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News/Politics 8-27-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. While much of the world focuses on ISIS, Boko Haram continues their bloody rampage.

From PressTV   “Boko Haram Takfiri militants have taken control of more Nigerian towns as they press ahead with their attacks in the African country.

A Cameroonian police source said on Tuesday that Boko Haram militants moved into the Nigerian town of Ashigashyia overnight Monday, where they killed three people in front of a church, after soldiers sent there fled to take refuge across the border in nearby Cameroon.

Nearly 500 Nigerian soldiers escaped from the border towns of Ashigashyia and Kerawa over the weekend to take refuge from Boko Haram Takfiris on Cameroonian territory.”

“According to residents, the militants now control at least the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state as well as Gwoza and Gamboru Ngala in neighboring Borno state.

In the northeastern state of Adamawa, which has been under a state of emergency along with Borno and Yobe states since May last year, local government officials said scores of gunmen attacked the town of Madagali on Saturday, forcing out soldiers and taking over government buildings.”

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2. Liberals have a new boogeyman. And of course they’ll blame greed and not the high tax policies that caused it.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “The major fast food chain Burger King is in talks to merge with the Canadian donut and coffee chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters to Canada.

Burger King would be one of the largest and most well-known companies to seek to leave the U.S. in a so-called corporate inversion, in which a U.S. company buys a smaller foreign company in a lower-tax jurisdiction and then places its headquarters in the foreign country to lower its tax bill. Its departure will likely heighten concerns about inversions eroding the American tax base.

In a press release announcing the discussions, Burger King and Tim Hortons said that they were pursuing the deal for business reasons and to accelerate Tim Hortons’ international growth. But the new company’s headquarters would be located in Canada, which has lower corporate taxes than the U.S.

President Obama has criticized companies attempting to move headquarters to lower-tax countries as “corporate deserters.” The Treasury Department is preparing options to prevent tax inversions through tax rules.

Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation to tighten the rules to prevent companies from fleeing the domestic tax base, but Republicans have opposed such measures, saying that they do not address the underlying problem of the U.S. tax code’s lack of competitiveness internationally.”

And some of it’s being financed by Obama’s pal Buffett, who already owes millions in back taxes. He must not have gotten the “economic patriotism” memo.

From CNBC  “Burger King on Tuesday confirmed plans to acquire Ontario-based Tim Hortons for about $11 billion—creating a new company to be based in Canada with combined sales of $23 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett is helping to fund the deal by committing $3 billion of preferred equity financing. The news release on the deal did not disclose the terms for Berkshire, which is only a financing source and will not have any participation in the management and operation of the business.”

“Amid speculation that the deal was motivated to save taxes by moving a U.S. company’s headquarters to a foreign country, sources said the U.S. would receive at least as much in taxes, not less, because of the way the deal is structured. Those sources did not elaborate. Locating the new company’s base in Canada was seen as a way to garner support from Canadian regulators, which tend to take a dim view of foreign acquirers, the sources said.”

Here comes the new boogeyman…

From TheDailyBeast  “To help business grow in America, taxpayers have funded public infrastructure, workforce training, and incentives to encourage R&D and capital investment,” Brown thundered. “Runaway corporations benefited from those policies but want U.S. companies to pay their share of the tab.”

Sen. Carl Levin, who has long been a champion for closing corporate tax loopholes, warned the company that the blowback from the American consumer could swamp any tax benefits it receives from leaving the United States. He was speaking before the deal was confirmed on Tuesday.”

“So could Levin and Brown be onto something? Burger King’s Facebook wall has been inundated with threats from customers over a possible boycott should their corporate operations move to Canada. An advertisement for their Mushroom and Swiss burger became a key venting ground for Americans frustrated about the potential deal.

“If you attempt to buy Tim Horton’s for the purposes of evading US Taxes, I will NEVER step foot in another Burger King again…Don’t do it,” read the most ‘liked’ comment on the post. Others called them “tax cheats,” “freeloaders,” “tax dodgers”—and many others threatened boycotts. The same fate befell the company’s Facebook advertisement for cookies.”

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3. Obama spoke to veterans yesterday in a speech to The American Legion. The response was as you’d expect.

From TheDailyMail  “President Barack Obama faced a tough crowd on Tuesday – American military veterans – and fell flat on his applause lines as he failed to win over the American Legion’s convention-goers.

His 35-minute speech seemed to have reminded the audience of the stark divide between the White House’s policy choices and the feelings of the men and women often called on to carry them out.

A Virginia legionnaire who served in the U.S. Marine Corps told MailOnline that ‘a small group of Obama’s admirers – and there are some here – sat near the front and tried to generate applause for him about 10 times.’

