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The US will say they have jurisdiction when ANY American is involved in any business anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter even if you renounce your citizenship. If you are involved in Commerce (in any shape or form) with (past or) present Americans they will get (eventually) get involved.

Under 18 U.S.C. Â 486, it is a Federal crime to pass, or attempt to pass, any coins of gold or silver intended for use as current money except as authorized by law.

Since only gold and silver are legal tender, anything that threatens that monopoly of money infrastructure and status quo is automatically targeted -- even if it is private currency.

New York Times ran an article a few years back ... emphasis added to highlight the shenanigans:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10...

His name is Bernard von NotHaus, and he is a professed "monetary architect" and a maker of custom coins found guilty last spring of counterfeiting charges for minting and distributing a form of private money called the Liberty Dollar.

Described by some as "the Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement," Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars' worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country -- so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of "domestic terrorism" for using them to undermine the government.

No one was pretending the Liberty Dollar was legal tender. It was clearly a private currency, but simply because it was too popular it got targeted -- you know other the "Golden Rule":

* "He who has the gold, makes the rules"

This government abuse is nothing new. Look at the shenanigans of how whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld exposing the fraud of UBS was treated:

In October 2001, Birkenfeld began working at UBS in Geneva, Switzerland, handling private banking, primarily for clients located in the United States. In 2005, he learned that UBS's secret dealings with American customers violated an agreement the bank had reached with the IRS.

He resigned from UBS in October 2005 and provided written whistleblower complaints to Peter Kurer, Head Counsel for UBS, and other UBS senior executives regarding the illegal practices of U.S. cross-border business.

He is the first person to expose what has become a multi-billion dollar international tax fraud scandal over Swiss private banking. AT THE TIME, despite his unprecedented, extensive and voluntary cooperation, and registering as an IRS whistleblower, Birkenfeld was the only U.S. citizen to be sentenced to jail as a result of the scandal.

The IRS explained its decision by citing Birkenfeldâ(TM)s âoeexceptional cooperationâ and the âoebreadth and depthâ of the information he provided, all of which led to âoeunprecedented actionsâ against UBS

/sarcasm America, the best government money can buy!

--
Only Cowards Censor

Mining rare earths is not a major environmental problem. Comparing it to the environmental cost of fossil fuels is absurd.

You were correct up until that point. But rare earths do cause massive environmental damage. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10...

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...

All of that money is money earned overseas. So it's not "funneled" anywhere, it's just not brought back

US profits are funneled through a Nevada subsidiary because Nevada doesn't have a corporate tax.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html

After all, they're allowed to ignore US copyright:

http://www.ictsd.org/bridges-n...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01...
http://motherboard.vice.com/bl...

It might not help for stuff published in Europe (or distributed to Europe?), but it'd make it so they'd have the WTO to back them up.

...but she didn't inhale. Ducks...

You want a big one? Go back to the day Bush inroduced the Ownership Society. Read the article about where that went. Those bankers didn't invent it all on their own, they had the President of the United States leading them there.

More than that I just saw that he dropped out of the race altogether.

I like to return (somewhat repetitively, I admit) to the Gary Taubes article that really summed it up best in recent history. (meta) Yes, what you eat matters. No, calorie counts aren't the whole story. The story is complicated, and different for everyone. Some people don't get fat even if they pound Twinkies(tm). Some people get fat and stay fat in spite of going to all types of extremes — or even just eating healthy and getting exercise. (Thankfully, I seem to respond fairly well to that combination, when I bother to stick with it...) The science of what precisely makes people fat is not precisely settled, but I leave you with a reminder that poop pills may yet be the answer, even before we're clear on why they work.

President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy
Eight years after the financial crisis, unemployment
is at 5 percent, deficits are down and G.D.P.
is growing. Why do so many voters feel
left behind? The president has a theory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05...

but the cars they sell in Europe and America are built in Sweden.

Not for a year now. Of course, that's just the first model line to switch, but the company promises further cost reduction.

Didn't realize there were so many Volvo fanboys with mod points. Heck of a reality distortion field for a Chinese company making cars in China, whatever it might once have been in a previous century.

