Kerry's Record On Electronic And Civil Rights

An anonymous reader writes "John Kerry lambastes John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, positioning himself as a crusader for civil liberties. The question is, how much substance is there to his rhetoric? This article was an eye-opener to me, in evaluating just that. Slashdotters tending to be passionate about the Patriot Act, encryption, and electronic monitoring - subjects this article tackles with respect to Kerry."

Comments

Re:Well..

[nelsonal]

It's not as much of a tax break as it sounds. Most countries tax income earned domestically. So take Diagio (the parent of Guiness) they tax the income it earns in the UK. The US taxes the income of Anheiser-Busch globally with a tax credit for foreign taxes paid, with a major loophole (if you reinvest the proceeds in the foreign country you can deferr the taxes). The loophole is designed to allow companies to earn tons of money in foreign countries, but they have to spend it in the foreign country--hence the pro-outsourcing tilt of the group. Both sides should know that it mostly equalized our tax law with foreign competitors (which US companies scream bloody murder about) as opposed to really supporting outsourcing.
As an example take a Toyota factory in Ohio the US would tax the domesitic subsidiary of Toyota for the profits from the cars built in the factory and Japan would not. If Ford were to do the same thing in Osaka, however, the US would tax income both from cars exported to Japan and cars built in Japan. This puts Ford at a bit of a disadvantage to Toyota, and lots of companies lobbied hard for the tax break to equalize them. Now you know a bit more about the "outsourcing tax break."