‘They didn’t get much pickup,’ the retired lieutenant colonel said of the ‘instigators’ gathered at the Charlotte, North Carolina event, but ‘they were persistent. You could tell when the applause was genuine and when it wasn’t. It was obvious to everyone here.’

Most of the veterans sat on their hands, leaving awkward silences where White House speechwriters expected ovations.”

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4. I’m starting to think this global warming thing might be a scam. 🙂

From Breitbart  “The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been caught red-handed manipulating temperature data to show “global warming” where none actually exists.

At Amberley, Queensland, for example, the data at a weather station showing 1 degree Celsius cooling per century was “homogenized” (adjusted) by the Bureau so that it instead showed a 2.5 degrees warming per century.

At Rutherglen, Victoria, a cooling trend of -0.35 degrees C per century was magically transformed at the stroke of an Australian meteorologist’s pen into a warming trend of 1.73 degrees C per century.

Last year, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology made headlines in the liberal media by claiming that 2013 was Australia’s hottest year on record. This prompted Australia’s alarmist-in-chief Tim Flannery – an English literature graduate who later went on to earn his scientific credentials with a PhD in palaeontology, digging up ancient kangaroo bones – to observe that global warming in Australia was “like climate change on steroids.”

But we now know, thanks to research by Australian scientist Jennifer Marohasy, that the hysteria this story generated was based on fabrications and lies.”

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5. Donna mentioned later yesterday that it was National Dog Day. So in honor of our furry friends, Hero dogs: Tales of bravery and sacrifice.

From MSNNews  “Aug. 26 is National Dog Day. To mark the occasion, we look at heroic dogs and the way they saved people and fellow canines.”

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8 thoughts on “News/Politics 8-27-14”

  4. Tim Horton’s is an iconic chain here in Canada – it’s popularity has even raised discussions on how to reduce the emissions due to the long lines at the drive-thru every morning. To many, selling Tim’s to an American company would be like selling the Mounties to Disney (once the subject of an April Fool’s news story by CBC). The takeover by 3G (the Brazilian based majority owner of Burger King) and Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway killed our Heinz factory, putting hundreds out of work. The same could well happen again – Canadian consumers don’t like being pushed around by outside corporations, as Target could attest. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/how-the-burger-king-deal-could-change-tim-hortons-1.2746620

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  5. From Drudge: This could be significant. This can’t have force of law. But regulators are above the law.
    WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.
    In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
    To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.

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  7. The Burger King acquisition is interesting. The parent corporation, 3G, is actually based in Brazil and is known to emphasize quarterly returns above all else. Tims and BK claim this merger allows for mutual benefits ie tax rates for one and and international marketing expertise for the other. However, I don’t see the latter.

    Tims is making a slow but steady push into the US (north east and upper midwest — not coincidentally where hockey has some roots) and is popular in the Gulf countries (expats and Arab Canadians brought it over). I really don’t see it as needing BK’s expertise — BK is on a slow decline and is closing restaurants and it has not updated itself as well as McD’s — Tim’s is probably better off with its existing strategy.

    Now 3G also claims its not after the tax benefits. In part thats bull but the tax difference isn’t nearly as great as posted. Canada’s base rate is about 25% and with very few deductions thats what you pay. The US rate is about 35% but corporate lobby groups have carved out an array of specialized “boutique” tax breaks, deductions, subsidies etc all dependent on industry, location, etc that the effective rate is anywhere between 0 to 35%. The US problem is not the rate but the consistency and reliability of the rate. More accurately then 3G may be looking for tax stability.

    Why then merge? 3G is using a large decaying company (its real estate holdings are worth more than the actual restaurant) to grab a smaller more vibrant company. Once gained, the question is are they after long term growth or are they as vulture capitalists ready to strip BK and Tims’ down for some quick quarterly profit? If the latter, they might be using/messing with the wrong company — Tims’ controls 75 to 80% of all retail coffee sold in Canada and its a national icon. The gov’t, no matter what party, will intervene if they suspect 3G is taking Tim’s in a non Canadian direction (whatever that is)

    Targets entry in Canada is also interesting. It used the same method as Walmart, buy an existing company (Zellers), close some, and rebrand the others. However, Zellers was completely unionized and Target deliberately closed the stores in such a way that the staff were fired and then hired a day later non-unionized. One day it was a unionized Zellers store and the next day it was a non-union Target. This didn’t go over well and killed staff morale. Secondly, they also stocked the stores differently than the American Target — most Canadians live near the border and have shopped in the US — they were not impressed. Two lousy first impressions.

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