Collins Says Goldman Arrogant and Evasive

If you missed Goldman Sachs' executives strange and evasive responses, watch here. Democrats are voting today for a third time to move the financial reforms to debate. But once again, republicans look like they'll block it. Susan Collins says republicans want to amend the bill. Richard Shelby says the republicans are still hung up on derivatives and the consumer agency.

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Levin Asks Goldman About Sh--ty Deal

These guys clearly live in a different world than we do. Goldman Sachs officials' wacked out answers:

Obama is Forcing Accountability on Afghanistan

Bob Woodward said something interesting on Meet the Press this morning. He said the deliberate Afghanistan strategy meetings are forcing everyone to dig in, which will have the effect of accountability.
On the Nobel Peace Prize, Lindsey Graham says Obama will earn it if he sends more troops to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, democrats are saying he'll earn it if he pulls troops out of Afghanistan.
It's pretty clear that the Peace Prize has become just another obstacle thrown in Obama's way.
It's also pretty clear that no one knows what they're talking about when it comes to Afghanistan. Everyone just has an opinion. No one seems to know the hearts and minds of the Afghanistan people. No one knows what's the best path for Afghanistan.

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Full episode:

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Jim Jones on Face the Nation Oct. 4

Sen. Carl Levin, Rep. Ike Skelton and General Anthony Zinni talk about the coming decision on Afghanistan. Levin says we don't need more troops. Zinni says hurry up with the troops. It's too bad politics has to play a part in something as important as sending our troops to war:

Michigan Town Wants Gitmo Prisoners Hoekstra Says No

Federal officials will travel to Standish, Michigan, on Thursday to tour a state prison that could be used to house terror suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. government officials said Wednesday.

The prison in Standish, Michigan, is slated for closure but would stay open if Guantanamo detainees are sent there.

Among those who will check out the facility, the officials said, will be representatives from the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons.

One administration official stressed no decision has been made about where to relocate Guantanamo detainees. Multiple options are under consideration. That official added Thursday's visit is simply to gather information about the prison.

The prison in Standish is a maximum security facility slated for closure. Some local officials would like to see Guantanamo prisoners brought there as a way to keep the prison open and preserve jobs in an area with more than 20 percent unemployment. More at CNN

Republican Pete Hoekstra has promised to fight having Gitmo prisoners in Michigan. His tweet:

If press reports on moving Gitmo detainees to Mich are accurate my answer is no. I will do everything possible to stop this.

Meanwhile, Sen. Carl Levin is for it and so is Standish. They want the jobs:

Give us Gitmo!
To the rest of the country, the 229 suspect Al Qaeda, Taliban and foreign fighters at Guantanamo Bay are terrorists.
To the men and women who work at the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, they could be a meal ticket.
Unemployment is at more than 17% in Standish and residents say they would welcome a possible plan to relocate detainees from the soon-to-be shuttered Guantanamo Bay prison to the U.S.
"We'll take the most dangerous prisoners the world has to offer if we have to," corrections officer Paul Piche said Monday.
Read more at NYDN

Obama's Weekly Address April 18

Another campaign promise fulfilled. Obama will announce in a few weeks the elimination of government programs. Obama says his staff is already working on this. 
Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin are leading the charge in Congress.
Obama also announced Jeffrey Zients, who will serve as Chief Performance Officer. Aneesh Chopra will serve as Chief Technology Officer. They will streamline government and work with Vivek Kundra, Chief Information Officer.

Jeffrey D. Zients - Chief Performance Officer
Zients has twenty years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur with a deep understanding of business strategy, process reengineering and financial management. He served as CEO and Chairman of the Advisory Board Company and Chairman of the Corporate Executive Board. These firms are leading providers of performance benchmarks and best practices across a wide range of industries. Currently, he is the Founder and Managing Partner of Portfolio Logic, an investment firm focused primarily on business and healthcare service companies.

Aneesh Paul Chopra - Chief Technology Officer
Chopra serves as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology. He leads the Commonwealth’s strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform, to promote Virginia’s innovation agenda, and to foster technology-related economic development. Previously, he worked as Managing Director with the Advisory Board Company, leading the firm’s Financial Leadership Council and the Working Council for Health Plan Executives.

Obama, McCain, Others, Team to Reform Government Contracting

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Today Sen. McCain joined the President again to develop that idea further, along with Senators Carl Levin and Claire McCaskill and Representatives Edolphus Towns and Peter Welch.
The President signed a Presidential Memorandum that will reform government contracting by strengthening oversight and management of taxpayer dollars, ending unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contracts and maximizing the use of competitive procurement processes, and clarifying rules prescribing when outsourcing is and is not appropriate. The OMB will be tasked with giving guidance to every agency on making sure contracts serve the taxpayers, not the contractors.

In addition, the President endorsed the goals of the bipartisan effort on defense procurement reform led by Senators Carl Levin and McCain, and has asked Defense Secretary Gates to work with the Senators going ahead. In his remarks, President Obama made clear that while there are those who will try to protect contractor excesses behind cries of weakening our national defenses, there will be a bipartisan, firm stand to put those excesses to an end:

The American people's money must be spent to advance their priorities -- not to line the pockets of contractors or to maintain projects that don't work.

Recently that public trust has not always been kept. Over the last eight years, government spending on contracts has doubled to over half a trillion dollars. Far too often, the spending is plagued by massive cost overruns, outright fraud, and the absence of oversight and accountability. In some cases, contracts are awarded without competition. In others, contractors actually oversee other contractors. We are spending money on things that we don't need, and we're paying more than we need to pay. And that's completely unacceptable.

This problem cuts across the government, but I want to focus on one particular example, and that is the situation in defense contracting. Now, I want to be clear, as Commander-in-Chief, I will do whatever it takes to defend the American people, which is why we've increased funding for the best military in the history of the world. We'll make new investments in 21st century capabilities to meet new strategic challenges. And we will always give our men and women the -- in uniform, the equipment and the support that they need to get the job done.

But I reject the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. And in this time of great challenges, I recognize the real choice between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe and those that are designed to make a defense contractor rich.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, looked into 95 major defense projects and found cost overruns that totaled $295 billion. Let me repeat: That's $295 billion in wasteful spending. And this wasteful spending has many sources. It comes from investments and unproven technologies. It comes from a lack of oversight. It comes from influence peddling and indefensible no-bid contracts that have cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. WH

Obama to Close Offshore Tax Havens

The Department of Justice is also going after wealthy tax cheats with secret Swiss UBS bank accounts who are illegally hiding their money.
Tax havens are legal loopholes that wealthy people take advantage of because they can. Sen. Carl Levin has been leading this charge to close tax loopholes.

HP: As part of the budget that he will introduce this Thursday, President Barack Obama will call for the closure of tax havens that allow companies to pay greatly reduced tax rates, an administration official tells the Huffington Post.

The inclusion of "funding for a robust portfolio of IRS international tax compliance initiatives" could help Congress make up an estimated $100 billion of revenue that is lost when companies set up what are often P.O. box addresses in locales like the Cayman Islands. Another Democratic official involved in the budget proceedings, however, cautioned that closing these loopholes could pose additional difficulties, specifically in determining which jurisdictions qualify as tax havens, and which companies qualify as domestic.

Who takes advantage of tax havens? 

A GAO report from December revealed that 83 of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations had placed subsidiaries in tax haven jurisdictions to, ostensibly, pay less on their tax bills.

Obama and McCain at Fiscal Summit Video

Funny helicopter exchange:

Most U.S. Companies Pay No Federal Income Taxes

ABC: Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The American Pie in Hands of the Few

Victor Davis Hanson wrote this: "Refined Americans became more concerned over questions of gender, race and class justice in our universities and courtrooms, as if the chief problem were only dividing the American pie equitability, rather than expanding it."

I would argue that establishing equitability would expand the pie. When the regulations, laws and education don't favor the richest of the rich, then it would inspire and enable more people to expand the pie, so to speak. 

Power and money in the hands of the few leads to subprime mortgage meltdown, banks and rich folks hiding their money overseas and not paying their share of taxes (can you imagine the average person getting away with that?), corruption in government, the ever increasing divide between the richest and the poorest, greater social problems. Need I go on? 

I'm sure everyone of us can look to our own communities to find people who have unfairly reached the top of the heap only to tumble down and splat on the bottom. Then who picks up the pieces? Who pays for their mess? 

What we've set ourselves up for is a nation where the rest of us will have to depend on the goodwill of those who are controlling the money. 

But often, those who rise to the top do so because they are highly competitive and they don't mind stepping on heads on the way up, not because they're generous. Of course, you can be both and rise to the top, financially speaking, and often folks come to the realization that they can be both once they've amassed wealth. Bill Gates is a prime example.

But wouldn't it be great if laws and regulations were more equitable, and a solid education was available for all, not just those who could afford it. Then, more people would have more opportunities and that would expand the pie. 

Fairness, a level playing field, inspires expansion.
Today's bank raid:

Securities regulators from several U.S. states on Thursday raided the St. Louis headquarters of Wachovia Securities, seeking documents and records on the company's sales practices.

The move is part of a broad investigation into questionable practices involving auction rate securities, Missouri officials said.

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office said the "special inspection" at the Wachovia division, the former A.G. Edwards, concerned the $330 billion auction-rate securities crisis. Wachovia Securities is part of the Charlotte-based bank, Wachovia Corp.

Did anyone catch ABC's investigation on the super rich hiding their money? I'd like to hide my money but the best place I can think of is under the mattress and with the stock market down considerably and interests rates in the toilet, the mattress seems to be a good option.

Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme.

The bank clerk, Heinrich Kieber, has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country's bank secrecy laws.

He is now in hiding but scheduled to testify to the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Thursday via a video statement from a secret location, according to Congressional investigators.

Aides for committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) are scheduled to provide reporters with a background briefing later this morning in Washington on the committee's investigation of tax haven banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

Aides say the hearing will also focus on the role of the giant Swiss bank UBS and its alleged efforts to help wealthy Americans hide their money from the IRS through shell companies in Liechtenstein.

Liechtenstein's veil of secrecy was pierced five years ago when the disgruntled technician, Kieber, downloaded the names of foreign citizens connected to the secret accounts.