No they are still designed and built in Sweden. The financial owners are Chinese though.

Yeah, that didn't last long before manufacturing began moving to China as well. Are you surprised? It's been publically in the works for years.

From Jan 2015:

After years of promises by the industry followed by manufacturing delays, a major automaker is finally on the verge of starting sustained exports from China to the United States.

The Volvo Car Corporation announced at the Detroit auto show on Monday that it planned to begin shipping a midsize sedan from Chengdu in the next several months.

If it's getting worse because of our own choices, then they aren't "playing" the victim. Relative to you (not some foreign prodigy) they have been victimized. These kids aren't taking on massive debts because because they're stupid; they're doing it because everyone else doing so has massively raised the cost of tuition. So why is there so much lending/borrowing/debt now, that you need so much to afford an education nowadays? Because the Nixon Shock and consistent inflation since then have encouraged it. That amazing growth we enjoyed in the 80's was because we were borrowing from people applying for jobs today.

I realize alcohol poisoning alone isn't a comprehensive metric for "partyingness" but that at least has been going down. What makes you think they party more now than they did when Animal House came out?

I'm not denying that an American youngster is better off than a Chinese/Russian, but your lack of sympathy pales in comparison to how little they will sympathize with your house, your 401K, your children's inheritance, or any other legacy you might want to leave behind. As the subject of this article illustrates, they simply don't respect your right to property. You can point fingers and complain, or you can try to understand so you can do something about it.

10 percent of the country’s total wealth will change hands every five years
Households with less than $500,000 in net worth will transfer about $3 trillion to their heirs. Ones with more than $500,000 will transfer four times that much wealth.

What Comes After Rich Baby Boomers? Kids With a Big Inheritance

There's a town in Minnesota with an umlaut in its name as well. They recently had to convince the Department of Transportation to expand their allowed character set in order to correctly spell their name on the highway signs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

But scientists say that in the more ancient past, California and the Southwest occasionally had even worse droughts — so-called megadroughts — that lasted decades. At least in parts of California, in two cases in the last 1,200 years, these dry spells lingered for up to two centuries.

The new normal, scientists say, may in fact be an old one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
                ---Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Yeah, these are the "masters of the universe" that tanked our economy, was bailed out for 10s of billions of dollars after their CEO became the treasury secretary, then outsourced 1,000 American jobs and gave their execs huge raises and paid "up to" a paltry $5 billion for defrauding their own customers.

No high level execs at Goldman Sachs went to jail,and the systemic problem is worse today than before the crisis.

Why would I give even even a penny to admitted criminals with a proven record of abusing their customers and being grossly selfish and irresponsible?!

Fuck those guys. Seriously.

Wasn't Charter recently in bankruptcy?

The New York Times reports that the Department of Defense's Cyber Command unit is mounting cyberattacks against the terrorist organization.

Contrary to numerous reports echoing each other mocking Donald Trump (but, curiously, not Hillary Clinton) of wanting to "shut down the Internet", his actual proposal was different. Specifically, it was just this:

“I’m not talking about closing the Internet. I’m talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is, spotting it. Now, you could close it. What I like even better than that, is getting our smartest and getting our best, to infiltrate their Internet, so, that we know exactly where they’re going, exactly where they’re going to be. I like that better.”

Nice to know, somebody somewhere was listening... Time, perhaps, for NY Times itself to apologize for or, at least, correct their own piece calling Trump's (and, Clinton's) proposals a "fantasy".

The New York Times reports that the Department of Defense's Cyber Command unit is mounting cyberattacks against the terrorist organization.

Contrary to numerous reports echoing each other mocking Donald Trump (but, curiously, not Hillary Clinton) of wanting to "shut down the Internet", his actual proposal was different. Specifically, it was just this:

“I’m not talking about closing the Internet. I’m talking about parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, where ISIS is, spotting it. Now, you could close it. What I like even better than that, is getting our smartest and getting our best, to infiltrate their Internet, so, that we know exactly where they’re going, exactly where they’re going to be. I like that better.”

Nice to know, somebody somewhere was listening... Time, perhaps, for NY Times itself to apologize for or, at least, correct their own piece calling Trump's (and, Clinton's) proposals a "fantasy".

