Tag: TMC Politics

In an email to The Huffington Post on Sunday, GE spokesman Seth Martin wrote that the company paid $3.2 billion in cash income taxes worldwide, including in the U.S., in 2012. In addition, he stated, GE paid more than $1 billion in other state, local and federal taxes.

“GE is one of the largest payers of corporate income taxes,” Martin wrote.

Still, GE and other hugely profitable U.S.-based companies like it have come under fire in recent years over their tax practices. Tax breaks given to corporations cost the U.S. government $180 billion per year, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. In addition, companies are likely stashing $1.9 trillion overseas in an aim to avoid paying U.S. taxes on those profits, according to a March analysis by Bloomberg.

GE parks the most profits offshore of any company, Bloomberg found. Many companies including, Apple, Microsoft and Google allegedly employ this strategy of keeping money overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes on those profits.

The real problem is that GE doesn’t pay its fair share of the US tax burden and, apparently, Apple gets away with a billion dollar tax dodge due to a loop hole in the tax laws. Tim Cooke, Apple’s CEO, appearing before Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations defended funneling billions to off shore tax shelters. What didn’t get mentioned at the hearings were the billions that Apple saved using the “excess stock options” tax break. The loophole allows corporations to deduct compensation that they give to executives in the form of stock options as an expense, the same way they deduct cash compensation. The hitch: stock options don’t hurt the companies bottom line, unlike cash options.

“The only meaningful costs associated with this are that the more stock you issue, the more it dilutes the value of the stock that’s already held by shareholders,” Matthew Gardner the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy told The Huffington Post last month.

Apple took home $3.2 billion between 2010 and 2012 (pdf) thanks to this tax break — the most of any company, the report found. But it’s not the only company taking advantage of the loophole. Activists have criticized Facebook over its use of the executive stock option tax break in recent months after the social networking giant used it to wipe out its entire tax liability in 2012.

Though using the tax break has been rather common practice among technology companies, which tend to issue a higher percentage of their compensation in stock options, it’s becoming more common and lawmakers are slowly starting to take notice, Gardner said.

While the hearing focused on Apple’s offshore holdings, companies have stashed $1.9 trillion in offshore accounts to avoid paying US taxes.

Large U.S. companies boosted their offshore earnings by 15 percent last year to a record $1.9 trillion, avoiding hefty tax bills by keeping the profits abroad, according to a new report.

The overseas earnings stockpile has climbed by 70 percent over the past five years, said research firm Audit Analytics. Data in its report covers the Russell 3000 index of the largest U.S. corporations. [..]

Conglomerate General Electric Co , had the most indefinitely reinvested overseas earnings, at about $108 billion, while drugmaker Pfizer Inc was next with $73 billion, according to Audit Analytics.

Yeah, corporations not paying taxes is the problem.

The main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This is an Open Thread.

Chris in Paris and John Aravosis at Americablog gives us some good news on the aftermath of the deadly tornado in Moore, OK:

• OMG Oklahoma tornado victim interviewed about losing her dog in rubble, when she spots her dog
• Heartwarming videos of parents reuniting with kids at Oklahoma school destroyed by tornado

Then from John, the uglier side of this tragedy from the “Me, But Not For Thee” crowd:

• Oklah. GOP Senator takes own constituents hostage, demands budget cuts or no tornado aid
• Anti-Sandy-relief GOP Oklahoma Senator: Aid for my state is “totally different” than Sandy

Over at Corrente, lambert‘s marathon ObamaCare Clusterf**k continues with:

• The “unbanked” are 27% of those eligible for ObamaCare, and may be denied coverage because they have no way to pay that insurance companies will accept
• Today’s rollout compared to Medicare’s

At FDL’s Newsdesk, DSWright fills us in on the news that we missed while the MSM is reporting the disaster. No, folks, the idiocy in politics and the changing canvas of the “Scandal-Gate” has not stopped:

• White House Changes Story On IRS Knowledge Again
• New Head Of CIA National Clandestine Service Featured In Wikileaks Cables On Torture Case
• Occupy Our Homes Activists Arrested At Justice Department Headquarters

From Jon Walker at FDL Action:

• Poverty Among Senior Citizens is Worse than Official Numbers
• Obama Gives Civil Liberty Abuse a Bipartisan Seal of Approval

Kevin Gosztola continues his reporting on “Reporter- Gate” and the Bradley Manning trial at FDL’s The Dissenter:

• When the Justice Department Pursues Reporters as Spies
• Government Accepts Bradley Manning’s Plea to Lesser Offense Related to Disclosure of Diplomatic Cable

From the many contributors at MyFDL:

• CIA: An Idea That’s Time Has Gone
  
  by David Swanson
• Jamie Dimon’s Sleazy Record
  
  by masaccio
• Changing My Recorded Gender With DOD
  
  by Autumn Sandeen

From the contributors at Grist here are just a few of today’s really interesting features:

• Fourth-grade filmmaker sneaks a camera into the cafeteria to document his gross school lunch
  
  by Susan Laskow
• Bill aims to tackle climate-caused health problems
  
  by John Upton
• Utilities for dummies: How they work and why that needs to change
  
  by David Roberts
• Manhattan to see more killer heat waves
  
  by John Upton

And finally, Charles P. Pierce gives Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse a Big Bravo. Both Charles and Atrios make note of a possible “band reunion” of sorts:

Bring the band back together.

   The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility. The list of candidates could start with Kenneth Starr, who chased down the scandals, real and imagined, of the Clinton presidency.

They learned nothing.

The stupid just burns.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Peter Sheer: Real Outrage Is That Surveillance of AP Reporters’ Calls Was Probably Legal

The real outrage about the Justice Department’s use of secret subpoenas for the phone records of Associated Press journalists is that, based on the information that has surfaced to date, it was probably legal.

Under federal law the Justice Department needs only a subpoena — a piece of paper that a U.S. Attorney generates unilaterally, without any court authorization — to obtain from phone companies and other service providers the call logs for customers. This includes essentially the same information you see on your monthly bill — numbers dialed, calls received, duration and times of calls.

Although federal prosecutors need a court’s OK to obtain the content of phone communications (and most, but not all, email communications), nothing in the relevant federal statute (the Stored Communications Act) requires a prosecutor to satisfy preconditions or to submit to judicial oversight when subpoenaing “metadata” associated with a phone number.

Robert Reich: Global Capital and the Nation State

As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this. [..]

Baloney. The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible — and play off one country against another to keep their taxes down and subsidies up, thereby shifting more of the tax burden to ordinary people whose wages are already shrinking because companies are playing workers off against each other.

The main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This is an Open Thread.

Paul Krugman at his blog Conscious of a Liberal want to know Where Are The Deficit Celebrations?.

This is your Obama DOJ at work protecting us from an 83 year old nun and two pacifists, from transcriber at Corrente:

• In which an 83-year-old nun is convicted of terrorism, her weapon is white roses, and the jury is not allowed to hear a former Attorney General testify in her defense: It’s nukes in America

also from lambert:

• Unlike Michelle Obama, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with aspiring to be a rapper

From Gaius Publius at Americablog:

• Pressure building on OFA over Keystone Pipeline betrayal

At Crooks and Liars, Mike Lux writes about foreclosure protestors demanding that Attorney General Holder hold the Wall Street Banks that ravaged America’s economy accountable:

• The Courage to Put Yourself on the Line

From Suzie Madrak:

• Are The Deficit Hawks Actually Trying To Starve Us Now?

and by David:

• Iowa Senate Republican Staffer Fired After Reporting Sexual Harassment

At FDL Action, Jon Walker on health care:

• Poorly Designed Employer Mandate Could Lead to Problematic Gaming
• Projected Government Health Spending Down Almost a Trillion Since Deficit Hysteria Began

Over at naked capitalism, Dan Kervick:

• Did the House of Representatives Just (Unintentionally) Eliminate the Debt Ceiling?

David Dayen:

• SEC Convenes Foot-Dragging Roundtable on Rating Agency Reform, While Securities Issuers Return to Familiar Rating-Shopping Tricks

From our friends at Voices on the Square:

by Robyn:

• Pentagon acknowledges transgender veterans

and JayeRaye:

• Hellraisers Journal: IWW strikers sing on their way to jail after mass arrest.

And in case you hadn’t turned on the TV or Radio, a huge, deadly tornado swept through Moore, Oklahoma leveling the suburb of Oklahoma City.

Regardless of the left’s opinion of Fox News, the Obama administration has gone way over the constitutional line and this is adds to the serious threat to freedom of the press. The idea that the government. on its unconstrained wild hunt for whistle blowers, can issue secret subpoenas for telephone records just got worse this morning. The case is being made against Fox News reporter James Rosen for his reporting on the possibility that North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests back in 2009. The Department of Justice is prosecuting State Department adviser and arms expert Stephen Jin-Woo Kim for “leaking” the information to James Rosen of Fox News. To makes the case against Rosen this is what the DOJ did:

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails. [..]

Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist – and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

First, Kim did not obtain these documents illegally, he had access to them, He did not steal or sell the documents, or pass them to an enemy agent of the US. He gave, what is for all intents and purposes, innocuous information to a news reporter. For that Kim is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Now the DOJ is seeking to prosecute Rosen for revealing the information.

Glenn Greenwald reiterated that it is not against US law to to publish classified information and is far worse than the secret subpoena of the phone records of the Associated Press:

The focus of the Post’s report yesterday is that the DOJ’s surveillance of Rosen, the reporter, extended far beyond even what they did to AP reporters. The FBI tracked Rosen’s movements in and out of the State Department, traced the timing of his calls, and – most amazingly – obtained a search warrant to read two days worth of his emails, as well as all of his emails with Kim. In this case, said the Post, “investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.” It added that “court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist”.

But what makes this revelation particularly disturbing is that the DOJ, in order to get this search warrant, insisted that not only Kim, but also Rosen – the journalist – committed serious crimes. The DOJ specifically argued that by encouraging his source to disclose classified information – something investigative journalists do every day – Rosen himself broke the law.

In an affidavit (pdf) from the FBI by Agent Reginald B. Reyes in the application for the search warrant, Reyes alleged that because Rosen and Kim used aliases to protect their communications and sought ways to maintain confidentiality, all completely legal for journalists to do, Rosen was acting “much like an intelligence officer would run an [sic] clandestine intelligence source, the Reporter instructed Mr. Kim on a covert communications plan… to facilitate communication with Mr. Kim and perhaps other sources of information.”

In her comparison of this case with the Associated Press, and cases against James Risen of The New York Times and Bradley Manning, Marcy Wheeler notes that Agent Reyes used the strategy of painting Rosen as criminal to circumvent the “Privacy Protection Act protections for media work product” in order to obtain the warrant for Rosen’s e-mails and other records:

In other words, during a period from May 2010 through January 2011, Eric Holder’s DOJ was developing this theory under which journalists were criminals, though it’s just now that we’re all noticing this May 2010 affidavit that lays the groundwork for that theory.

Maybe that development was predictable, given that during precisely that time period, the lawyer who fucked up the Ted Stevens prosecution, William Welch, was in charge of prosecuting leaks (though it’s not clear he had a role in Kim’s prosecution before he left in 2011).

But it’s worth noting the strategy – and the purpose it serves – because it is almost certainly still in effect. FBI Special Agent Reginald Reyes accused Rosen of being a criminal so he could get around the Privacy Protection Act protections for media work product (See pages 4 and following), which specifically exempts “fruits of a crime” or “property … used [] as a means of committing a criminal offense.” Then he further used it to argue against giving notice to Fox or Rosen.

   Because of the Reporter’s own potential criminal liability in this matter, we believe that requesting the voluntary production of the materials from Reporter would be futile and would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation and of the evidence we seek to obtain by the warrant. (29)

While the AP’s phone records weren’t taken via a warrant, it would be unsurprising if the government is still using this formula – journalists = criminals and therefore cannot have notice – to collect evidence. Indeed, that may be one reason why we haven’t seen the subpoena to the AP.

It is very clear that this is an unprecedented threat to freedom of the press and the Obama administration has escalated this war since Obama took office in 2009.

In an interview last week with Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, senior fellow at The Nation Institute Chis Hedges, called the monitoring of the AP phone records “one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press.”

“Talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government, and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they’re terrified of going to jail.”

~Chris Hedges~

Here is Mr. Hedges piece from Truthdig documenting The Death of Truth

Other related articles from Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian:

Justice Department’s pursuit of AP’s phone records is both extreme and dangerous

The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Robert Kuttner: Needed: A Mass Movement for College Debt Relief

Austerity has failed in Europe, where the European Union just racked up 18 months of negative growth with no end in sight. It is failing in the United States, where this year’s deficit reductions will cut the growth rate in half. [..]

What might change this grim politics?

Last seek, Senator Elizabeth Warren — how splendid to be able write the words Senator and Warren in the same sentence — showed the way. Warren introduced her very first free-standing bill, and fittingly it was a bill to cut interest rates on student loans.

