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Romney’s Tax Returns Show How Laws Favor the Wealthy

From the NYTimes:

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, made $27 million in 2010. They held millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account and millions more in partnerships in the Cayman Islands. His family’s trusts sold thousands of shares in Goldman Sachs that were offered to favored clients when the storied investment house first went public. The couple’s effective federal tax rate for the year worked out to 13.9 percent, a rate typical of households earning about $80,000 a year. Yet the hundreds of pages of tax documents released by Mr. Romney’s campaign on Tuesday morning did not readily reveal any elaborate financial legerdemain or exotic tax shelters. What Mr. Romney’s returns illustrated, instead, was the array of perfectly ordinary ways in which the United States tax code confers advantages on the rich, allowing Mr. Romney to amass wealth under rules very different from those faced by most Americans who take home a paycheck. 

(via: inothernews)

“[F]or about a good hundred and ten years, movies have invented all sorts of tricks and all sorts of fancy and sometimes very charming means to make us believe that films were concurring space indeed. The camera was put on tracks and on shoulders and on steadicams and on cranes and you can put it into automobiles and planes and god knows you could even throw it out of the window. But it always ended up on a two-dimensional screen, so space was really always fake. It was always a simulation. I only realized that there was something lacking when I tried to imagine how to film Pina’s dance, because the two of us had been trying to make a film together for twenty years. I was just  stalling for time and I found myself at a loss how to film her work, because my tools and my craft didn’t seem to have what it took to really do justice to Pina’s art and to the magic and to the contagious energy of it. I only finally saw myself able to say “now I can do it” when I saw my first 3D film and realized that was the answer and that’s what we had been missing. Space, for the first time, was a tool for filmmakers. I think 3D is the greatest revolution ever since the talkies, only most people didn’t realize it because we thought it was just a gimmick for national blockbusters. Now some movies come out that show the true potential of 3D which is really a whole different way of seeing the world.” — Wim Wenders

“[F]or about a good hundred and ten years, movies have invented all sorts of tricks and all sorts of fancy and sometimes very charming means to make us believe that films were concurring space indeed. The camera was put on tracks and on shoulders and on steadicams and on cranes and you can put it into automobiles and planes and god knows you could even throw it out of the window. But it always ended up on a two-dimensional screen, so space was really always fake. It was always a simulation. I only realized that there was something lacking when I tried to imagine how to film Pina’s dance, because the two of us had been trying to make a film together for twenty years. I was just  stalling for time and I found myself at a loss how to film her work, because my tools and my craft didn’t seem to have what it took to really do justice to Pina’s art and to the magic and to the contagious energy of it.

I only finally saw myself able to say “now I can do it” when I saw my first 3D film and realized that was the answer and that’s what we had been missing. Space, for the first time, was a tool for filmmakers. I think 3D is the greatest revolution ever since the talkies, only most people didn’t realize it because we thought it was just a gimmick for national blockbusters. Now some movies come out that show the true potential of 3D which is really a whole different way of seeing the world.”

— Wim Wenders

“Still, there’s a reason for optimism about America’s workforce, and a good lesson to be learned from Apple’s surge. What really makes the iPhone work isn’t the hardware. Sure, the glass—designed by Corning in upstate New York and manufactured in China—is beautiful. But the transformative part of the phone is the software. The code behind the touch-screen was written here; the iOS operating system was written here; most of the apps that we use are written here. Thousands of companies, in fact, have been started here to write apps for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Software remains a great American expertise, and it’s only becoming more important as processors shrink into ever more powerful forms. As Marc Andreessen argued in the Wall Street Journal this summer, “software is eating the world.” Computer code is transforming industry after industry, and writing code is something that Americans are very good at. It’s also something that requires creativity, which isn’t fostered in giant factories with guards guiding people through crowded doorways and a central kitchen that roasts three tons of pork and thirteen tons of rice a day.

So perhaps there’s a different insight from Apple for Obama. Yes, there are industries where manufacturing jobs can be brought back to America through proper tax incentives and training programs. But maybe he should have talked more about the things that he could do to keep software jobs here. He spoke of federal funding for university and scientific research. But a real pro-software agenda would also include reforming patent law to stop trolling (and perhaps eliminating software patents altogether); increasing H-1B visas for highly skilled coders; stopping Congress from defunding DARPA, whose research helped create Siri, the iPhone’s talking assistant; and opening up the unused, federally owned wireless spectrum.

That agenda wouldn’t bring Apple’s manufacturing jobs back, but it would help to keep the company’s coding jobs here. And it would certainly help develop “an economy that’s built to last.”

— Nicholas Thompson

Apple CEO Tim Cook responds to claims of factory worker mistreatment

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are. For the many hundreds of you who are based at our suppliers’ manufacturing sites around the world, or spend long stretches working there away from your families, I know you are as outraged by this as I am. For the people who aren’t as close to the supply chain, you have a right to know the facts.

Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain. As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people. […]

We are focused on educating workers about their rights, so they are empowered to speak up when they see unsafe conditions or unfair treatment. As you know, more than a million people have been trained by our program.

We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word. You can follow our progress at apple.com/supplierresponsibility.

To those within Apple who are tackling these issues every day, you have our thanks and admiration. Your work is significant and it is changing people’s lives. We are all proud to work alongside you.

Tim

©2011 Kateoplis