Of Apple's $133bn profit, that means approximately $41.23bn was generated in the US (assuming reasonably even profit margins across the globe). They paid $19.2bn in US taxes. That's a tax rate in the US of 32%.

That amount is probably local and state sales taxes collected from Apple retail stores.

The "tax avoidance" that everyone seems to be going on about is that they're not paying US taxes on sales made in Europe and China, instead, they're paying European*, and Chinese taxes on them.

Not entirely. Apple has a PO box in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html

Should I want to hire someone at a PO box in some lax country to assign my income around - it'd be legal for me too.

Actually, Apple's PO box is in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.

Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company's profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California's corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada's? Zero.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html

I'm all for doing something about Climate change, but can we fix our country first?

The US labor participation rate has fallen off the cliff. Our population is increasingly divided into the rich and the homeless.

The suicide rate is highest it's been in 3 decades. Looking at the commentary to that article, lots and lots of smart, highly trained workers are out of work and terrified.

Even among those who *have* jobs, the jobs now are part-time, menial and boring. A greeter at WalMart 20 hours a week won't keep you from poverty. Articles entitled "<such-and-so> corporation fires entire department, hires H1B workers, and makes employees train their replacements" come up about once a month now.

The lead politician on the R side has a 70% disapproval rating, but D side leader is only 12 points lower (and might be indicted for several felonies).

We spend twice as much as our revenue. We spend it on endless wars over pointless goals. We torture foreigners and assassinate our own citizens. We've turned our "land of the free" into Stazi-Lite with no one to reign the abuses of law enforcement, spy agencies, or even elected officials.

We are not safe in our homes.

All recent news indicates that the US is dying as a nation. It's headed for a crash-and-burn not seen since Roman times.

I'm all for trash talking the Republicans for ignoring climate change and all that, but we have much bigger fish to fry.

I really, *really* don't care about every niggling little political issue in an election with one binary choice.

I make my choice based on the biggest issue, and vote for the person I think will best address it.

Ignore the small problems, and the distant ones.

We have more immediate concerns.

The rest of us will live our normal lives of quiet desperation as we serve our life-extended masters.

I guess you haven't read today's headline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/upshot/rich-people-are-living-longer-thats-tilting-social-security-in-their-favor.html

Not to say that real ones don't exist, but I've long been skeptical about the super-misogynistic Bernie Bros and (without getting overly conspiratorial) they've just felt false-flag to me.

Don't forget racist. You can't follow a black or Hispanic person or who tweets about politics and supports someone other than Bernie (or even one who supports nobody at all) without being regularly treated to watching them get buried under racist tweets from Sanders "supporters".

Citation needed. I don't believe that. I haven't seen any of the so-called "Bernie Bros". There will always be a few independent assholes, but there's no broad support for them.

Here's a black person who supports Hillary. Where's the racist Sanders supporters? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04...

All they do is pass along the cost of the taxes they're paying to the consumer. In the end, all taxes are paid by individuals, whether directly or hidden in the cost of the products and services they buy.

Not so. Here is what Conservative economist Bruce Bartlett (senior policy roles under Reagan and GHW Bush, and served on the staffs of Reps. Jack Kemp and Ron Paul) has to say about corporate income taxes, and who pays them, ultimately:

For many years, economists assumed that the corporate tax is paid almost entirely by shareholders. This is unquestionably true when a corporate income tax is first introduced. But over time, corporations adjust their affairs so as to minimize the tax, causing the burden to be shifted. For example, companies may try to raise prices to compensate for the corporate income tax, thus shifting some of the burden onto consumers.

Most economists don’t believe that much, if any, of the corporate tax is shifted onto consumers this way, because corporations face competition from noncorporate businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships, and from businesses based in countries with higher or lower corporate taxes. Competition sets prices for goods and services without regard to the corporate tax rate.

Now it is true individuals eventually pay the tax, but it is not consumers, it is owners of capital - the investors, or perhaps management if their compensation packages are pinched.

Do you actually think that Apple wouldn't simply raise their prices so that their profit margin stayed the same? In what world?

Do you believe that Apple is not already charging what they think the market will bear? In what world? Even Apple products cannot become arbitrarily expensive.