Glen Ford: Radicalized = Weaponized = Kill at Will

“The line between political beliefs and illegal action is eradicated, so that the ‘radicalized’ person or group is inherently deserving of liquidation.”

Like all advanced police states, the U.S. national security regime has begun speaking its own, degenerate language. It is a mode of speech that simultaneously defines the “enemy” and justifies his or her destruction. The soulless, bureaucratic roots of National Security Speech belie the ruthless intent, which is to make the utter destruction of the targeted group or individual appear to be the natural order of things.

“Self-radicalization” is one of the terms coined by national security speakers. To people like President Obama, a guy who adds targets to his Kill List every Tuesday, “self-radicalization” represents a grave threat to the American state. “One of the dangers that we now face,” said Obama, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, “are self-radicalized individuals who are already in the United States,” because it is difficult to prevent them from carrying out “plots.”

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Steve Kornacki: Joining Steve are: Margie Omero, democratic pollster, managing director, Purple Strategies; Alan Abramowitz, political science professor, Emory University; Rick Hertzberg, writer, The New Yorker; Liz Kennedy, counsel, Demos; Mark Elias, attorney, Perkins Coie, chairman of the firm’s political law practice; Kim Barker, reporter, ProPublica; and Chaumtoli Huq, professor, New York Law School, with expertise in labor, employment and human rights,

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests this Sunday are: White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer; Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH); Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ); Rep. Tom Price (R-GA); and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY).

On the roundtable are guests: George Will, Washington Post; Ron Fournier, National Journal; April Ryan, American Urban Radio Networks; Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation; and Jeff Zeleny, ABC News.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer; Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX); Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT); and President/CEO of the Associated Press Gary Pruitt.

His roundtable guests are: David Sanger, New York Times; Lois Romano, Politico; Dan Balz, Washington Post; and John Dickerson, CBS News.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Kasie Hunt, NBC News; David Ignatius, Washington Post; Gloria Borger, CNN; and Howard Finman, Huffington Post.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: THis Sunday on MTP the guests are White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI).

At the roundtable: Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA); Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal; and Bob Woodward, Washington Post.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley:Ms. Crowley’s guests are White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); Susan Page, USA Today; Democratic Strategist Donna Brazile; GOP Strategist Ana Navarro; and Jessica Yellin, CNN.

Dan Pfieffer is a busy man. He is also a guest on Faux Noise.

We learn in this week segment of Up‘s “What We Know Now” with host Steve Kornacki that Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed marriage equality passed by the Demcratic held state legislature. Also, Jason Richwine resigned from the Heritage Foundation after revelations about his doctoral dissertation. In the aftermath, Pablo Pantoja, the director of the RNC Florida Hispanic Outreach, resigned and became a Democrat.

Democratic nominee for the vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts, Ed Markey dis-invited  former Georgia Democratic congressman Ben Jones from a fundraising event over Jones’ support of the displaying the Confederate flag public events.

According to Public Policy Polling, hipsters are no longer “in.”

Telling us what they have learned this week are Steve’s guests: Patricia Ireland, former President of the National Organization for Women; Anu Bhagwati, executive director and co-founder, Service Women’s Action Network; Goldie Taylor, MSNBC contributor, managing editor, The Goldie Taylor Project; and Jessica Hinves, former U.S. Air Force member, board member of Protect Our Defenders (a group that works to being attention to military sexual assault).

Minnesota Legalizes Gay Marriage: Gov. Mark Dayton Signs Bill Into Law

from Huffington Post

Minnesota officially became the 12th U.S. state to approve same-sex marriage May 14 when Gov. Mark Dayton appeared before a jubilant crowd to sign a marriage equality bill into law.  [..]

Dayton’s signature came just a day after the state Senate approved it with a 37-30 vote, the Associated Press reported.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should certainly include the right to marry the person you love,” he noted.

Echoing those sentiments was State Rep. Karen Clark and Sen. Scott Dibble, who are both openly gay.

Jason Richwine Resigns From Heritage Foundation After Dissertation Controversy

by Luke Johnson, Huffington Post

Jason Richwine, the co-author of a Heritage Foundation report on immigration who came under fire this week for arguing in his Harvard dissertation that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. have substantially lower IQs than whites, resigned Friday. [..]

The report put the cost of immigration reform at a whopping $6.3 trillion. Though Heritage’s 2007 report was one of the reasons an earlier immigration bill failed, the 2013 report was widely mocked, even by Republicans the foundation hoped would support it.

