Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is under fire for his decision to block the execution of man convicted of massacring four people at a Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora, Colo., two decades ago.
The Democrat has vowed not to sign a death warrant for Nathan Dunlap as long as he's in office, even though he declined to back an outright repeal of capital punishment two months ago.
Hickenlooper's decision on Dunlap — a day before lawyers for Aurora movie-theater massacre suspect James Holmes were due in court to challenge the death-penalty statute — infuriated some victims' relatives and law-enforcement officials.
"He should die," former Aurora Police Officer Dan Jones, who was the first to arrive at Chuck E. Cheese the night of Dec. 14, 1993, told NBC station KUSA.
"What he did was horrific. And now 20 years later...the governor passes the buck."
Bob Crowell, whose 19-year-old daughter Sylvia was one of those killed, called Hickenlooper a "chicken governor."
"We've waited an awful long time," Crowell said after a heated conference call with the governor on Wednesday. "It's a little like carrying a knife in my back. Today, that night was severely twisted."
Colorado has had the death penalty since 1977, although only one person has been put to death since then and there are just three on Death Row.Comment: It's time for justice for the slain!
For four months, the FOX 9 Investigators watched and noticed cab after cab kept coming from the Duluth area roughly 115 miles way despite the fact that Duluth has its own methadone clinic. One methadone patient described the process as "outrageous," and said the state pays as much as $500 a day for those fares.Comment: 114 miles ... I'm sure they dead-head back!
Many economists and tax experts, and of course CEOs, have pushed for more drastic change – like eliminating the corporate income tax altogether.
“I think it would make the system much simpler,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning tax expert David Cay Johnston. He spoke to The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task and Henry Blodget as Cook went head-to-head with Congress.
Johnston says killing the corporate income tax outright would immediately spur growth, investment and hiring. Plus, eliminating the tax would reduce the number of tax loopholes and make a lot of the corporate lobbying in DC moot. One proponent of far-reaching tax reform is Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. The anti-tax hawk – and tea party favorite – told the Senate subcommittee to apologize to Cook and Apple executives.
"If anyone should be on trial here it should be Congress ... for creating a bizarre and byzantine tax code," said Paul. "If you want to assign blame, this committee needs to look in the mirror and see who created that mess." That “mess” is still the tax law of the land. If Cook’s reform efforts gain steam, maybe they could call it the iTax.
Mr. Levin unveiled the results of his months-long investigation into Apple's corporate taxes and accused the American business success of employing "alchemy" and "gimmickry" to lower its tax bill. What Mr. Levin did not do was present any evidence of anything illegal or even inappropriate. He did prove that Apple has smart accountants and tax lawyers.
Mr. Levin is outraged that Apple subsidiaries in Ireland pay little or no corporate income tax on profits generated from Apple's international sales. Ireland has a laudably low corporate tax rate of 12.5% to attract jobs and capital, but it turns out that for certain corporations controlled by entities outside Ireland, the deal gets better.
The Apple units are based in Ireland, so U.S. law does not consider them to be U.S. corporations subject to U.S. corporate tax. But since they are managed and controlled by Apple in the U.S., Irish law doesn't consider them Irish companies and thus they are also not subject to the 12.5% Irish corporate tax. This isn't alchemy; it's accountancy.
...... None of this required a Senate "investigation" to discover because Apple is constantly inspected by the IRS and other tax authorities. These tax collectors are well aware of Apple's corporate structure, which has remained essentially the same since 1980. An Apple executive said Tuesday that the company's annual U.S. tax return adds up to a stack of paperwork more than two feet high.
We wonder what the Irish think of the spectacle of an American Senator expressing outrage that an American company doesn't pay enough Irish taxes. As Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson pointed out on Tuesday, Americans are better off when U.S. companies pay less in taxes to foreign governments.
That includes Americans who are invested in Apple through their mutual and pension funds. And it includes Apple's U.S. workers who benefit when the company is able to sell more iPhones and iPads overseas. Roughly 50,000 of Apple's 75,000 employees are in the U.S.
It's also amazing to behold Democrats who routinely claim that high tax rates don't matter to business behavior denouncing a business for engaging in behavior to avoid paying higher tax rates. Which brings us to the real scandal that Mr. Levin has exposed: the folly of America's corporate tax code.Comment: The Facts:
An ounce of gold, often represented by a single American Eagle coin, is a fairly easy thing to visualize. Even a 400 ounce gold bar, like the ones held at Fort Knox, is a fairly fathomable concept. But when you try to get your head around just how much of the metal an ETF like the SPRD Gold Shares (GLD) owns, it can get a little daunting. And the same is true when you try to track how much they've had to sell as the price of gold slips to a 2-1/2 year low.
"300 tons," says Tom Lydon, the editor of ETF Trends, in the attached video, calling the disposal of over 600,000 pounds of gold so far this year "amazing" and "incredible."
This, of course, as the largest metal-tracking fund has gone from briefly being the biggest ETF, to being a top-5 player after being cut in half to approximately $46 billion in value today, holding just over 1,000 tons of gold in its vaults.
While gold is clearly out of favor forcing the hand of holders to sell into weakness, Lydon says it won't always be that way. "Central banks maybe aren't as concerned," he lists as one reason why gold is down. "I think the average investor, with stocks and bonds doing so well, I think they say, 'hey, I don't need to hedge, so that gold position I had, I'm going to put that into stocks for now.'"Comment: If (when?) inflation kicks in ... Gold will be safe harbor. Image above is of a 400 oz gold bar. 300 tons would be the equivalent of 24,000 400 oz gold bars.
Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law
Excerpt:
Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.
Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.
Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.Comment: Murphy's law
With a seeming imperviousness to economic cycles, Campbell's annual operating income has varied little over the past decade. In a world of low interest rates, that bondlike quality is a plus. Campbell funds dividends and buybacks from healthy free cash flow: Fiscal 2012's equates to a "yield" of 5.6% of the company's market capitalization. That is higher than for many "junk" bonds.
And unlike regular bonds, a stock also will at least keep pace with inflation, or at least that's the theory. Adjusted for the consumer-price index, Campbell's operating income has in fact shrunk over the past 10 years at a compound annual rate of 1%.
Without sustained growth beyond the cosmetic effect of share buybacks on earnings per share, Campbell's appeal is tied to low interest rates. That isn't a permanent state of affairs, though, and shareholders may be in for a rude surprise when they get back to normal.
No soup for you!Comment: Soup Nazi, Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans. My take on CPB: Uber conservative. We have shares in an IRA and have seen some growth. My favorite Campbell's soup is bean with bacon.
The Star Tribune 100 is a measure of the largest publicly held companies with headquarters in Minnesota ranked by revenue. Data presented also include each company's total profits from continuing operations, assets and market capitalization (taken on April 13).Comment: Sortable. 2013 Grads ... a good place to start looking. Stocks I like (and own): GIS, MMM, USB, MDT, UNH, TGT, XEL
BCE Inc. is Canada's largest communications company, providing a comprehensive and innovative suite of broadband communication services to residential and business customers in Canada. Powered by industry-leading investments in media content and broadband networks, Bell services include high-speed Fibe Internet, Fibe TV, Satellite TV, Bell Mobility and Virgin Mobile, Home Phone local and long distance services as well as IP-broadband services and information and communications technology (ICT) services.
You can see either the white arrow or the FedEx letters, but not both at once, because one is always the background to the other.
The current FedEx logo was shortened from the earlier company name Federal Express and given a new snazzy illusory design element, the background arrow between the “E” and the “x.” Did the company shorten the name to reduce the amount of paint needed for signage on its planes and trucks? That explanation makes no sense, unless the painters could use only one font size. Once the name was shorter, they could just paint the letters larger to take up the same space and use about the same amount of paint. In fact, according to Linden Leader, the graphic artist who designed the new logo, the FedEx CEO specifically requested that the logo be easily legible on every truck from five blocks away.
Instead the change resulted from a thorough analysis of the company’s name recognition in the market. Why might the new logo be more effective? One reason is that the arrow, a symbol that has special meaning to our cognitive system, helps to draw attention to the logo as a whole. Arrows indicate what scientists call “implied motion.” Visual neuroscientists Anja Schlack and Thomas Albright of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have shown that neurons that respond preferentially to specific directions of motion in the world are also activated by arrows pointing in the corresponding direction, even though the arrows are not themselves moving but just represent the concept of motion.
The FedEx arrow pointing to the right signifies motion toward the future for those who write in English and other left-to-right languages. Moreover, because our motion areas also have more neurons that prefer cardinal rather than oblique directions, here the arrow invokes a powerful competition with the FedEx name itself, so our perception vacillates between “FedEx” and forward momentum. In languages read right to left, the FedEx arrow points toward the left, such as in the Arabic version of the logo, consistent with the corresponding cognitive representation of time’s arrow.Comment: Never noticed it!
The Domestic Names Committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names doesn't like apostrophes. Visitors to Harpers Ferry or Pikes Peak might not realize it, but anyone aspiring to name a ridge or a swamp after a local hero will soon find out.
In this Adirondack town, pop. 1,219, a move is on to put a mountain on the map in honor of James Cameron, who settled here in 1773. There is some dispute as to which mountain, and whether to call it Jimmy's Peak, Jimmie's Peak or James' Peak. But there is no opposition to the apostrophe—except from the government.
"Without it, Jimmys looks plural, not possessive," Evelyn Wood, Thurman's town supervisor, said one morning upstairs in the Town Hall. She is 35 years old and has a college degree in English. The Domestic Names Committee, citing her "Jimmy's Peak" proposal in a letter, added "[sic]" after each "Jimmy's."
Said Ms. Wood, "They're their '[sics]' not ours."
For punctuation sticklers, this official apostrophe aversion is a sad comment on a useful mark in serious trouble. Apostrophes aren't welcome on the Web (McDonald's is mcdonalds.com). Banks and druggists ignore them (Barclays, Walgreens). And they sow signage chaos (Employee's Only; Happy Bosses Day; Blue's Band).Comment: Who knew there is a Apostrophe Protection Society?!
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The governor’s “secret plan” to replace revenues that were promised through e-pulltabs may be revealed today. At MPR, Tim Nelson reports: “The plan to boost Vikings stadium-bound revenue likely won’t include a sports memorabilia tax. That proposal appears dead. Supporter of the memorabilia proposal House Taxes chair Ann Lenczewski announced at a conference committee meeting that she’d opted to back the governor’s so-called ‘secret’ plan to make up for the shortfall in gambling tax revenues. … [She said], “The (revenue) commissioner will be telling people about that later… The House is going to give up the sports memorabilia approach and support the governor’s approach.” Let’s start a pool … Electronic bake sales? Online keno? Sports cliche bingo?Comment: It seemed obvious that the Pull-Tabs was a foolish guess
Clorox Co. (CLX), the bleach maker with products ranging from Hidden Valley salad dressing to Glad trash bags, will raise its dividend by 11 percent, higher than analysts estimated.Comment:
