Multinational Tax Deform:
In response to public outrage, congressional Democrats are clamoring for a crackdown on offshore tax dodges. They’ve focused particularly on the notorious Bermuda loophole, whereby unpatriotic companies such as Tyco, Stanley Works, Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting have or plan to set up mail drops in Bermuda to avoid taxes on their U.S.…
Europe’s New Crusade
The Netherlands, visitors have long observed, seems the very embodiment of tolerance. To stroll along Amsterdam’s central canals is to see cops bicycling through a haze of marijuana smoke while heroin addicts, drunk British tourists, pimps and prostitutes commingle in the alleys. Historically, the story goes, the Netherlands’ legendary tolerance made it one of the…
Shock without Therapy
The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy By Strobe Talbott. Random House, 457 pages, $29.95 The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia By David E. Hoffman. PublicAffairs, 567 pages, $21.00 Russia’s Post-Communist Economy Edited by Brigitte Granville and Peter Oppenheimer. Oxford University Press, 551 pages, $29.95 The New Russia: Transition Gone Awry…
It’s Clear Skies for Dirty Air
When the Environmental Protection Agency launched its highly publicized Acid Rain Program in the early 1990s to cut sulfur-dioxide emissions, environmentalists were skeptical. The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 introduced a nationwide emissions-trading system: Factories and utilities whose emissions were cleaner than the law required could sell their “excess” to dirty plants. Over time,…
On the Contrary:
Considering the generous tax exemptions long enjoyed by religious institutions, the routine invocation of God at official events or even the persistence of blue laws prohibiting the sale of liquor on Sundays, it’s clear that the “wall” between church and state has never been much more than a curtain. While separationists often succeed in closing…
Shifting to Offense
Epochs do not change on a dime. Yes, the era of market extremism is waning, Republicans’ ratings are plummeting, and, the polls agree, more of us believe that Elvis is hiding in the hills with the Shining Path than still have faith in American big business. But none of this means that the liberal era,…
The Andersen Tape
Are the corporate scandals the work of a few “bad apples” in an otherwise healthy business world, as President Bush asserts? Or do they spring from a “bad seed” that’s sprouting corrupt practices all over the corporate landscape? A promotional video made by eight corporate executives on behalf of Arthur Andersen and aired on the…
Wanted: Brave Democrats
Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, recently profiled in these pages, committed a brave political act the other day. He called for repeal of George W. Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut. What makes the act so brave is not that repealing the tax cut is an outlandish idea, or even that it is unpopular. What makes Dean’s…
Plumbing the Depths
There are many reasons to applaud K-19: The Widowmaker, not the least of which is that it is such a hellish bummer. Here’s the scenario (and it’s based on a true story): In 1961, with the Cold War glacially raging, the Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 puts out to sea. Untested, undermanned and undersupplied, it is…
One-Day Wonder
This September, when the Senate returns from its summer recess, the Foreign Relations Committee plans to vote on the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, which Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin signed at the Moscow Summit in May. Bush claims the treaty “will liquidate the legacy of the Cold War,” but it does…
Help from the Hill
As a rule, both the joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence Agency’s leadership prefer that Congress stay out of their affairs. Indeed, an ideal Congress for many denizens of this realm would be one that simply holds open the cash spigots while Langley and the Pentagon set their own agendas. That makes it…
Dems’ Fightin’ Words
There it was, the first Fourth of July after September 11: The majestic swell of a patriotism associated more with the era of the Andrews Sisters than the age of Destiny’s Child. The ritual exultations of American values. The worry, yes, that something bad might happen somewhere, but even this concern only enhanced the solemnity…
What Do Afghan Women Want?
The unveiling took place amid the giddy whirl of a $1,000 ticket, all-star production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues on Feb. 10, 2001. Raucous merriment had come and gone: Ensler conducted a chorus of ecstatically groaning celebrities, Glenn Close urged the audience to reclaim the c-word by yelling it at the top of its…
Is the Big-Business Era Over?
It may be true that the era of big government being over is over, as conservative Christopher Caldwell has argued, done in by President Bush’s reluctance to challenge popular spending programs. But it may also be true that the era of big business being over has just begun. By that, I don’t mean that people…
