Canada police begin clearing Wet'suwet'en land defender camps
Wet'suwet'en Nation leaders say they never consented to Coastal GasLink pipeline project in British Columbia. Al Jazeera EnglishYesterday

RCMP move in to clear northern B.C. gas pipeline blockade, 6 arrests made
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Pipeline opponents brace for more possible arrests in northern B.C.
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Protesters blockade Port of Vancouver in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en
Protesters blockaded the Clark Drive and Heatley Avenue entrances to the Port of Vancouver on Thursday afternoon in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en.

COOP REFINERY LOCK OUT REGINA

Unifor spokesman Scott Doherty was arrested by Regina police
Scott Doherty, executive assistant to Unifor national president Jerry Dias was arrested by Regina police on Thursday. CTV NewsYesterday

Co-op Refinery asks for precedent-setting fine, jail time for local Unifor members
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Unifor says their lead negotiator arrested by Regina police, charged with mischief
Regina police have charged Unifor's lead negotiator with mischief, says the union. On Thursday, Scott Doherty, executive assistant to Unifor's national president ...

Ottawa orders trains carrying dangerous goods to reduce speed after fiery crash in Saskatchewan
The federal government has ordered lower speed limits for all trains carrying dangerous goods on Canada's railway lines after a train jumped the tracks in rural ... The Globe and Mail Yesterday


Train carrying oil derails, erupts into flames in Saskatchewan
CBC News Yesterday


Sask. train derailment: village residents evacuated from area | CTV News
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Another train derails in fireball near Guernsey
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The hardest decision of my life: to end a pregnancy because I had no paid leave

Despite my job at a college and my husband’s job at a grocery store, neither of us would get paid parental leave. So we made a difficult choice
Supported byAbout this content


Charlotte X C Sullivan

Wed 5 Feb 2020
 
Charlotte Sullivan lives in Vermont. 
Photograph: Oliver Parini/The Guardian


In the summer of 2018, I was 34 years old. I lived with my husband-to-be in a one room apartment in rural Vermont. After spending almost a year underemployed, I was ecstatic to be offered a full-time job with benefits at a liberal arts college. I began working there a month before our wedding, a small ceremony we had carefully designed for months. A week after we were married, I found out I was pregnant.


Maternity leave: US policy is worst on list of the world's richest countries

The pregnancy was unplanned; I was four weeks in. This new reality was disorienting. Looking at our wedding photos, I realized there were not just two lives present but three. I was cognizant of my age and wondered, what if this is my only chance? I am someone who takes comfort in color-coded to-do lists and calendars – an approach that often clashes with that of my more spontaneous husband. Was having the baby with extremely limited funds, in a small apartment, actually a romantic way to start a family?

Being pregnant made me feel powerful and horrible. I have never been more tired in my life. The fatigue was like the weight of a thousand bricks pressing on me from every possible angle. I would come home from work and immediately get into bed, relieved to finally fully surrender to gravity. I also became anxious. Once asleep, I could not stay asleep, and this was beginning to wreak havoc on my productivity at work, a job I could not risk losing.

At the time, my husband was earning less than a living wage at a grocery store. His job was stable, but like 83% of all civilian workers in America, he did not have paid family leave. Not only did my employer provide health benefits we both relied on, my position paid slightly higher than his and had a six-week paid parental leave policy. I soon learned, however, that in keeping with federal mandates, this was only available to staff who had been employed for one year. Due to my employment of just 33 days at the moment I learned of my pregnancy, I was ineligible.

As well as being stressed and tired, I was angry. The policy discriminated in favor of planned pregnancy, which is not possible for everyone, even if you’re married. It also seemed biased in favor of non-pregnant women and their spouses. What if a woman was pregnant when she was hired? Perhaps she would decline the job offer, knowing that she could not afford to take time off without being compensated during her leave. My anger grew as I considered the millions of women in the United States without any paid leave at all.


The US is the only one of the world’s 41 richest countries to offer no national paid family leave.

We didn’t go on a honeymoon. Instead, for two blurry weeks, the first of our marriage, we processed the decision of whether to have a baby. We would both work a full day, carpool home, and use this transit time to discuss our feelings, since as soon as we got back I went straight to bed.

“On a scale of one to 10, 10 being let’s have the baby, where are you?” we would ask each other.

Our numbers fluctuated. My husband’s averaged around seven. Mine hovered at three, mainly due to my physical distress and anxiety about how financially risky the pregnancy seemed.

For days I went back and forth with the idea of sharing my news with HR to see if they could grant an exception to the official policy. Revealing to them that my decision to stay pregnant partly depended on their willingness to waive the rules felt daunting. Perhaps if I had been brave enough to communicate what I wanted, they would have relented. I’ll never know. But proving a need for this benefit should not be the responsibility of a pregnant woman to fight for in real time, particularly if her pregnancy was unplanned.


The female health bible Our Bodies, Ourselves talks about the importance of fostering a “climate of confidence” around childbirth to ensure a woman is fully respected and comfortable throughout this natural process. After scrutinizing our finances, my husband and I decided that our situation did not embody the climate of confidence we agreed was necessary for us to be parents. And so we made the hardest decision of my life: to end the pregnancy.

The opposite of a climate of confidence is a climate of doubt – an environment that fosters worry and fear. Unpaid family leave policies contribute to a climate of doubt. The US is the only one of the world’s 41 richest countries to offer no national paid family leave. (By comparison, Estonia offers 80 weeks.) A few states and some individual companies provide these benefits, but the corporate policies are largely available to higher-income workers.

Lawmakers in the state of Vermont, where I live, have been working to pass paid family leave legislation since a previous bill was vetoed by the Republican governor, Phil Scott, in 2018. Last week, he vetoed the bill’s latest iteration.

