Bernie Sanders and Corporate Income Tax

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a dyed in the wool socialist. He believes in redistribution of wealth on the same basis as Obama. He does not believe in the land of opportunity and the need for hard work in order to exercise the opportunities. He further castigates companies that operate profitably making money for their stockholders, one of which is me, and he gives no credence to the fact that profitable companies supply goods and services to the general public, which would be missing without those companies. He continues to be on a campaign to demonize profitable companies. His latest take in his newsletter is to criticize companies for holding profits which they made from overseas sales in foreign countries rather than return the profits to the US, where they can be taxed. In his latest newsletter, this is what he had to say:
“Instead of sheltering profits in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens, the largest corporations in this country must pay their fair share of taxes so that our country has the revenue we need to rebuild America and reduce the deficit,” Bernie said. "At a time when corporations are making record-breaking profits, while the middle class is disappearing and senior poverty is on the rise, the last thing we should be doing is giving huge tax breaks to profitable corporations that don’t need it.” The Washington Times says that Bernie will soon reintroduce legislation to crack down on corporate tax avoidance by making sure that profits shifted to offshore tax haven subsidiaries are taxed at the top U.S. corporate tax rate.
Most corporations in the US are in business to make a profit for their owners, generally shareholders of stock. They do this by providing goods and services to the market (general public) at competitive prices. This requires efficiency in their production and marketing operations, which includes the proper handling of their finances. For this reason, all major corporations have a Chief Financial Officer to oversee the continuing need to make a profit. Without a profit, a company goes bankrupt, which means it is no longer in business and no longer able to supply goods and services to the general public.
In their operation, corporations also have an obligation to pay their federal taxes, since they are organized under US government rules for corporations. That obligation only goes so far as to fulfill the requirements of tax laws. Any excess taxes which they pay, deprive the owners of their share of profits and also reduces the corporations ability to accumulate wealth for reinvestment in new production and marketing facilities.
Forcing corporations to pay taxes on foreign generated profits before return of those profits to the United States has some advantage to US federal government revenue, but not as much as anticipated. The stockholders of the corporations obtain a portion of the profits as dividends, on which they must pay federal income tax through their Forms 1040. If the federal government takes a big chunk of taxes out of overseas generated profits, there is less money available for stockholders, in the form of dividends, and less taxes paid by those stockholders through their Forms 1040. As mentioned earlier, this also jeopardizes the corporations position in being able to expand its manufacturing and marketing facilities. This limitation jeopardizes the health of US corporations, who have to compete with foreign-based corporations not subject to the same US tax rules.
The bottom line is that we need the US corporate tax provision requiring payment of taxes on foreign generated profits only when those profits are repatriated to the US. We need it to keep our corporations healthy and continuing to do business to supply us with the ancillary goods and services they generate.
Bernie Sanders is either shortsighted in not recognizing the complete picture as indicated above, or as consistent with the operations of most socialists, he distorts the picture to generate jealousy within the voting public using the false presumption that they are not obtaining their share of goods, services and handouts from the federal government. Bernie Sanders and people like him are a danger to our society.

Retaliation Following Warning

Open Email to Sen. Ted Cruz:

Dear Sen. Cruz,
The Washington Times reports that you warned Pres. Obama to stop spending on amnesty plans for illegal immigrants.
Congratulations. By your statement, you are obviously opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants and the spending of federal funds thereon.
However, I am somewhat concerned about your use of the term "warning", which is similar to "threat", and always implies that there will be some retaliation if the initial action is carried out.
Before the federal government intervened with children's privacy through the schools, the boys used to have a standard procedure for resolving conflicts. One of the contestants would put a wood chip on his shoulder and encourage the other contestant to knock it off. The implication was clear that if the chip was knocked off the shoulder, a physical fight would ensue. Clear-cut. If you do so and so, I will do so and so in retaliation.
Which brings us to your challenge. The likelihood is that Pres.
Obama will knock the chip off the shoulder by ignoring anything said by a federal judge or by you or other members of Congress. What then do you plan to do about it? What is your retaliation? If you don't have a specific retaliation in mind, you should not have made the challenge. If you have a specific retaliation in mind, why keep it secret? Let us all hear what it is.

