A funny thing happened in Panama

For many The Panama Papers confirm the worst fears that a tremendous amount of money is being hidden in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes, denying many struggling countries of the revenues they need to meet their massive budget shortfalls. These papers also point to world leaders who project themselves as men of the people only to have socked away millions, if not billions in offshore accounts for a rainy day.

President Obama was quick to respond to the Papers by issuing a directive to the Treasury Dept. to stop corporate tax inversions, whereby an American company like Pfizer can merge with a foreign company like Irish-based Allergan to change its legal place of residence and avoid paying taxes in the higher-taxed country. Of course, the good folks at Forbes claim the real problem here is the uncompetitive US corporate tax code, but when the effective corporate tax rate is much less than the 35 per cent rate, one has to ask if lowering the tax rate will yield any greater compliance with US tax codes.

Fact of the matter is that there are a whole lot of ways to dodge taxes. It is estimated that US companies alone are hiding $2.1 trillion overseas to avoid paying taxes, including such big names like Apple, Microsoft an Google. While perfectly legal, it does point to questionable ethics on the part of companies that promote economic fairness.

This has become a big issue on the campaign trail, which Bernie Sanders has harped upon repeatedly and now can say "I told you so." This moneyed-class claims it cannot pay a fair minimum wage because of high corporate taxes and health care, yet its CEO's earn "yuge" pay checks and use any hook or crook to boost the value of their company dividends so that stock holders stay happy, in turn rewarding CEO's with even bigger salaries and bonuses. The average Dick and Jane have to apply for food stamps or worse just to make ends meet. Bernie has been telling anyone who would listen that this is a wicked game we are playing and now may reap the electoral rewards of this bombshell disclosure.

The Panama Papers is the biggest story to date by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has been following the money. This story pulls the cover off the ongoing money-laundering schemes by Mossack Fonseca, one of several international law firms that specialize in offshore operations. For its part, MF claims its activities are above board and if there are any irregularities it is because of the failings of intermediaries.

Of course, countries could stop these inversions and offshore accounts immediately if they sharpened their tax codes, but it is unlikely that these lawmakers will bite the hands that feed them. So, don't expect Congress to act on Obama's initiative. Instead, you will hear more calls to lower the corporate tax rate, claiming that this will stop corporations from stashing their money overseas. Yea, and I've got some beach front property in Panama to sell you.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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