I experienced abrupt relief after ending the pregnancy, a solemn sense of calm following weeks of unexpected turbulence. The decision unburdened me, as being in a state of uncertainty was overwhelming. I felt proud that I had made such a difficult choice in a short amount of time. Physically, I was grateful to feel my body return to the hormonal balance I was used to. I had granted myself time to consider parenting in a way that felt stable and intentional. In a logistical sense, my choice felt right.

Yet the mystery of this life lost still unsettled me. There were so many unanswerable questions: what if this decision meant my parents would never become grandparents? What if this was my chance to experience having a daughter and if pregnant again, I would have a son? And my anger remained. Our inability to afford the pregnancy was not only due to an absence of paid family leave, it also hinged on the absence of many other foundational support systems currently lacking for most Americans, including universal childcare and healthcare and a living minimum wage.

Up until my pregnancy, I defined the origin of family as love, a force that I had never considered synonymous with money. Processing this newfound disillusionment required research and reflection. I felt grateful to know I was biologically capable of becoming a parent. But the realization that motherhood, in America, is not really a right but a privilege triggered a tectonic shift in my perspective that I am still struggling to understand.

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Austerity, gentrification and big tunes: why illegal raves are flourishing

Amid disillusionment with mainstream clubbing, illegal events are harking back to the original spirit of rave – but police maintain they are as dangerous and criminal as ever

Wil Crisp Wed 5 Feb 2020 
 
Dancers at a squat party in London’s King’s Cross,
 October 2019. Photograph: Wil Crisp

t’s an hour after midnight on New Year’s Day 2020, and a stream of revellers is gathering in an alleyway next to KFC on London’s Old Kent Road. They pass between piles of car tyres and through a gap in a gate where a group, wrapped in hats and scarves, are taking £5 notes from each person who enters the yard of a recently abandoned Carpetright warehouse.

Inside, the lights are on and groups of partygoers are huddled in groups talking, waiting and smoking as a behemoth sound system and makeshift bar are constructed against one wall. Next door, in a larger abandoned warehouse that was formerly an Office Outlet, an even bigger sound system is being built.

There’s a sense of anticipation as the warehouse fills up with mohawked punks, tracksuited squatters, crusties, rude boys, accountants, graphic designers, students, and grey-haired veteran techno heads. Everyone has come together looking for the same thing: a night of loud electronic music and dancing without the constraints of a regulated night club. No closing time, no dress code, no age limit, no searches on the door.

In recent years, unlicensed underground raves like these, which are run by decentralised networks of soundsystems and party crews, have flourished across the UK as legitimate night clubs have foundered in the face of tighter licensing requirements and a population of young people with less disposable income.

In September, the drum’n’bass producer Goldie, who was awarded an MBE for his services to music in 2016, singled out illegal parties such as these as a key pillar of the UK dance music scene amid struggling clubs and increasingly corporate festivals. “Culture ain’t a thing you can put in a weekend festival,” he said. “Rave culture is thriving, but on an underground level. People want to go to fucking raves, people want to go to illegal parties.”
GOLDIE(@MRGOLDIE)

I played an illegal rave in a forest last night in Blackburn those kids are brilliant,there love for the music is pure! #dropjaw 🔥⚡️🙏🏼August 26, 2018

Bryan Gee, another British hall-of-fame drum’n’bass DJ, started playing reggae at south London squat parties in the early 80s, when he was 16. Today, he is in his 50s and still plays occasionally at unlicensed raves despite regularly DJing for crowds of over 7,000 at legitimate commercial venues. “I’ve turned up to unlicensed parties over the last couple of years and been shocked by the numbers,” he says. “Some club nights spend a ton of money on advertising and can’t pull in anything like the numbers these events get.”

“Since the 80s the illegal rave scene has always been active on some level,” says John (not his real name), a member of a prolific London-based free party crew. “It’s no coincidence that the original boom in acid house free parties took place after a decade of Tory government headed by Margaret Thatcher. It’s still here now and the current political climate is one reason why it’s healthier than it’s been for a long time.”

The last couple of years have seen scores of unlicensed events across the country, from 5,000-strong mega-raves in Bristol warehouses, to three-day breakcore soundclashes on south coast beaches, to intimate psytrance parties in the woodlands of Lancashire, and multi-rig “teknivals” on Scottish wind farms. Like John, many of those involved in the free party scene believe that these events are becoming more important than ever amid the widening social divides, ongoing Tory austerity and creeping gentrification. 

 A London multi-rig party in November 2019, 
attended by over 2,000 people. Photograph: Wil Crisp

The free party veteran and acid techno innovator Chris Liberator says that unlicensed raves are a way for people to take back control of their local areas, even if it is only for one night. “We are culturally in a place where normal people can’t control their environment at all,” he says. “I’ve seen the best pubs in my area turned into Starbucks – homogenous, big corporate high streets all with the same shops. There’s no space for people to live – let alone to throw events and have some fun on their own terms. There is very little cultural representation for anyone apart from the mainstream, and even the mainstream clubs are struggling to stay open.”


Police, though, maintain that these events pose “a significant risk to public order and public safety”, in the words of Metropolitan police service commander Dave Musker, who is the national lead for unlicensed music events. He describes them as “illegal, dangerous gatherings that encourage antisocial behaviour and are linked with serious criminal activity” and adds that organisers are changing the “structure” of their parties to “counter police tactics” (understandably, he refuses to detail these tactics on either side).

By 3am, hundreds of people have filled the dimly-lit warehouse. The giant sound system is thundering out a gut-shuddering set of bass-heavy jungle, and the walls are covered in an increasingly dense patchwork of graffiti tags. A heaving mass of ravers are thrashing and embracing on the thickly carpeted dancefloor in front of the speaker stacks. Around them are signs that say “20% off 1000s of carpets”.