Is this a 50% tax on profits, or gross revenues?

In either case, I think a 50% tax makes many businesses not viable. Across the US we have huge unemployment issues, and many young people are unemployed. This is a negative situation, and is putting the social safety net at risk. Companies move where the taxes are lowest.

It appears that many small businesses pay much more in taxes than do the large multinationals employing the double irish with a dutch sandwich

Furthermore, the US already has worldwide taxation that leads to double taxation, whereas most countries utilize a territorial taxation system. Worldwide taxation leads to companies keeping their earnings abroad to mitigate the double tax when they return them to the US

High taxes, unemployment, and high welfare can create perverse incentives for people needing income.

I don't think a 50% tax is going to solve any of those problems.

In summary:
We need tax reform
We need territorial taxation
We need to address taxation for smaller businesses
We need something like basic income that is more equitable

More like a self-driving taxi, I'd imagine. A self-driving bus doesn't have any substantial advantages over regular buses, but a self-driving taxi... might be slightly cheaper. Slightly. It's revolutionary!

Like Uber are working on after hiring a large portion of Carnegie Mellon's robotics department?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...

other countries don't have the same problem with climate deniers/skeptics/whatever:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Its going to get really interesting when certain regions get temperatures over 38C and 100% humidity.

The Persian Gulf area will be uninhabitable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/science/intolerable-heat-may-hit-the-middle-east-by-the-end-of-the-century.html

He should have been executed or worked to death in a stone mine. He is _NOT_ a human being. He deserves nothing. Ask the relatives of those whom he killed... Inhuman handling.

Even some parents who lost children in the attack appeared to be satisfied with the verdict, seeing it as fair punishment that would allow the country, perhaps, to move past its trauma. “Now we won’t hear about him for quite a while; now we can have peace and quiet,” Per Balch Soerensen, whose daughter was among the dead, told TV2, according to The Associated Press. He felt no personal rancor toward Mr. Breivik, he was quoted as saying. “He doesn’t mean anything to me,” Mr. Soerensen said. “He is just air.” ...via the NYT.

Let's hope so. US government agencies have caused a lot of damage by the way they handled this case, blowing everything hugely out of proportion, making heaps of false and/or questionable accusations and acting like this is the first case of tampering with emission tests ever. The whole affair seems very dishonest and hypocritical. It is nothing more than an attempt to grab money, to damage the reputation of a competitor to U.S. government-backed car manufacturers and to distract from EPA's own failures in the recent past. It is suspicously similar to the way Toyota was attacked because of a problem with accelerator pedals that probably never existed.

It is more than fair that VW should fix the issues at its own cost and that owners should be compensated for their inconvenience. If it can be established that any environmental damage was done, it is also reasonable that VW should pay for compensation projects administered by an independent third party. Anything beyond that is, in my opinion, unfairly taking advantage of the situation. Let's not forget that only a few VW employees, who are already facing criminal prosecution, were responsible for this violation and similar cases involving American manufacturers (e.g. GM's Cadillacs) were handled with small fines and little publicity. Moreover, the EA189-equipped cars do not actually pollute more than most comparable Euro 5 diesels (or even many Euro 6 diesels). The only difference is that other manufacturers (as far as we know) design around test conditions, rather than checking for them explicitly (although the Opel Zafira case suggests otherwise and the Renault Espace case is also very fishy).

It happens a lot. I don't know why you think that. There's been a lawsuit on a similar topic for a while.

DERPA DERPA DEMOCRAT DERP

Quality contribution there. Did you know that "subprime mortgage" is specifically defined as "mortgage not backed by Fannie or Freddie"? Fannie and Freddie insured ZERO subprime mortgages and had absolutely no financial problems at all until after the credit freeze when companies started shutting down and laying off hundreds of thousands of employees who had prime mortgages (and could afford them, until they lost their job?)

Even more BULLSHIT

Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Reached Tipping Point

Whenever competitors asked Congress to rein in the company, lawmakers were besieged with letters and phone calls from angry constituents, some orchestrated by Fannie itself. One automated phone call warned voters: “Your congressman is trying to make mortgages more expensive. Ask him why he opposes the American dream of home ownership.”

