iBankCoin
Home / 2011 / April (page 66)

Monthly Archives: April 2011

Israel Deploys the Iron Dome

“With the financial help of the Americans, we hope to equip ourselves with four new ‘Iron Dome’ batteries so we will have six in operation in the next two years.”

Full article

Comments »

Tepco Fails to Block Fukushima Crack

Tokyo Electric Power is struggling to block a crack discovered in a pit that is leaking highly radioactive water into the ocean at its Fukushima Daiichi plant, and said it had discovered the bodies of its two missing employees at the stricken plant.

Staff discovered the 20 centimetre-wide crack in a shaft storing supply cables close to reactor No 2. Tepco is making preparations to inject a type of polymer into the pit in its latest effort to block the leaking water, after Saturday’s attempts to plug the crack with concrete failed.

It is the first time that the company has discovered a source of radiation leakage, amid signs it was continuously seeping into the sea. High levels of radiation inside and outside the building were detected at the reactor No 2 in the past week.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

US Deeply Concerned by Violence in Ivory Coast

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the U.S. is “deeply concerned” about the situation in the Ivory Coast and reports of human rights abuses and a massacre of more than 1,000 people.

In a statement Sunday, Clinton called on Laurent Gbagbo (luh-RAHN’ BAHG’-boh), the entrenched incumbent who lost a November vote, to step down immediately. She also says forces loyal to the internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara (AL’-ah-sahn wah-TAHR’-ah) must respect the rules of war and stop attacks on civilians.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

AT&T Purchase of T-Mobile: Ma Bell All Over Again?

Executive Summary: the FCC is going to help reconstitute Ma Bell all over again. Let’s call it Ma Bell 2.0.

The damage to the economy will be significant as it results in less competition, less risk-taking, less entrepreneurship, and less innovation. Higher prices for consumers and a step backwards for the U.S.

I can prove it.

Think of the most unregulated marketplace in the U.S. One with the least government intervention. If you answered software and Internet applications, you’re a winner.

Over the last 25 years, the largely unregulated world of software has created untold trillions in value creation: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, eBay, Oracle, Facebook… the list goes on and on. Anyone with a good idea and some hacking skills can create a business worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

No regulation. Unfettered competition.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

No April Fools’ Joke, U.S. Now World’s Highest Corporate Taxer

James Pethokoukis

If only it were an April Fools’ Day prank. With Japan officially cutting its corporate tax rate as of today, America now has the highest rate among advanced economies. Even its effective tax rate is way above average despite the likes of General Electric spending billions to game the labyrinthine code. A smarter approach would be to substitute a business consumption tax.

Now the United States might cling to second place if Japan cancels the rate reduction to help pay for the tsunami and earthquake devastation. After factoring in state taxes, America’s top rate of 40 percent would still exceed the average of 26 percent for the rest of the OECD.

Headline rates, of course, are like sticker prices on new cars. The real numbers are lower, thanks in part to the $40 billion companies spend annually to comply with, and often sidestep, the maximum levy. GE, for example, has taken heat for consistently paying less than what the U.S. tax code would imply it should.

But even taking into account the efforts of attorneys and lobbyists, the average effective U.S. rate in 2010 was 29 percent against 21 percent for international counterparts, according to the  American Enterprise Institute. And before the recession, corporate tax revenue as a share of U.S. GDP was at its highest since the 1970s.

Politicians of all stripes have been talking about lowering corporate taxes and eliminating loopholes to pay for a sharp rate reduction.  A sharply lower rate —  Canada’s will be just 15 percent in January 2012 — would boost worker wages, investment, productivity, jobs and growth. Such reforms, though a big improvement, would still leave in place a flawed and unwieldy structure.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

Huffington Post Silences Conservatives After Pressure from Van Jones

Lee Stranahan

The Huffington Post is certainly doing a spectacular job of keeping their readers completely in the dark about the entire story of their caving to pressure from the group Color of Change and banning Andrew Breitbart from their front page. This story has been covered by Slate, Mediaite, the New Yorker and a host of conservative sites but there hasn’t been one single word mentioned about it in the Huffington Post, which has an entire section devoted to covering Media. (Paging Jason Linkins.) Not a peep. No stories, articles, statements of clarification.

As far as Arianna and her bosses at AOL are concerned THIS NEVER HAPPENED.

Furthermore, they are now in full hush-up mode to the outside world, too. Huffington Post’s poor flack Mario Ruiz has gone from simply giving nonanswers when pressed to explain this new policy to completely ignoring his emails on the subject.

You think the Arianna Huffington and editor Roy Sekoff don’t know what the reaction of their readers would be if they told them that they both knew Andrew Breibart wasn’t a racist? Do you think they don’t know the reaction of the anyone fair minded if they made it clear that they had ALWAYS known this but still let HuffPo serve as the platform for attack after attack on him?

Read the rest here.

Comments »