People are risking arrest to create a space where people can come together, no matter who they are, in a country where social divides are increasingSophie Duniam

In a era of austerity, the unlicensed rave scene offers people a low-priced alternative to legal clubs. But that’s not the main reason people attend, according to Sophie Duniam, one half of underground electronic music duo My Bad Sister, which started out MCing at illegal events. “It offers people a place where they can come together as a community without prejudice and without intimidation,” she says. “People are risking arrest just to create a space where people can come together, no matter who they are, in a country where social divides are increasing. What the Tory government, and all governments, want to do is to isolate people so they can control them. When communities are united they are stronger and they can’t be pushed around.”

Duniam says that the ability of clubs and festivals to provide a similar space for free expression has been curtailed in recent years due to more stringent attitudes towards licence requirements. Drug-related incidents have led to the closure of several clubs in recent years, including The Arches, which used to be located in Glasgow and had its nightclub licence revoked in 2015, after the death of an underage clubber. In 2016, London superclub Fabric also saw its licence taken away for five months, following the death of two 18-year-olds after taking drugs on the premises. It reopened in 2017 with stricter security regulations. “It’s like 1920s prohibition in America,” Duniam says of the legal clubbing scene. “When we perform at Fabric all of the punters are searched and have their passports photocopied before they are allowed into the club – and you can get chucked out for having a vape.”

Many believe the rave scene is filling a void left after a decline in grassroots venues, defined by the mayor of London’s office as those that focus mainly on music, and play an important role in local communities or as a hub for musicians. In July, figures revealed there were only 100 grassroots music venues in the capital, 30% fewer than in 2007. It’s representative of a nationwide decline: a government select committee report published in 2019 warned that the “closure of music venues presents a significant and urgent challenge to the UK’s music industry and cultural vibrancy”.

Original nuttahs ... a rave in Ashworth valley, 
Rochdale, 5 August 1989. Photograph:
 Peter J Walsh/Pymca/Rex/Shutterstock

The Bristol-based DJ, producer and record label owner Mandidextrous, who started her career DJing at free parties in the early 2000s in Buckinghamshire, says “the innovation that happens in the underground is what fuels the commercial scene”. She also believes that the UK’s squat party scene offers a unique space for people to come together. “As a transgender woman, I’ve been two different people in the rave scene, and I have been openly welcomed throughout the whole thing. You get every single walk of life.”

It’s 10am on the Old Kent Road, New Year’s Day. A flood of new people enter the former Office Outlet warehouse from another unlicensed event, which took place in an office block on the South Bank and was shut down after police seized the sound system in the early hours. As the pale morning light streams through the skylights, hundreds of ravers are dancing to a hardtek remix of DJ Nehpets’ Bounce, Ride. A man with a wild head of grey hair is cutting intricate lines through the peripheries of a crowd of a pair of roller skates, swooping inches away from a teenager asleep on the floor wrapped up in a large yellow “Store Closing” sign.

Since the original boom in acid house parties in the late 80s, the unlicensed rave scene has been the target of media scare stories about drug overdoses and violence, but many of those who regularly attend say they feel safer than when they attend legal club nights. “Parties take place without a problem every weekend,” says Duniam, comparing them with licensed events where “people are kicked out at four in the morning, or earlier if they have done something to piss off the security. If you are a teenage girl and you haven’t got money for a cab, and the trains don’t start running until six or seven in the morning, being thrown out can leave you in a very vulnerable position. This would never happen at most illegal raves where, because no one is getting paid to look after anyone, everyone is looking out for each other as a community.”

The police claim this utopian vision is false. In 2017, two people were shot when gunmen wearing masks let off semi-automatic weapons at an illegal party in Leyton, and over the course of 2014 two teenage boys died after taking drugs at separate unlicensed raves in London. The Met’s Dave Musker says: “The obvious public risk comes from unsafe derelict buildings, overcrowding and youths being exposed to alcohol and illegal drugs in an environment which encourages excess. The revellers at these events are often unlikely to report crimes, including serious sexual assault, due to the culture of taking part in an illegal activity. Young people under the influence of alcohol or drugs are also at risk of being victims of crime or violence as they leave the venue.” He maintains the police’s priority is “to protect vulnerable people”. 

A beach rave on the south coast in August 2019. 
Photograph: Wil Crisp

This is all a gross misrepresentation, according to Mandidextrous. “I’ve been attending illegal raves for more than 20 years, attending hundreds of illegal parties, and I have hardly seen any violence,” she says. “Any I have seen has actually come from the presence of police. If you go down any high street on a Saturday night you see bar brawls and fights on the streets; if you go to a rave, no one is fighting. Everyone is there to have a good time. Occasionally you get a few bad people – but nine times out of 10 they are marched out of the rave as soon as they do something wrong.”

The rave in Carpetright at least passes off without incident: by 9pm, the last of the equipment is being packed into vans while a handful of remaining partygoers sit around a small fire in the yard of the warehouse. Some are discussing the Tory campaign pledge to change the law on trespass and give police new powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of those “who set up unauthorised encampments”. The plans have been seen as an attempt to criminalise Gypsies and Travellers, and could also have ramifications for the free party scene. “Even if the laws get changed raves will carry on in some form,” says one person. “There are too many crews and too many sound systems.” As if to illustrate their point, another white van pulls up, and another crew get out to clean up the venue ahead of their own party the following weekend.