The ripple effect of Fannie’s plunge into riskier lending was profound. Fannie’s stamp of approval made shunned borrowers and complex loans more acceptable to other lenders, particularly small and less sophisticated banks.

Not only that, they lied about it:

SEC CHARGES FORMER FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC EXECUTIVES WITH SECURITIES FRAUD

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged six former top executives of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) with securities fraud, alleging they knew and approved of misleading statements claiming the companies had minimal holdings of higher-risk mortgage loans, including subprime loans.

...

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions' exposure to subprime loans, and misled the market about the amount of risk on the company's books. All individuals, regardless of their rank or position, will be held accountable for perpetuating half-truths or misrepresentations about matters materially important to the interest of our country's investors."

...

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions' exposure to subprime loans, and misled the market about the amount of risk on the company's books. All individuals, regardless of their rank or position, will be held accountable for perpetuating half-truths or misrepresentations about matters materially important to the interest of our country's investors."

...

Fannie Mae's executives also knew and approved of the decision to underreport Fannie Mae's Alt-A loan exposure, the SEC alleged. Fannie Mae disclosed that its March 31, 2007 exposure to Alt-A loans was 11 percent of its portfolio of Single Family loans. In reality, Fannie Mae's Alt-A exposure at that time was approximately 18 percent of its Single Family loan holdings.

One in five of Fannie Mae's loans were sub-prime.

Who's the derp now, derp?

Reagan also deregulated the banking system which essentially has caused all the financial calamities that have followed, including the 2009 meltdown. What's your point?

BULLSHIT

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

And

Barney Frank: What Housing Bubble?

Except that doesn't seem to have been their motive. You are right, a lot of people don't care about "breakthrough" special effects, but they do tend to be dismissive about yet another film where talking animals prevent an audience's suspense of disbelief.

Have a quick read of this article for more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04...

The biggest danger isn't from birds of prey (at least in the USA); the danger is geese. There are serious geese mitigation efforts near major airports (example), and geese have seriously damaged and even brought down planes before (example).

Did you do any research before posting? I've heard about these mitigation efforts, and I don't know anything about flying. Then again, the word "lazy" is in your handle...

On the contrary! If I were in the business, I would hire her in a New York Second. She definitely left a mark..

By comparison, North Korea stories can be posted in the Idle section. For some reason, I suspect they won't have a successful launch any time soon.

Why does it matter what Li'l Kim does?

These stories are to distract us from even worse enemies (depending on your POV of course)

On the other hand, if they did decide to influence people politically, would you be able to tell it was happening.

Completely correct. And not just Facebook, but Google and others as well.

There was a fascinating (and disturbing) Aeon essay posted a couple of months ago on this very subject. The short version is that there are many ways to subtly influence people's opinions without them ever knowing they have been targeted, and there is already significant effort and money being spent in this arena (and not just in the obvious case of advertising).

One only need to look at the Facebook "experiment" from 2014 to see what's easily possible and already being done (and that's just the one reported on in the news).

You seem to think you know about this internet thingy but you could just try this thing call Google. It's amazing what it can find:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03...
BEIJING — China has released new statistics indicating that it used less coal last year than in 2014, lending support to the view that the country, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, may have reached a peak in coal consumption.

That would be a boon for global efforts to limit climate change, since industrial coal burning is the primary source of greenhouse gases. The new data, released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics, said coal consumption had fallen 3.7 percent in 2015 compared with the previous year. It was the second straight year of decline, according to the bureau, which said coal use had dropped 2.9 percent in 2014.
Coal use fell 3.7% in 2015, following 2.9% drop in 2014, as China tries to wean itself off fuel that causes local air pollution problems and global warming

If your only response to deniers is to use police instead of evidence you are no longer doing science.

A nice canned response, but it is complete nonsense. You are trying to perpetuate the myth that scientists are trying to silence deniers, when this is about lawmakers going after those spending millions of dollars orchestrating cynical campaigns of misinformation for their own profit. And the people who are talking about this are not "doing science" as you claim. The scientists are using evidence to back their claims, but they are being met with campaigns of FUD and unfounded accusations of corruption. It is hard to match simple, one sentence slogans against climate change with pages of data that nobody can understand.

