Foreign corporations who do business with the U.S. should pay U.S. corporate taxes

Walgreens, one of the largest pharmacy chains in the country, has threatened to move its corporate headquarters from the United States to Switzerland in order to evade U.S. corporate income taxes.

This has set off a major political firestorm, and it should. I think it's downright unpatriotic for a U.S.-based company to move their corporate headquarters, which often consists of nothing more than a mailbox and a filing cabinet, to a foreign country, for the sole purpose of tax evasion. Furthermore, corporate tax evasion is depriving federal, state, and local governments of revenue that could be used to, among other things, fix crumbling roads and bridges, fund public education, and reduce or eliminate budget deficits.

I believe that corporations based in foreign countries, but do business with the United States, should be legally required to pay federal corporate income taxes, in addition to any corporate income taxes they are legally required to pay in the countries where they are headquartered. Not only would this put an end to corporate income tax invasion in the U.S., it would also put the reins on the rampant economic globalization that is hurting our economy and costing us thousands upon thousands of jobs.

Corporate tax evasion is one of the more serious problems our country faces.

Corporate Democrats at Netroots Nation

Netroots Nation is supposed to be an annual gathering of progressive bloggers and activists, although quite a few corporate Democrats showed up to crash the party.

Although Hillary Clinton, who voted for the unjustified Iraq War and voted for free-trade agreements that shipped American jobs overseas as a U.S. Senator from New York, didn't show up at Netroots Nation herself, the Ready for Hillary SuperPAC, an organization seeking to convince Hillary to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, did bring their bus to Netroots Nation.

One corporate Democrat who did show up at Netroots Nation was Mary Burke, the likely Democratic nominee for Governor of Wisconsin and a supporter of charter schools and corporate welfare. In fact, Burke participated in a panel discussion about women running for public office at Netroots Nation. Another corporate Democrat who made his presence known at Netroots Nation was Chuck Schumer, the #3 Democrat in the U.S. Senate from New York and a shill for Wall Street interests who want to deregulate the financial industry in this country.

I find it disturbing that corporate Democrats have managed to infiltrate a supposedly progressive convention. Also, it's a shame that there there are few truly progressive conventions in this country, in fact, the only one I know of is Fighting Bob Fest, which is held annually in Wisconsin.

Sheila Kihne: Continuing Michele Bachmann's legacy of embarrassing Minnesota

Sheila Kihne, a far-right Republican running against incumbent Republican Minnesota State Representative Jenifer Loon, is one of the most vile candidates I've seen run for public office. Prior to running for public office, Kihne was a conservative political blogger, and she wrote some downright nasty blog posts, including one where she shamed women who get married while pregnant:

On a blog she discontinued in 2009, she wrote that President Barack Obama was leading the one-world-order communists and demanded that single mothers be denied formal wedding ceremonies. 

“Don’t you think that if you’re having a baby — and you’re not married — that you should forego the shower?” she asked. “I also think that if you get married — and are knocked up — you should get married quietly. At a courthouse, at a private home.” 

Kihne specifically said that there should be no dancing or dinner for prospective brides who are pregnant. She acknowledge that “I’m seen as very cold-hearted with this issue and it’s caused a couple of big arguments in my family,” but insisted on standing her ground against “the idiots in Hollywood who make it look ‘cool’ to tote a baby around sans daddy.”

For Sheila Kihne to suggest that women who are getting married while pregnant shouldn't be allowed to have the kind of wedding ceremony they want to have is downright offensive and shames women who have children out of wedlock. Also, shaming women who get pregnant out of wedlock is going to do absolutely nothing to decrease the percentage of women who get pregnant out of wedlock.

If you live in Minnesota State House District 48B (which is based in the Eden Prairie area in suburban Hennepin County), and you think that Jenifer Loon has been a terrible representative, Sheila Kihne would be an even worse representative, as Kihne would carry on Michele Bachmann's destructive legacy of embarrassing Minnesota. Thankfully, there is a DFL candidate (for those of you not familiar with Minnesota politics, the state Democratic Party in Minnesota is known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) running in Minnesota House District 48B: Joan Howe-Pullis. You can learn more about Howe-Pullis's campaign here.

Are war hawks using Hillary Clinton to divide and conquer the Democratic Party?

Neoconservatives, who had considerable influence on Former Republican President George W. Bush's foreign policy and were behind the costly wars in Iraq and Afghansitan, are now trying to influence Hillary Clinton, who is considering running for the Democratic presidential nomination:

After nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement’s interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.

Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.

[...] 

It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.

It's not just the brains of the neocon movement that are praising Hillary Clinton. Republican U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, who is one of the biggest war hawks in either house of Congress, praised Hillary Clinton a while back and is open to the idea of supporting Hillary's possible candidacy for president.

Many of the same war hawks who helped people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld lead this country into two long, costly wars that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans and turned a federal budget surplus into a massive federal budget deficit are now promoting Hillary Clinton's possible presidential candidacy as part of an apparent plan to divide and conquer the Democratic Party, whose base is full of progressives who, like me, are opposed to the interventionist foreign policy that the neocons support and promote. I disagree with people like Hillary Clinton and John McCain on this, but I firmly believe that the U.S. shouldn't be the world's policeman and should stay out of the affairs of foreign countries except when U.S. interests are at stake.

Hillary Clinton is more interested in serving some of George W. Bush's former cronies than rebuilding the American middle class and other progressive goals.

Cleveland, Ohio is now home to overhyped professional athletes and politicians

The City of Cleveland, Ohio has been in the national spotlight for the past few weeks.

First, the NFL's Cleveland Browns drafted quarterback Johnny Manziel, who played for Texas A&M University in college football for two years, winning the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman.

Second, Cleveland landed the 2016 Republican National Convention, which will officially nominate the Republican Party's candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States. Republicans are all but certain to nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates who support far-right political views that would wreck the American economy, destroy what little is left of the middle class, and take away rights from the American people.

Earlier today, Lebron James, one of the most high-profile NBA players, announced that he is returning to Cleveland to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

With Manziel, James, and whoever Republicans nominate for president and vice president, Cleveland will now be home to overhyped professional athletes and politicians. Well, at least it's not home to a burning river anymore, although the Republicans who will gather in Cleveland two years from now want to weaken environmental regulations so that the Cuyahoga River could be set on fire again, which would be an absolutely terrible thing to happen.

Did one of the "liberal" justices on the Supreme Court side with union busters in case that could bust unions nationwide?

Andy Kroll, a reporter for Mother Jones, has signaled that it's likely, but not certain, that the U.S. Supreme Court may rule to either effectively enact a nationwide right-to-work-for-less law by judicial fiat or, even worse, effectively bust every single public-sector union in the entire country by judicial fiat in the Harris v. Quinn case that will likely be decided Monday.

However, it may not be the usual five conservative justices who may make up an anti-union majority on the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia, usually one of the most conservative justices on the court, sided with the unions during the oral arguments of the Harris case (however, that doesn't guarantee that Scalia will side with the unions when the ruling is issued, although it's certainly a possibility). Additionally, in 1991, Scalia himself wrote that "where the state creates in the nonmembers a legal entitlement from the union, it may compel them to pay the cost" in the Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn. case.

If the Supreme Court, which has five conservative justices and four liberal justices, has only four conservative justices siding against the unions, that would mean that the union busters would need at least one of the liberal justices to side against the unions in order for the court to rule against the unions. You're probably asking yourself this question: Which one of the four "liberals" on our nation's highest court would be the one to side with the conservatives and bust the unions in this country? My guess that it would be either Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, or Stephen Breyer, since Ruth Bader Ginsburg is widely considered to be the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court bench, and it would be highly unlikely that she'd rule against the unions in a landmark case that would have massive ramifications on American society.

Should one or more of the four "liberal" justices of the Supreme Court rule against the unions in the Harris case, that would be perhaps the single most traitorous act in modern American history. It's atrocious enough when conservatives want to take away rights from working Americans, but, in my opinion, it's even worse when liberals do so, since liberals are expected to stand up for workers' rights, not take them away. A ruling against the unions would give wealthy people and corporations even more influence and control over our country's politics, worsen income inequality, and cost this country thousands, if not millions, of jobs.

Why I'm writing a book criticizing corporate welfare

Republicans and corporate Democrats have long supported corporate welfare, in which taxpayer money goes toward tax credits, tax cuts, handouts, and other forms of payouts to specific businesses or specific types of businesses, and those payouts have little or no benefit to the general public.

The corporate welfare system in this country is an inefficient, unsustainable system of government encouraging growth in the private-sector economy, and that's why I'm writing a book, which will be titled Corporate Welfare Queens, criticizing the corporate welfare system in this country and promoting my ideas for responsible economic development.

My book is currently slated for release sometime in the early part of next year, and it will likely be available in an online-only format, as I don't know of a single traditional book publisher that would be interested in anything I write.