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Why Parasite misses the mark as a commentary on South Korean society

Bong Joon-ho plays on working-class stereotypes and fails to examine the system that created the film’s rich and poor

Hahna Yoon

Wed 5 Feb 2020 
 

Parasite lost … The Kim children Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) in their cramped home. Photograph: Allstar/Curzon Artificial Eye


Like the character Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) in Parasite and its director Bong Joon-ho, I too have entered the home of Seoul’s elite as an English tutor. I live in one of those old Seoul villas and memories of rushing my own white envelope to the bank to pay outstanding phone bills allows me a small window into what’s been called Bong’s “dystopia”. For many, the critically acclaimed film nominated for six Oscars signals the beginning of an overdue appreciation for Asian cinema but it is precisely the issue of representation that makes the undoubtedly beautiful film troubling. Despite being hailed as a social commentary on contemporary South Korean society, Bong misses the mark in his portrayal of the country’s economic crisis and plays on stereotypes of the working class in an attempt to critique capitalism.


Parasite director Bong Joon-ho: 'Korea seems glamorous, but the young are in despair'

Kim Renfro for Business Insider says Parasite is “best seen with absolutely zero context”. It’s true – knowing little about South Korea makes the film easier to digest. Parasite begins on the premise that all four Kims are unemployed and presumably, it is harder for the Kim children – Ki-woo and Ki-jung (Park So-dam) – to find work, as neither have college degrees. The two characters are more plausible without knowing that South Korea’s millennials are some of the most educated in the world – with 70% aged 24 to 35 having some form of tertiary education. (In real life, could Ki-woo have scored so poorly on the exam that he was not accepted into any university whatsoever? Unlikely.) Bong is praised for highlighting Hell Chosun – a term to describe the socioeconomic conditions that make it a nightmare to get a job even after receiving a degree but, ironically, this term barely applies to the Kims. Without degrees, it is more likely they would look for work in a sector with a huge labour shortage – such as factory production … or housework.

Alternatively, put aside those reservations and try to see the film as an allegory. It becomes a dark reenactment of the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – more about greed than hunger. Ki-woo’s friend finds him a tutoring position at the upscale Park home – one that requires forging a fake diploma. With a wad of cash in his hands, Ki-woo fabricates yet another lie – introducing his sister as an art therapist named Jessica. By eliminating two other employees of the Park home, Ki-taek (their father, played by Song Kang-ho) becomes the chauffeur and Chungsook (their mother) assumes the role of housekeeper. Once the four are happily employed, Ki-woo not only pursues a physical relationship with underage student Dahye (Jung Ziso), but he imagines marrying her and the Kim parents fantasise about the Park house becoming their own. Stop the story here and the film being heralded as a critique of capitalism is more about the dangers of trusting the working class.


 Director Bong Joon-ho collected the best foreign
 language Bafta for Parasite.
 Photograph: Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP

The Kims have no plan, expect full pay for haphazardly folded pizza boxes, raid the Parks’ drinks cabinet and resort to bloody violence. All of Bong’s poor are similarly disorderly and directionless – drunkenly urinating on the street or waiting for free meals like prisoners. Bong argues the film is “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains” but the vulgarity of the film’s working class in bold starkly contrasts the bourgeois elitism in the fine print. As the Parks “give nothing back and don’t really care about anyone other than themselves,” Mark Goldberg for Collider asks if the Parks are the real Parasites, but the Parks are generous in addition to being oblivious. Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) – mother of the Park family – offers higher rates for Ki-woo, compensates Ki-jung for attending a birthday party and pays Ki-taek overtime for working on a Sunday. Even if Dahye’s affections are superficially juvenile, both the Park children seem to genuinely like Ki-woo and “Jessica”.

Here’s the twist: the director clearly wants you to like the Kims. We laugh as Ki-taek rehearses the script that will get the Park’s housekeeper fired, we feel the sting of being smelt and we nod as Chungsook notes kindness too is a luxury – “[the Parks] are nice because they are rich”. In the film’s last scenes, Ki-woo narrates his delusions and we enter into his fantasy of being reunited with his father. In spite of their questionable ethics, why is the audience drawn to side with the Kims? Are the Kims responsible for their own wrongdoings or is their dog-eat-dog mentality an inevitable byproduct of a capitalist society? If Bong’s 2013 film Snowpiercer makes it obvious that capitalism allows the powerful to puppet the powerless, Parasites does not do enough to drive its message home.

Without examining the system that has created the Kims and the Parks, the film’s message is reduced to this: commiserate with the working class – not because they are fully developed human beings with the same ethical dilemmas you have – but because they’re a hopeless lot. Bong himself glides between describing the film as an allegory and insisting he does not have an agenda. “I’m not making a documentary or propaganda here. It’s not about telling you how to change the world or how you should act because something is bad, but rather showing you the terrible, explosive weight of reality,” he told Vulture. As for my dystopia? After four sessions of tutoring, my student decided to “quit English”. When I told her mother I would have to return her upfront payment in instalments because I didn’t have the money, she thought I was lying.

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LAST YEAR AMAZON PAID NO TAXES 

Amazon paid a 1.2% tax rate on $13,285,000,000 in profit for 2019 AND LAST YEAR THEY GOT A REFUND!

Amazon paid a 1.2% tax rate on $13,285,000,000 in profit for 2019

Kristin Myers,Yahoo Finance•February 5, 2020

Last year, Yahoo Finance reported that Amazon (AMZN) paid a shockingly low amount in federal income taxes in 2018 on more than $11 billion in profits: $0.

But this year, while the company says it has paid “billions” in taxes for the year 2019, in reality it only paid $162 million in federal income tax — an effective tax rate of 1.2% on over $13 billion in profits. 

“We follow all applicable federal and state tax laws, and our U.S. taxes are a reflection of our continued investments, compensation of our employees, and the current tax rules,” Amazon wrote in a blog post on Jan. 31. 

In Amazon’s 10-K filing for 2019 (a detailed financial report required by the Securities and Exchange Commission each year) the company reported paying $162 million in federal income taxes, with more than $914 million in federal income taxes deferred. 