After all, climate change scientists are deliberately publishing misinformation for financial gain.

Oh look, it is one of those unfounded accusations of corruption. Where is your evidence of this claim? Is there anything like Wei-Hock Soon's price list of "deliverables" including anti-climate change testimony to congress and papers published?

Let's face it, with so many climate researchers out there who would have to be corrupt for there to be such a massive conspiracy to manipulate the entire field of climate science, surely there would be a huge number of leaked documents demonstrating this cash-for-comment. But it turns out that there isn't. Even the huge CRU leaks failed to provide any evidence of nefarious transactions.

I'm sure that you are ready to fire back with some line about scientists getting government grants for which they must toe the line. But most pure science has some government funding involved. Are all those scientists corrupt, or just the ones producing research that you don't like - i.e. in the field of climate science?

It isn't anything like the Iranian system. Virtually anybody can run for President with only a few restrictions.

During the 2008 election, Ron Paul had 9.1% of the votes (roughly, depending on specific vote and time).

I watched with astonishment how Fox news reported the results for candidates that got less than Ron Paul, but didn't report Ron Paul's results.

During that primary, the GOP had a rule that a candidate needs to win 8 states to be considered a candidate in the convention.

They changed that rule from 5 to 8, specifically to exclude Ron Paul.

Cruz might not win 8 states, so the GOP is changing the rules to lower that number to allow Cruz to be on the ballot.

It isn't *anything like the Iranian system. We have about 200 people who control the election, while Iran has only one.

A really big difference. Big whoop.

The shareholders of Polycom will get cash AND end up with 60% of the combined entity.
That is a lot more of "Polycom bought Mitel" than "Mitel bought Polycom."

Add the "keeping the name", "keeping the products", and escaping US legal and tax for better environment in Canada, and it all makes the same amount of sense as any other international merger (now limited by US tax laws to 60%/40%, conveniently the same as this one...)

I guess nobody crafted a special law to prevent Polycom from doing it like they did to Pfizer. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04...

E

Parts of Quicktime may have indeed been "stolen" from Apple, but I wouldn't trust that site to supply meaningful facts.

Ok, so you don't trust Roughly Drafted? Howabout Wikipedia?

Ok, so you don't trust Wikipedia? the IT Law Wiki?

Ok, so you don't trust the IT Law Wiki? Howabout The Register.com?

Ok, so you don't trust The Register (don't blame you)? Howabout the U.S. Courts?

Idiot.

US election law isn't really equipped to deal with an entity with FB size and reach

NY Times and other national newspapers had a similar reach within the US only a short while ago... And their electoral endorsements mattered — and were actively sought-out by the politicians. Maybe, not so much any more, but there was never anything illegal or even unethical about it. You have an opinion — you voice it. If you happen to have a bigger megaphone, good for you...

Is that unlawful coordination?

Why can the media endorse a candidate, but not other corporations?

Excellant points. I agree corporations can endorse a candidate, just like newspaper can endorse a candidate. Th question is where is the line between endorsing and contributing to a campaign? It's also illegal, IIRC, to tell employees to act on behalf of a candidate or reimburse them for contributions. Would that apply to acting against a candidate rates than endorsing one? I don't know, and Federal election law is very complicated so a corporation wading into an election rates than setting up a PAC to do the same thing is, IMHO, something they nee dot be very careful to avoid running afoul of the law. It's simply easier to create a PAC and buy access on FB than do it as FB.

US election law isn't really equipped to deal with an entity with FB size and reach

NY Times and other national newspapers had a similar reach within the US only a short while ago... And their electoral endorsements mattered — and were actively sought-out by the politicians. Maybe, not so much any more, but there was never anything illegal or even unethical about it. You have an opinion — you voice it. If you happen to have a bigger megaphone, good for you...

Is that unlawful coordination?

Why can the media endorse a candidate, but not other corporations?

That's too funny, you guys never miss a chance to spread more bull shit, what do you read? abovetopsecret.com?

Here is a more reliable source, from March 2016, Security Logs of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server Are Said to Show No Evidence of Hacking