-oranges comparison being made by Ellis and the ATR: There's a big difference between how individuals and corporations are treated when it comes to taxable foreign income, as the White House's National Economic Council (NEC) makes clear. 

An American citizen who earns up to $95,100 overseas pays only the foreign taxes on that income. If he earns more than that, he pays U.S. taxes only on the amount earned above that threshold. More importantly, the taxpayer gets a U.S. tax credit for taxes paid to other governments. The result should be that, at worst, someone earning money overseas should pay no more overall than if all money had been earned here, and all the taxes in question were paid to the IRS. (And, thanks to loopholes in the system, it often works out that those workers pay less, the NEC notes.) 

Corporations, by contrast ... well, that's more complicated, but the NEC website concisely explains the issue:  

Companies Can Defer Paying Taxes on Overseas Profits Until Later, While Taking Tax Deductions on Their Foreign Expenses Now: 

• Currently, a company that invests in America has to pay immediate U.S. taxes on its profits from that investment. But if the company instead invests and creates jobs overseas through a foreign subsidiary, it does not have to pay U.S. taxes on its overseas profits until those profits are brought back to the United States, if they ever are. Yet even though companies do not have to pay U.S. taxes on their overseas profits today, they still get to take deductions today on their U.S. tax returns for all of the expenses that support their overseas investment.

And it's questionable as to whether upholding a "territorial taxation" system -- in which taxes are paid only to the jurisdictions where the money is earned -- would benefit the U.S. economy, the NEC says. 

"Pure territorial taxation is a $200 billion tax incentive for increasing jobs overseas, not for creating jobs in America," Principal Deputy NEC Director Jason Furman told DailyFinance.
Right now, an American multinational corporation will pay 12% in taxes in China, for example, and nothing to the U.S. If after five years, it decides to bring those profits back to the U.S., it will pay 23% on the earnings -- equaling the top U.S. tax rate of 35%, and never exceeding it.
"The notion that there's a double tax is completely absurd," Furman said. 

And in reality, the NEC says, many U.S. corporations opt for added taxing flexibility by having a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands who will own the intellectual property and allow the company to pay only 2% in taxes. Some corporations will never bring that money back to the U.S.

Excerpt:  Read More at Daily Finance

Open Letter to Sen. Charles Schumer (Trade with China)

Just when we thought Schumer was already at the bottom when it comes to supporting the American consumer, he comes along and proves us wrong that he can go even lower. Now Schumer is leading a socialist charge to make us pay more for products from the Chinese by telling them to raise prices? That makes no UNLESS Socialist Schumer is attempting to pay off the unions by raising the price for Chinese goods so Americans will buy Union made goods.

Until recent years, we favored Buy American until the price of goods was driven up by union wages, benefits, and strikes. With the economy tanking, we have joined the Americans looking for the best product for the lowest price and if that means it comes from China then so be it as we would rather buy non-union no matter where it is made.

Why would Americans want to buy any product manufactured by AFL/CIO workers when they made a sweetheart deal with Obama to support Obamacare so they are not affected until the end of the decade.

Open Letter to Sen. Charles Schumer
by Don Boudreaux on March 24, 2010

Sen. Charles Schumer
Capitol Hill
Washington, DC

Dear Sen. Schumer:

Up-in-arms that the Chinese offer American consumers exceptionally good bargains, you propose legislation to pressure the Chinese to raise the prices of their exports. And, insisting that Congress pass your bill speedily, you warn that “every day we wait is a day we lose wealth.”

Let me see if I grasp your economics. Low prices – including low prices on many imports that American producers use as inputs in their own production – cause us to “lose wealth.” High prices, then, must cause us to gain wealth.

Okay! I get it! Now I understand that competition – which reduces prices – destroys wealth.

And technology! Man, that’s a big-time curse, given that it incessantly enables more and more outputs to be produced with fewer and fewer resources and workers and, thus, consistently pushes prices down.

No wonder we Americans are so poor and sub-Saharan Africans are so rich! We’re burdened with vast, open, competitive markets teeming with technology-laden producers, all of which combine to reduce the prices American consumers pay and, hence, (I now see) to deplete America’s wealth. In happy contrast, Chadians and Nigerians and other Africans are blessed with governments that severely restrict their abilities to trade, to compete, and to accumulate accursed price-lowering technologies.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Sen. Schumer for working to make America more like Niger! What would we do without your insight and courage?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University

Source: Read more like this at Cafehayek