Deferred taxes can be used by companies to reduce their taxable income, by “postponing” payment based on accounting practices. And so while the company’s balance sheet reports just over $1 billion in federal income taxes, the number paid last year amounts to less than $200 million.

Amazon’s deferred tax amount has steadily increased throughout the years, rising from $565 million in 2018, the first year of President Trump’s new tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, took effect. The TCJA lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

The tax law was largely criticized as a tax break for the rich, but proponents argued it would broaden the corporate tax base by ending special interest breaks and closing loopholes.

If Amazon paid the 21% as mandated by the TCJA, the $162 million the tech behemoth paid would skyrocket to $2.8 billion.

According to Amazon, its summary of U.S. taxes include over $1 billion in “federal income tax expense,” “more than $2.4 billion in other federal taxes, including payroll taxes and customs duties,” and “more than $1.6 billion in state and local taxes, including payroll taxes, property taxes, state income taxes, and gross receipts taxes.” The company also notes it collected and sent close to “$9 billion in sales and use taxes to states and localities throughout the U.S.”

Added together that would mean billions in taxes paid by the tech giant to the U.S. government. The problem? With the exception of the federal income tax, the listed amounts aren’t actually taxes that the company pays.

In this Dec. 17, 2019, photo Steven Smith places packages onto a conveyor prior to Amazon robots transporting packages to chutes that are organized by zip code, at an Amazon warehouse facility in Goodyear, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

‘Patting themselves on the back’

Matthew Gardner, senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), who analyzes corporations and their tax avoidance, says there’s “no meaningful” connection between Amazon and many of the taxes it listed in its announcement.

Instead, the company lists taxes it collects on behalf of the U.S. government, like payroll taxes and sales taxes from third-party vendors. In a post for ITEP, Gardner noted that “economists agree that payroll taxes are ultimately paid by employees in the form of reduced compensation. Like the sales tax, the payroll tax is one that the company really just collects and sends to the government, as required by law.”

“Congratulating an employer for collecting the payroll tax is like congratulating yourself for breathing,” ITEP continued.

“Amazon for a long time has fought tooth and nail against collecting sales tax,” Gardner said. “That was its comparative advantage to the smaller companies they drove out of business. That they’re patting themselves on the back for the first time finally in decades is really a cosmic joke.”

“Amazon’s leadership should be far more ashamed of their prior behavior on the sales tax front than they should be proud of their current behavior,” he continued. 

But how has Amazon been able to do this? In its 10-K the mega-retailer notes, “tax benefits relating to excess stock-based compensation deductions and accelerated depreciation deductions are reducing our U.S. taxable income.”

Gardner said it’s possible the company was “sensitive” to criticism about its tax avoidance, and chose this year to ensure it paid greater than 0% of taxes. Or, he noted, Amazon could be “running out of” its “stockpile of deferred tax assets.”

According to Amazon, “as of December 31, 2019, we had approximately $1.7 billion of federal tax credits potentially available to offset future tax liabilities. Our federal tax credits are primarily related to the U.S. federal research and development credit.”

Amazon does go on to state that “as we utilize our federal tax credits we expect cash paid for taxes to increase.”

Amazon isn’t alone

But while this might seem unfair, especially to Americans who have been previously slammed with “surprise” tax bills, it isn’t illegal. 

Though Amazon isn’t breaking the law, Gardner said the amount of tax paid by a company is an indicator whether it’s a “good corporate citizen.”

“The federal income tax is the one tax we apply as a nation designed to be targeted to companies that are doing profitable,” he said. “It’s the best measure of whether a company is really complying with the law.”

What’s more, Amazon isn’t alone. Many big companies make use of tax breaks and loopholes to lower, or even eliminate, their tax liability.

According to ITEP, 60 Fortune 500 companies avoided paying all federal income tax in 2018 (with their total average effective tax rate being roughly -5%).

That’s more than three times the number of companies that avoided paying corporate taxes on average from 2008 to 2015. During that period, 18 companies managed to pay 0% or less (with their total average effective tax rate over 8 years being roughly -4%).

Kristin Myers is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

ROMNEY VOTED FOR THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE DONALD J TRUMP POTUS
FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS HE WAS THE ONLY REPUBLICAN TO DO SO. HE SAID HE TOOK AN OATH IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS GOD AND THE CHAMBER.

MITT ROMNEY IS A HIGH RANKING OFFICER IN THE LDS CHURCH,THE MORMONS, 
AS HE SAID HE IS VERY RELIGIOUS, 

THE LDS TOOK THEIR UNDERWEAR AND SOME RITUALS FROM THE FREEMASONS, 

SO TAKING AN OATH IS A COMMON AND VERY SERIOUS TRADITION
 SHARED BY MORMONISM AND MASONRY

 AND AS ROMNEY POINTED OUT.HE DID WHAT HE TOOK HIS OATH
 TO DO, AS A MORMON ELDER AS WELL AS A SENATOR 

TOO BAD THE BRETHREN OF THE SQUARE AND COMPASS
 IN HIS PARTY DID NOT LIVE UP TO THEIR OATHS.

AOC lashes out at 'nauseating' spectacle of Rush Limbaugh receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom at State of the Union

Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has hit out at the "nauseating" spectacle of first lady Melania Trump awarding ailing conservative icon Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union.

In an Instagram video, AOC describes the recipient as a "virulent racist" and that the gesture "cheapened the value" of "an extraordinarily sacred award" previously given to Rosa Parks

Republicans Hate Surveillance on Trump but Sound Like They’ll Renew the PATRIOT Act

Spencer Ackerman,The Daily Beast•February 5, 2020

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI

If Republicans have any appetite for reining in domestic surveillance that they describe as a massive violation of the civil liberties of Donald Trump’s associates, it wasn’t on display when FBI Director Christopher Wray made his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the damning Justice Department inspector general’s report into the Trump-Russia investigation.

