Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff has a nice article (via) on the situation that Barack Obama will be greeted with when he enters office.  It can’t be pointed out often enough:  If he does not actively roll back this administration’s excesses and power grabs he will ratify them.  For instance, Stacy Sullivan points out that “the machinery at Guantánamo grinds on, seemingly oblivious to what lies ahead.”  And since that place may have put the president-elect’s defense secretary into legal jeopardy it may be more than just bureaucratic inertia in play.  That’s the kind of situation we can look forward to.

The newspaper industry is in great financial distress, and maybe they are trying to cushion the blow of their immanent mortality for the rest of us by publishing inane nonsense like transparently obvious rationalizations for morally degenerate D.C. establishment exceptionalism.

Murray Waas: “Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.”  Journalism hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory the past eight years, but there’s been enough of this kind of digging by enough reporters for Congress and the courts to run with.  The courts have been good - at times great - in resisting the excesses of the executive branch, but Congress, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, has been an unmitigated disgrace.

Here’s an eye glazing story (emphasis mine) about some coming changes in global stock indexes from the Wall Street Jou….trouble….staying…awa…zzzzzzz

Recently announced plans by Caribbean-based U.S. companies to move to Europe are likely to change the face of some major stock indexes, causing further upheaval for investors in an already troubled year.

<snip>

Covidien joins Tyco International Ltd., Foster Wheeler Ltd., Weatherford International Ltd. and Noble Corp. as companies that announced this month board approval for moves to Europe. Aside from Covidien, all the companies, which still need to hold shareholder votes, plan to relocate to Switzerland.

Transocean Inc. this month completed its plan redomicile from Bermuda to Switzerland. Insurer ACE Ltd. made the same move earlier this year.

The moves are prompted in large part by fears of tighter tax rules under an Obama administration.

<snip>

“In the past, companies domiciled in the Caribbean may have gone for some local regulations, but they were otherwise U.S. companies,” said [David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of S&P’s index committee]. “But Switzerland has a truly developed economy and financial system and a complete legal system. It’s a bit of a stretch to say, [about being domiciled there] ‘that’s just a convenience.’ “

<snip>

“I think these companies are trying to put themselves in better positions to deal with the changes to international tax rules under [President-elect] Obama,” said Rob Culbertson, tax partner at law firm of Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker.

Mr. Culberston said the fact that Switzerland has a tax treaty with the U.S. means that companies domiciled may be shielded from international tax-rule changes. Bermuda doesn’t have such a treaty.

…mmph WHAT?!  So does this mean that companies that have been hiding in, ahem, “lower-tax jurisdictions” are relocating from their offshore tax havens in anticipation of a crackdown?  Smooth.  I’m sure it’s all perfectly legal, but it’s the kind of scumbag behavior that makes people think large corporations, while perhaps run by perfectly nice people, behave as sociopaths and deserve to be regarded as such.

UNPACKING JANE:  From pp. 147-8, on the CIA’s initial setup of our torture infrastructure:

What the Agency was seeking for its most valuable prisoners was total isolation, total secrecy, and total control…One obvious choice was Afghanistan.  For the same reason the White House could argue Afghanistan was “a failed state,” unbound by international law, it was also an ideal spot for secret CIA prisons.  Several other countries, including a number of former Soviet satellite states who were hoping to win U.S. favor for their ambitions to join NATO, also agreed to host ghost prisons.  Although their leaders have denied it, multiple credible reports have identified Poland and Romania in particular as host countries.  The irony of the United States rewarding striving democracies, with histories as police states, for their help in interrogating prisoners outside the protection of the law was evidently not dwelled upon.  “We told them we’d help them join NATO if they helped us torture people,” a cynical former CIA officer said.

The bargains of our era.