Harvard accepted Richwine’s 2009 dissertation for a doctorate in public policy. In it, he spoke of the “growing Hispanic underclass.”[

Pablo Pantoja Turns Democrat: RNC Florida Hispanic Director Cites GOP ‘Intolerance’ In Making Party Switch

by Chris Gentilviso, Huffington Post

Less than two months after the Republican National Committee announced a multi-million dollar campaign to improve minority outreach, one of its state Hispanic directors is leaving the Republican Party altogether.

In a letter released by The Florida Nation on Monday, RNC State Director Of Florida Outreach Pablo Pantoja announced that he is changing his political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

“It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today,” he wrote. “I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.”

Ed Markey Disinvites Ben Jones From Campaign Appearance Over Confederate Flag Beliefs

by Pam Lavender, Huffington Post

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) disinvited former Georgia Democratic congressman Ben Jones from a fundraising event after learning of Jones’ support for the Confederate flag. [..]

Jones defended the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern culture in 2012 when NASCAR canceled plans to have professional golfer Bubba Watson drive the General Lee — the car from “The Dukes of Hazzard” which features a Confederate flag on its roof — at Phoenix International Raceway. Jones called the cancellation of the event “an extraordinary insult to rural Southerners.”

Hipsters trail in the polls but survey’s worth called into question

by Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

Public Policy Polling claimed 42% of Americans viewed hipsters unfavourably but methodology and purpose of poll questioned

A US polling company claimed on Monday that a shocking 42% of Americans have an unfavourable opinion about hipsters – in a telephone poll conducted among people who only have landlines.

Public Policy Polling was widely mocked for its survey, both for the frivolity of the poll, and for using a methodology that seemed guaranteed to produce the result that emerged.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: Angelina Jolie’s Disclosure

Angelina Jolie’s revelation on The Times’s Op-Ed page that she had a double mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer greatly raises public awareness of the genetic testing she used, as well as concerns about insurance coverage for this kind of testing. Ms. Jolie had a family history of cancer and tested positive for genetic flaws in the BRCA1 gene, which indicates an elevated risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Her doctor estimated that she had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer. [..]

Even women who think their risk is high should take a cautious approach, said the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a group of independent experts who provide advice to the federal government on health screening measures. They should talk with their doctors to see if genetic counseling is needed, assess the pros and cons of BRCA testing, and consider options for treatment, which might include surgery, drugs that could reduce risk of breast cancer, and close monitoring with mammograms and M.R.I. scans. Women will need to check their policies to see what coverage is provided for preventive mastectomies and other preventive measures.

Jill Richardson: Superbugs: Those Uninvited Guests at Your Barbecue

With most samples of several common store-bought meats testing positive for antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” factory farming practices must change.

Planning a Memorial Day barbecue? When you buy meat for that festive meal, watch out for some uninvited guests. An alarming amount of American meat harbors not just pathogens, but “superbugs” – antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

For now, you’d better cook your meat well enough to kill the germs (165F is the magic temperature), but there might be hope for safer alternatives in the future. Consumer advocates and lawmakers are trying to push changes that make these superbugs a thing of the past. That’s never been so important because industrialized agriculture delivers efficiency, productivity, and profit at the expense of food safety.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Simpson-Bowles Austerity Gang: Go Home

Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called “austerity economics,” a product that’s designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else’s expense.  This philosophy provides some (very thin) intellectual cover for the Republicans’ lunatic bloodbath of spending cuts.

Of course, Simpson and Bowles and austerity’s other sales people aren’t really economic thinkers. They’re paid to pitch a product. They didn’t invent austerity any more than Alex Rodriguez invented Pepsi.

But what they’re peddling isn’t a soft drink. It’s a lot worse for you than that.

Ralph Nader: Patriotic Yardsticks for Unpatriotic Giant Corporations

Why are big, global U.S. corporations so unpatriotic? After all, they were created in the U.S.A., rose to immense profit because of the toil of American workers, are bailed out by American taxpayers whenever they’re in trouble, and are safeguarded abroad by the U.S. military.

Yet these corporate Goliaths work their tax lawyers overtime to escape U.S. taxes. Many pay less than you do in federal income taxes. Imagine corporations, like General Electric, have not paid federal income taxes on U.S. profits for years.

Mega corporations have abandoned U.S. workers by entrenching “pull-down” trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Remember, the U.S. has run large trade deficits for the past 30 years as a result of anti-American trade deals pushed by these global companies. These Goliaths are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that will further pull down our economy.