That’s a real issue in light of next month’s expiration of several intrusive surveillance measures contained in the 2001 PATRIOT Act’s Section 215. One of those measures, the business records provision, permits broad FBI collection of records from service providers about an investigative target without that target ever knowing about it.

But few Republicans at Wednesday’s hearing who pronounced themselves offended by FBI surveillance abuses in the Trump-Russia probe, known as Crossfire Hurricane, told Wray that they will cost him Section 215. It was reminiscent of how Trump and House intelligence committee Republicans spent 2017 railing against surveillance on Trump’s allies before reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s single most expansive provision in January 2018.

Wray, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, was in for rough treatment from the panel’s Republican members. Hanging over his head was Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s findings that the FBI misrepresented information to the secret surveillance court relevant to continuing its surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
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But Wray had a script and he stuck to it. He refused to characterize any aspect of Horowitz’s investigation when legislators of both parties attempted soliciting a soundbite that could help or hurt Trump. Instead, he reiterated variations on a theme: Horowitz’s report “described conduct that is unacceptable and unrepresentative of the FBI as an institution.”

Several of the panel’s Republicans, having read Horowitz describe FBI officials misrepresenting their basis for continuing surveillance before a court that almost always hears exclusively from the government, found that frustrating. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) decried the FBI’s “systemic issues.” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) referenced the FISA Court’s Judge Rosemary Collyer, who said the Horowitz report “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.” More bluntly, California’s Tom McClintock told Wray, “I don’t trust your agency anymore.”

But that lack of trust ends where the PATRIOT Act begins. The committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Doug Collins (GA), said “we must reauthorize” the expiring PATRIOT provisions, even as Collins was a rare Republican who contextualized the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as a congressional response to the intelligence agencies’ unconstitutional surveillance of peaceful protesters and others. Wray took Collins’ opening to agree that the PATRIOT provisions were “not related” to the Carter Page case.

That’s true. But it overlooks Judge Collyer’s broader point about how the Page case indicts the FBI’s trustworthiness in its other, voluminous surveillance applications to her court. And FISA court-authorized surveillance isn’t the outer limit of the FBI’s surveillance powers. In October, it was revealed that the court found the FBI’s warrantless searches for Americans’ data captured in National Security Agency dragnets were so massively overbroad as to threaten constitutional freedoms.

Collins, to his credit, persisted in asking Wray if there needed to be a “macro-level” examination of FISA. But Wray brushed that off. The director said he was “leery of any kind of change that would have any unintended consequences.”

That was about it for most Republicans on the committee. They wanted instead for Wray to commit to firing FBI officials, often denounced by Trump, involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, most of whom have already departed the bureau. “I hope you’ve considered there might be criminal culpability,” Biggs told Wray. “A lot of people in my district have totally lost confidence” in the FBI, said Arizona’s Debbie Lesko, who further suggested that that “maybe you [could] make it public” when agents involved in the Russia investigation get disciplined.

A partial exception came from Armstrong, who noted that “FISA reauthorization” was coming up, as did Jim Jordan (R-OH), but Jordan quickly veered away from endorsing PATRIOT Act expirations. A more substantial exception came from Virginia Republican Ben Cline, who pointed to the March PATRIOT expirations and said, “It is paramount that we ensure American civil liberties and due process are in no way inhibited.”

Wray told Cline that returning to the higher, pre-PATRIOT Act standards, which demanded that the FBI possess specific, articulable facts that domestic surveillance targets were agents of a foreign power, “would be a sad day for America.”

Civil libertarians expressed their own frustration that legislators focused their ire on the small cohort of Americans tied to Trump whose liberties were jeopardized while ignoring the untold millions of Americans who for a generation have lived with their privacy at risk from their own security apparatus.

“Ranking Member Collins asked FBI Director Wray whether people’s civil liberties are now protected under FISA. As any civil liberties advocate will tell you, the answer is an emphatic ‘no,’” said Sean Vitka, counsel for digital-rights group Demand Progress. “The DOJ’s Inspector General report did reveal disturbing issues that need to be resolved, but Congress, and in particular the House Judiciary Committee, is wrong to remember Carter Page but forget the millions of innocent people who have been wrongfully spied on under this and previous administrations.”

Vitka backs a bipartisan bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) that puts ---3restrictions on information the FBI can collect and use under Section 215 and expands safeguards on related surveillance authorities. “In fact, the House Judiciary Committee should make it clear to surveillance hawks that nothing weaker than the Safeguarding Americans' Private Records Act will advance to the floor under its watch,” he said.

Jake Laperruque, of the Project on Government Oversight, said “concerns about the Carter Page FISA warrants” aided momentum for surveillance reform like the Wyden bill.

“If the members talking about Crossfire Hurricane now want their complaints to be taken seriously,” Laperruque said, “this is the type of reform legislation they’ll need to support.”

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What to know about Shadow Inc., the vendor behind Iowa Democrats' caucus app

SOO RIN KIM, ABC News•February 4, 2020

What to know about Shadow Inc., the vendor behind Iowa Democrats' caucus app originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

As the results of Monday’s first 2020 presidential election contest in Iowa ground to a halt, all eyes turned toward a mysterious digital app developer with an equally opaque name: Shadow Inc.

Shadow Inc. was a small for-profit tech startup contracted by the Iowa Democratic Party to build an app to record and report its caucus results. But it quickly rose to the national political spotlight Tuesday morning when the much anticipated results of the caucuses were delayed after the party found what it described as "inconsistencies" in the reporting of the results partly due to a "coding issue" in the app's reporting system.

MORE: 2020 Iowa caucus election results

Much of what went wrong Monday night and what caused it still remains unclear.

