WhimsyLand

The Senate Finance Committee has been investigating corporate tax havens recently.  Basically, these are countries with low or no taxes, and little transparency.  Corporations are increasingly establishing subsidiaries (or moving the entire company) offshore to these countries to avoid taxation.  In February, for example, the giant pharmaceutical company, Merck, announced it would pay $2.3 billion in taxes and penalties for evading taxes on royalties for drug patents.  Merck has established a shell company in Bermuda and transferred all rights to the patents to it.  It then paid billions in royalties to their own subsidiary, deducted it as an expense, and substantially lowered their corporate taxes.  Microsoft has set up an Irish subsidiary and transferred its copyrights, and shifted $9 billion in profits to it just last year (at much lower Irish tax rates).  IBM and even Google have made similar moves.  Anyway, back to the Finance Committee.  They found an address in the Cayman Islands that houses 12,748 companies in a single five-story building.  The supposition is that these are shell companies that don't really do anything but avoid taxes.   The Committee asked the GAO to go take a look at the building and rumor has it that the GAO staff are drawing straws to see who gets to go.  By the way, only corporations can pull these shenanigans, not citizens (natch).  You have to pay U.S. tax on any income you derive from anywhere (you get a credit if you have to pay local taxes). 

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There's little I can imagine less likely than Jim Behrle's cartoons showing up on the Poetry Foundation site (you know, that bastion of the School of Quietude).  But , there they are.  Way to go, Jim.

Zelda Update:  I'm battling Hogriders on Hyrule Plain.

I took Jonathan's Merwin vs. McKuen test (resurrected, as he says, from 3 years ago).  The last time I did this, I think it was Tate vs. Young and I did well.  This time is a lot harder.  Merwin's poems often employ that strange diction and odd line breaks of his, so I should be able to suss him out.  Here goes:  6.07.2007 - a. McKuen, b. Merwin, c. McKuen, d. Merwin, e. McKuen, f. McKuen.  More-- Merwin or McKuen? 1) Merwin, 2) McKuen, 3) Merwin?, 4) McKuen, 5) Merwin.  Come to think of it, I have two poems where Merwin makes a showing.

Kasey and Anne have a new journal "printed on the cheapest paper and clumsily stapled for your reading pleasure".  I particularly liked the seventeen year subscription offer for $968.

I put up an audio of my recent radio reading with Dona.

I found that if you put an avocado seed in a pot with some potting soil and water it week after week and don't get annoyed and impatient and throw the damn thing out and start over and water and wait you get an avocado treelette.  My first approach was to do what my mom always did, which was to stick three toothpicks in the thing at an angle and drop it into a glass of water and watch it hover there.  The problem with that strategy was a) Colorado is so dry that you have to refill the water every day, b) even if you do refill it, Ms. Emily drinks it anyway, c) eventually Ms. Emily decides that it's a toy and you find it behind the couch.

Gabe cites the 13 mental qualities of a wholesome mind:  Confidence, Mindfulness, Conscience, Shame, Nonhate, Nongreed, Even-mindedness (equanimity), Tranquility, Lightness, Flexibility, Efficiency, Proficiency, and Straightforwardness.  I think Dick Cheney scores a 2.

Ahsahta Press's Finalist list looks like a Who's Who:  Baumblatt, Buchanan, Clay, Corey, Pafunda, Waldrep and others.