billionaires and Average Per Capita Income

Open email to Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Dear Sen. Sanders,
I have read your recent newsletter on US billionaires. You obviously don't like them, and you would presumably eliminate them by distributing their wealth among the general public. It is not clear to me whether you have a purely socialistic interest in establishing wealth equalization or whether you are using this approach to generate jealousy in the general public and through that obtain more votes for your reelection.
Perhaps some data will convince you that an emotional approach is many times inconsistent with the facts.
There are 187 countries for which annual per capita incomes are listed. This is a little more data than can be easily handled, so I decided to take the first five countries in each of the four quartiles.
In the first quartile, the average annual per capita income ranged from $70,000 to $145,000. The number of billionaires in the five countries was 45.
In the second quartile, the average annual per capita income was in the $10,000 range. The number of billionaires in the five countries was 53.
In the third quartile, the average annual per capita income ranged from $2000 to $3000. The number of billionaires in the five countries was 13.
In the fourth quartile, the average annual per capita income range from $600 to $900. The number of billionaires in the five country was zero.
I don't know what you will get out of this, but to me the message is clear. The more billionaires you have in a country, the greater is the average per capita annual income. In other words, the presence of billionaires in a country is favorable to the financial status of the average inhabitant. I will not speculate on whether the country has made the billionaires or the billionaires have improved the country. I can only say we need more billionaires to improve the financial status of the average person.
See the attachment for more detail.

Murder versus War

In discussion about ISIS, the media is using a wrong terminology. The problem with using a wrong terminology is that it confuses the issue.
The media claims that ISIS is murdering Americans. Not true. ISIS is killing Americans.
The term "murder" is usually reserved for situations where an individual or a small number of people in a disorganized manner kill one or more other people. For example, the Manson killings were acts of murder.
However, if a large number of people are either involved directly or indirectly in the killing of unknown other people, this is an act of war, in which an "enemy" is killing another "enemy". In no way, is this action a matter of murder.
In the case of ISIS, the killers are killing Americans, because they are at war with America. Any killing that ISIS members do are a result of enemy action. There is no murder involved.
Calling the deaths of Americans at the hands of ISIS acts of murder, accidentally or intentionally hides the fact that ISIS is at war with America. America can then not respond equally in defending itself as a war enemy.
For example, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. That action by Japanese aircraft killed many Americans and destroyed many American ships. America recognized the Japanese action as an act of war and immediately responded with similar acts of war. The the complete war was then on and America was successful in winning it. If the Americans had regarded the Japanese attack as acts of murder, there would have been no basis for organized retaliation; no war; and you can guess the outcome.
ISIS by its actions has demonstrated that it is at war with America. America needs to recognize this activation of war by I SIS and respond equivocally, with the intention of defeating the enemy and thereby winning the war. Anything less, reduces all future action to skirmishes, such as US border control agents periodically have with drug dealers.

Terrorism versus Global Warming

There was a discussion on Fox News this morning concerning the President's comments on terrorism. He is reported to have said that terrorism is overblown. There are more people who will die from global warming than from terrorism.
This is the result of a President voted into office by an electorate with an unrealistic attitude toward hope and change. As human beings, almost all of us have a positive attitude with the hope that somehow things will be better. However, there is also a practical side of human nature, which is realism or an ability to face facts. Those persons who believe strongly in a future based on hope with an inability to recognize existing facts are candidates for psychoanalysis, depending upon the degree to which they live in a non-real world. I don't claim that Pres. Obama has gone so far that he needs psychoanalysis, but his borderline position with respect to recognizing facts as opposed to his emotional feeling of hope have done significant damage to our country.
More specifically, the President could have said that more people would be killed by an asteroid hitting Earth or a severe outbreak of bubonic plague than will be killed by terrorists. If he had done so, it would be more obvious that he did not understand reality. The point being that terrorism is here and most of us can clearly recognize it, whereas an asteroid or a bubonic plague effect is so remote as to not be worth considering. However, he chose to make the comparison with global warming, presumably on the basis that 50% of the general public believe that global warming is real. That's rather a high number but taken in its proper context it is still insignificant with respect to reality. Terrorism is here and 100% factual, probably recognized by 99% of the voting public.
If Pres. Obama wants to relate the factual existence of terrorism to a factual existence of global warming. He has a lot more work to do. He has already accomplished much by convincing 50% of the public of global warming reality but that is still nowhere near 99%.

Ebola and Quarantine

Open Email to Sen. Cruz,

Dear Sen. Cruz,
Thank you for your form letter concerning the Ebola virus and the Obama administration's handling of the previous incipient pandemic in the US and epidemic in West Africa.
Fortunately, the threat appears to have subsided. It may be that the subsiding was caused by appropriate action by the Obama Administration, but I believe it was more a matter of luck.
The spread of such diseases is basically controlled by a technical knowledge of the organisms lifecycle and reproduction. Such information is obtained by investigative processes, which are the responsibility of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). With this information, control is actually accomplished by quarantine procedures, which have been known for a great many years, but for some unknown reason seems to have fallen into disuse. It needs to be revived.
The CDC has previously admitted that it knew little about the Ebola virus. Perhaps that is changed, if they have been studying it for some months. However,  I believe you as a Senator,  need to have one of your subcommittees investigate CDC activity on this point, and if the CDC is found lacking, Congress should see that the appropriate investigative techniques are developed.
With respect to quarantine procedures, we now have an outbreak of measles, which can be appropriately handled by quarantine procedures. However, there seems to be a a reaction from some sources that mandatory vaccination would be an infringement of human rights. That's ridiculous. Human rights are only appropriately used when they do not negatively affect the rights of others. No person has the right to subject another innocent victim to measles or other similar disease, because he opposes vaccination for himself.

Handling Poverty with Opportunity

Open Email to Sen. Cruz:

Dear Sen. Cruz,
Thank you for your form letter on welfare. You said there are more than 80 welfare programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). You also said that you have cosponsored a bill to require SNAP recipients to be employed or be actively seeking employment.
This is a step in the right direction, but there are two things wrong with it. First, it's a bill that's apparently going nowhere and second, it would handle only 1-80th of the various welfare programs.
We are all sympathetic with the difficulties of the poor, but long experience has shown that handouts to the poor do not help to reduce the general state of poverty, primarily because those handouts remove an incentive for the poor to improve their situation themselves.
This is the land of opportunity and the granting of handouts pushes opportunity into the background for a simple reason of human nature. Receiving a handout generally requires no work, although your proposed bill would reduce that to some degree. Exercise of opportunity requires effort of independent action. Human beings by nature all prefer efficiency, and they will take the easiest route to a goal. To reduce poverty, it is necessary to have opportunity be the less difficult course to follow than that of receiving handouts.
The best place to teach this, with its attendant detail, is in high schools. It is ridiculous to require the average high school student to learn calculus, when he has not the slightest idea of how to make a living. He should be taught how to obtain a job or develop an independent line of work which would be profitable. In short, he should be taught how to make money. This is presently not done because of the continued inefficiency of the federal system involving the Department of Education which grants money to school boards only if they follow an ineffectual program of education dictated by the department.
I have said for many years that the Department of Education should be eliminated, which would automatically reduce grants to school boards and allow them to properly apply conditions of education which would be helpful to the average student. I encourage you, as a Senator, to call for elimination of the Department of Education or if that seems impractical to reduce its level of funding to a basis where it is unable to make grants to local school boards and thereby stop controlling the education program.

EPA Abuses

Open Email to Sen. Cruz:

Dear Sen. Cruz,
Thank you for your form letter on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
You said ,"The new emissions rules for existing power plants and the redefinition of navigable waters are overreaches that typify the Administration’s troubling behavior and threaten countless jobs. Controversial and harmful policies like these—especially those that seek to expand the role of the federal government—should be decided by Congress, not by a unilateral decree by the Obama administration."
I agree with you completely, but the question is, "What are you going to do about it?"
Congress set up the EPA and supposedly included guidelines on its responsibility and the courses of action it should take to satisfy the requirements of Congress. It also appointed the President as the Chief Executive Officer to control EPA operations. If this were a private business, the Congress, which would be equivalent to a Board of Directors, would have the power to direct the CEO to apply appropriate goals and responsibilities, and if necessary, fire the CEO. With the present state of government, Congress cannot fire the President. However, it can control the EPA program with appropriate funding or dis-funding, which originates in the House. The funding bill for the EPA could be very specific. It could disallow funding for any EPA action, which would be inappropriate from Congress's point of view.
We need EPA. It has done some good work, but it also has become a pawn for the President's ideological agenda. You mentioned new emissions rules for existing power plants. The President has been trying to kill off for many years the use of fossil fuels as an energy source and replace those with solar and wind energy. He has latched onto the emission of carbon dioxide in the burning of fossil fuels and has with insufficient data or even theory, claimed that such carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming with disastrous effects. The EPA has gone along for the ride.
On the positive side, it has previously been shown that the burning of coal containing significant quantities of sulfur gives sulfur dioxide as an emission, which subsequently oxidizes in the atmosphere to sulfur trioxide and is later brought down to earth as it dissolves in falling rain. This is the acid rain effect and is real. The global warming effect from carbon dioxide emissions is unreal. Congress should force the EPA to come up with a substantial set of facts or at least a well-qualified scientific theory that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels cause global warming. In its program, Congress should also be wary of claims from pseudo-scientists, who have joined the President/EPA bandwagon on carbon dioxide/global warming. They are being paid to do so through University research grants.
With respect to redefining navigable waters, from what Congress originally stipulated, the EPA has really gone out on a limb to foster the President 'S power grab. The EPA is now trying to define every little puddle and every dry streambed in the West as navigable waterways, in order to take control of the small amount of private not already in control of the federal government. Here again, appropriate use of the funding mechanism by Congress might be able to put a stop to that. If not, perhaps the EPA should be sued in federal court by Congress and let the court decide what a navigable waterway is.

American Citizens Risk in War Areas

I am sorry about the death of Kayla Mueller, a U.S. ISIS hostage apparently killed in a Jordanian airstrike on Syria. However if she had not been there, she would not have been killed.
I covered this situation in a previous blog on 12/7/14. At that time, I said the following:
"The question seems to be what do you do to protect American citizens in dangerous parts of the world? It's not an easy one to answer, but I think I can offer clarity on the subject.
The first thing to consider is whether a particular country is dangerous to American citizens. We can easily pick out a few that are not dangerous, such as Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Some of the clearly dangerous ones are Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Some appear to be marginal, such as Mexico, Cuba, Lebanon, and Israel. However, I don't think that's specific enough.
I believe the United States government should designate which countries of the world are unsafe for Americans to travel and work in. Travel would mean entry to the country for business reasons, family contacts, tourism, missionary and other religious work. Perhaps the best test of whether a country is dangerous for Americans is whether the United States maintains a working embassy with minimal security in the country.
If a country is on the dangerous list, the position of the United States should be that Americans are not restricted from entering or operating within the country, but the United States government will take no extraordinary means to protect them or save them from further harm if captured or detained. Persons excluded from that position would be all employees of the United States government, including military personnel, federal representatives and congressmen, State Department officials, spies, or persons engaged in any activity when they are on the federal government payroll."
Therefore, my position is that Kayla Mueller died as a result of a poor decision to her part to be in Syria. However, the federal government is not doing its job of properly advising citizens traveling abroad of the dangers that might be involved.