PHOTO: A volunteer holds a Presidential Preference Card

 before the start of a Democratic caucus at Hoover High

 School, Feb. 3, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa.

 (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Shadow Inc. insisted that the issues with the app "did not affect the underlying caucus results data" and that the company "worked as quickly as possibly overnight to resolve this issue."

"We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night's Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and the Democratic caucus-goers," Shadow tweeted. "As the Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow's mobile caucus app was sound and accurate but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the [Iowa Democratic Party] was not."

MORE: Iowa caucus results delay ignites debate over state's status as 'first-in-the-nation'

A spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency wrote in a statement that "at this time, we have no reporting of any malicious cyber activity."

"We encourage our election partners to build resilience into their planning and execution procedures, to prepare for issues that may come up during election processes," the spokesperson wrote. "The Iowa Democratic Party is the best source for information on Caucuses and we encourage everyone to review their updates and reporting."

DNC Chair Tom Perez in a statement Tuesday evening -- a full 24 hours since the Iowa chaos -- calling for transparency and accountability of what went off the rails Monday night and declaring that the app will not be used anywhere else during the 2020 primaries.

"What happened last night should never happen again," Perez wrote in the statement. "We have staff working around the clock to assist the Iowa Democratic Party to ensure that all votes are counted. It is clear that the app in question did not function adequately. It will not be used in Nevada or anywhere else during the primary election process. The technology vendor must provide absolute transparent accounting of what went wrong."

Shadow Inc. was launched early last year by liberal-leaning nonprofit ACRONYM, which specializes in providing digital services for Democratic campaigns and committees, as part of its efforts to build what it called a "smarter" technological infrastructure for Democratic campaigns and committees.

At the time of Shadow's launch, ACRONYM's CEO Tara McGowan, who was previously a digital producer for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign, wrote on Twitter that Shadow’s capabilities included syncing data between a volunteer management platform and an SMS tool -- saving campaign organizers from manual data entry and reducing the risk for mistakes.

MORE: Iowa caucuses: What we know and what went wrong

Shadow would allow campaigns to "use the most effective new tools in smarter ways," McGowan tweeted at the time.

PHOTO: A precinct secretary and other officials look over

 documents at a caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, Feb. 3, 2020.

 (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Shadow's CEO is Gerard Niemira, who was ACRONYM's chief operating officer prior to joining Shadow. He was also previously a Hillary Clinton campaign aide during the 2016 presidential election, according to his Linkedin profile.

And now as questions on Shadow Inc. arise with the failures in the Iowa caucuses, ACRONYM is seeking to distance itself from the app.

MORE: Iowa Democratic Party releases the majority of caucus results

In a statement late Monday night posted on Twitter, ACRONYM spokesperson Kyle Tharp wrote that ACRONYM is a "nonprofit organization and not a technology company and that it has not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party." Tharp said Shadow is just one of multiple for-profit companies the group has invested in.

"We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow's work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic Party with respect to what happened," Tharp added.

pic.twitter.com/dkWBvMvNzW

— Kyle Tharp (@kylewilsontharp) February 4, 2020

ACRONYM has also taken down from its website a blog post penned by Niemira at the time of Shadow's launching, which describes Shadow Inc. as a "technology company that will exist under the ACRONYM umbrella." Niemira further details, "As part of Shadow’s technology suite, ACRONYM will continue to license Groundbase technologies to campaigns and organizations across the progressive movement." It's unclear when exactly the page was taken down.

MORE: Iowa caucuses considered a 'crucible' of 2020 primary: Here's how they work

The Democratic Party had previously declined to release information about its vendors for the early caucuses and the only trace of Shadow's involvement in the Hawkeye State until now has been the party committee's payments to the company totaling $63,183 in November and December for "website development," according to a campaign finance disclosure report.

The House Administration Committee's ranking member Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., wrote in a statement on Tuesday that the Iowa Democratic Party didn't receive any technical assistance available from the Department of Homeland Security to inspect the app before its use.

"Yesterday, we saw a breakdown of the Iowa Democratic Party's technology that could have been easily preventable," Davis wrote. "Not only are there no regulations around this new election technology, but they did not take advantage of the resources of the Department of Homeland Security to check the security and functionality of this new app."

Election security experts told ABC News that while a paper trail should eventually be able to produce accurate results, Monday night's debacle adds to existing concerns over the country’s election system.

"I do think it's a warning to those running our primaries and general election that they must be prepared for system-wide failure," Lawrence Nordern, director of the Election Reform Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice told ABC News.

“It undermines people's trust because people expect that election officials are going to be able to produce winners and do so in a transparent way," professor Richard Hansen, an election law scholar at the University of California, Irvine told ABC News. "They have lost both the transparency and the finality at this point. And it's very worrisome."

PHOTO: Local residents check-in after arriving at an Iowa 

Democratic caucus at Hoover High School, Feb. 3, 2020, 

in Des Moines, Iowa. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

MORE: DNC rejects plans by Iowa and Nevada to hold 'virtual' caucuses

Last year, the Democratic National Committee rejected Iowa and Nevada's plans to hold "virtual" caucuses citing security concerns, causing the two state parties to scramble together revised plans just months ahead of the early primaries. Security and technological concerns have continued to plague the state parties, but the Democratic Party said it had thoroughly vetted its technology.

The Nevada Democratic Party, which is slated to hold its Democratic caucuses later this month on Feb. 22, had also paid Shadow Inc. $58,000 for "technology services" in August last year, an FEC record shows.

The state’s Democratic Party announced on Tuesday morning that it "will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus." It's unclear if the decision to not use the same vendor was made before Monday's results.

FEC records show that a number of other campaigns and state committees have also paid the firm, including $42,500 from the campaign of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in July for "software rights and subscriptions," FEC records show. The Buttigieg campaign told ABC News the payment was for the vendor's texting services.

