Blog Post by: The Century Foundation, on May 22, 2013
Apple CEO Tim Cook testified before a Senate hearing this week to discuss Apple’s creative tax avoidance strategies. Apple’s behavior is perfectly legal. But Century Foundation fellow Edward Kleinbard has been busy explaining why Apple’s behavior—which Kleinbard says goes far beyond what other American companies are doing—demonstrates the need for serious tax reform. We’ve collected some of the highlights below.
Blog Post by: Peter Osnos, on May 22, 2013
What was billed as the first-ever Publishing Hackathon took place over the May 18–19 weekend at Alley NYC, a crowded co-working space in midtown Manhattan. Digital designers, programmers, engineers, and assorted techies gathered to devise the means to improve book discovery. About two hundred people—working in teams as small as a single individual to a group of seven—came up with thirty submissions with a simple, common objective: how to help readers find books that will appeal to them based on a variety of criteria, including their social media and browsing histories. Enabling readers of all ages with a cross-section of interests to connect with publishers is a major challenge for the book industry as it evolves ever more deeply into a digital universe.
Blog Post by: The Century Foundation, on May 21, 2013
This winner of this week’s #TCFBest is from The Atlantic, How to Make the U.S. a Better Place for Caregivers, by Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM.) Last year, Slaughter wrote another Atlantic piece Why Women Still Can’t Have It All that sparked a national debate about women, work and families. In this follow-up piece she offers a summary of what the country needs for employment to work for women and families.
Blog Post by: Neil Bhatiya, on May 20, 2013
A recent poll conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the Australia India Institute suggests that Indians view climate change and its related effects as a bigger threat than potential conflicts with either of its regional rivals, China or Pakistan. Energy shortages and water shortages also beat out worries about other regional powers in South Asia.
Blog Post by: The Century Foundation, on May 20, 2013
When I was preparing to graduate high school, I was faced with several offers from four-year universities, including scholarships and grants that would cover 100 percent of my tuition. I looked closely at the numbers: I could either begin my college experience at a highly ranked UC school with classrooms as large as 500, or I get a more personal education at my local two year school in a classroom of 25. I chose the latter. I figured that I could always transfer to the university later; I might as well pick up a two-year degree on the way.
Not only did Grossmont College help prepare me for my future career, they offered specialized technical courses that weren't offered at any four year university. Getting into classes that I needed for my transfer wasn't a struggle. The instructors were passionate and always had time to assist every student. While I was taking lower-division courses for a transfer degree, it gave me an opportunity to choose what I was most interested in before committing to a major.
I've become such an advocate of community colleges that, over a decade after I first enrolled at one, I began working at one. Today, I am the social media marketing specialist for Clackamas Community College and I have the honor of watching students' lives get changed by the community college experience every single day.
Blog Post by: Thanassis Cambanis, on May 20, 2013
The Century Foundation’s Beirut-based fellow, Thanassis Cambanis joins the BBC’s Newshour to discuss Hezbollah’s growing role in Syria’s ongoing civil war. You can listen to the full podcast below.
Blog Post by: Edward D. Kleinbard, on May 17, 2013
This paper uses Starbucks Corporation, the premier roaster, marketer and retailer of specialty coffee in the world, as an example of stateless income tax planning in action. “Stateless income” comprises income derived for tax purposes by a multinational group from business activities in a country other than the domicile of the group’s ultimate parent company, but which is subject to tax only in a jurisdiction that is neither the source of the factors of production through which the income was derived, nor the domicile of the group’s parent company.
Blog Post by: Jeffrey Laurenti, on May 16, 2013
As pressures mount in Washington for a more aggressive American involvement on behalf of at least some rebel groups in Syria, President Obama has seemed intent on proving the Nobel committee was farsighted in awarding him its peace prize four years ago.
He sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow this month with an initiative to re-engage diplomatically with Russia to end the war, through an international conference in June. It could not come soon enough. The Syrian government has, by all accounts, begun to win back some of its lost ground, worries are mounting about an increasing dominance of rebel militias by Islamic extremists, and a United Nations vote yesterday shows eroding support for the rebel side in notable quarters of the international community.
Today, after meeting with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the White House, Obama turned aside calls for arming Syrian rebels, noting, "There is no magic formula for dealing with an extraordinary violent and difficult situation like Syria's." His view was echoed during the day by Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, normally a conservative darling. "I would urge on the president extraordinary caution," Harper told a New York audience at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Arming unnamed people is extremely risky."
Blog Post by: Peter Osnos, on May 15, 2013
This week's revelation that the Department of Justice has secretly obtained Associated Press telephone records from 2012 reaffirms the argument made by venerable First Amendment lawyer James C. Goodale last month: that "the fight for freedom of the press never ends even under a president previously thought to be friendly to the cause." In fact, Goodale has been increasingly critical of the Obama administration's pursuit of whistleblowers.
Goodale, with a career spanning over fifty years, is unusually well-placed to make this case. He, after all, was the general counsel at the New York Times when that paper published the Pentagon Papers in June 1971. His memoir Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles (CUNY Journalism Press), published last month, provides an inside account of the intense struggle inside the publication of one of the most famous classified-document leaks in history.
Blog Post by: Richard C. Leone, on May 14, 2013
In Washington and in most state capitals, fierce political battles are underway challenging once broadly accepted public policies. Underlying the current sharp divisions over fundamental questions is the widening fissure between the two parties. It's fashionable to describe this development as the result of a more or less symmetrical shift—with Democrats moving to the left while Republicans move to the right. I guess this approach is intended to make the whole thing look reasonable and any analysis of the shift appear nonpartisan. But whatever the reasoning at work, the conclusion is just plain wrong. Democrats have not moved to the left, if anything they have moved to the right—but not so fast or as far as Republicans.
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Greg Anrig is vice president of policy and programs who writes on employment and retiree benefits; Social Security solvency and reform; economic security; education; and tax reform.
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