The presidential campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as state Democratic Party committees in Wisconsin and Texas, hired Shadow for its "fundraising consulting," "text messages" and "software" services earlier last year.

Texas Democratic Party spokesperson Abhi Rahman told ABC News that the party committee only used Shadow for its texting contracts, not for app development or website services.

Because ACRONYM's nonprofit status doesn't require donor disclosure, much of its source of funding is unknown to the public.

But FEC records show that ACRONYM's super PAC, PACRONYM, designed to help Democrats in 2020, is bankrolled by a host of liberal megadonors.

Last year, under the leadership of McGowan, who was also previously the director of strategy with Priorities USA, one of the largest Democratic-aligned outside groups, PACRONYM raised more than $7 million, receiving a series of eight-figure checks from wealthy supporters including financier Seth Klarman and Donald Sussman, as well as $500,000 from Steven Spielberg.

The Iowa Democratic Party has began releasing its caucus results late Tuesday afternoon. With 62% of precincts reporting, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg had 27% of the vote and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had 25%, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 18%, former Vice President Joe Biden had 16% and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar had 13% of the vote.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote in a statement Tuesday afternoon that "the continuing chaos in Iowa is illustrative of our overall failure to take sufficient steps to protect the integrity of our election systems."

"We need to look holistically at protecting the security, integrity, and resiliency of election systems – from registration systems, to e-poll books, voting machines, tabulation machines, and election night reporting systems," Warner wrote.

ABC News' Matthew Vann, Fergall Gallagher, Lucien Bruggeman and Ali Dukakis contributed to this report.

Silicon Valley sells snake oil 'solutions'. The Democratic party fell for them

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Guardian•February 6, 2020

Photograph: Craig Lassig/EPA

As I write this sentence I have no idea which candidates prevailed in the Democratic caucuses held in Iowa on Monday. That’s fine with me.

We don’t know the results because the Iowa Democratic party fell into the same mania that has twisted the American economy, culture and political world for almost 40 years: the thoughtless pursuit of immediate gratification through the expensive installation of complex, fragile technological systems.

Related: Joe Biden flopped in Iowa. And so did the Democratic party's reputation | Nathan Robinson

The Iowa party spent thousands of dollars contracting with an inexperienced mobile application developer called – in all seriousness – Shadow to develop a mobile phone app to gather and report the vote and delegate tallies from the 1,681 precincts in the state.

The failure of the app has embarrassed the Iowa party and convinced the Nevada Democratic party, which will host similar caucuses on 22 February, to abandon its plans to use the same service.

This might seem at first glance to be a serious blow to the image of the national Democratic party and its candidates’ efforts to defeat Donald Trump. But I’d argue that it could be the best thing that could have happened.

The Democrats needed a bracing embarrassment early, so they could learn from it. Had things worked smoothly in Iowa, the systematic flaws and errors of thought that have dominated Democratic strategy for years might have revealed themselves months later when it really mattered.

So what’s good for the Democrats in this series of events? The Iowa glitch shows party leaders that their challenges cannot be addressed by fancy sales pitches from Silicon Valley snake oil salespeople.

No one needs to know just 48 hours after a long, complex, decentralized deliberative event what the results are

Hopefully this experience will also teach us a lesson about patience. No one needs to know just 48 hours after a long, complex, decentralized deliberative event what the results are. There are only 41 pledged delegates to the Democratic national convention up for grabs in Iowa. That’s about 1% of the 3,979 pledged national delegates. So the “winner” of Iowa barely has a lead over her or his competitors.

We should all walk away from Iowa 2020 more patient and circumspect. Speed kills democracy. Slow democracy is healthy democracy.

The Democratic party is operating under the mistaken assumption that Trump’s 2016 campaign had some sophisticated technological advantage over Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That could not be more wrong. In 2016 Clinton had elaborate voter databases and dedicated platforms for organizers and volunteers to deploy in the field to identify and motivate voters.

The very sophistication was the downfall. Organizers complained that the data was slow and outdated. The app interface was clunky. Money could not buy enthusiasm or discipline.

Instead of building elaborate predictive models and licensing specialized software like Clinton and the Democrats, the Trump digital campaign handed the reins to Brad Parscale, a neophyte to national campaigns whose experience was limited to helping some local races and building some websites.

To find new supporters, urge them to donate and motivate them to show up at rallies and knock on doors, Parscale and the Trump team used a dazzlingly obvious technological platform: Facebook.

Trump’s digital team had a limited budget and limited technological expertise, but experience with Facebook ads. So they just did what worked. Yes, Facebook helped Trump by embedding staff with the campaign to make sure it could use its services effectively. But there was nothing sophisticated or expensive about the Trump 2016 digital campaign. For 2020, Trump campaign manager Parscale is apparently planning a more intense version of the same, with more money.

If the Democrats take one lesson from Iowa, it should be that simple, dependable technology is better than flimsy, new technology. That technology includes paper, an ancient technology that still works best for recording and counting votes.

Here is a bigger lesson: it’s not about the app. Just as we fool ourselves by thinking that an app will fix things, we fool ourselves by blaming an app. All technologies are embedded in webs of human relations. We say the app failed because the systems failed – humans failed. Humans built a system too complex to handle simple tasks. We often fool ourselves into thinking that speed and convenience are paramount values. So we maximized speed over reliability, data over truth, attention over depth.

Maybe the Iowa glitch, one caused because caucuses are poorly designed rituals and retrofitting custom software to them only widens their flaws, will show us a better way forward. There is no reason to deploy gizmos and magic spells when simple, steady, slow work can win – as always. Democracy is not for the impatient. Democracy is too important to be trusted to the “innovators”.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is Guardian columnist, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy