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senators
lou are investigating apple remember we talked on the bonus show and it's been
in the news how apple is being
questioned about there
creative accounting and business organization techniques where they
basically are paying
far less taxes than they would it if they truly reported the income that they
make is an american company within the u_s_ you know all about that
investigation well aware of that it turns out that two senators serving on
the subcommittee that was grilling apple executives over their offshore tax
practices
actually own apple stock either directly or through their spouse
and uh...
i'd so much to say about this but just to give you a little background
one of these individuals as senator heidi height camp i'd and emma craft
from north dakota
and she owns the most apple stock of the fourteen members of the homeland
security and governmental affairs committees
permanent subcommittee on investigations
her holdings are somewhere between
a quarter million and a half million dollars worth of apple stock
and that was in a statement that covers twenty twelve
and she was one of six committee members we didn't even show up to the hour long
hearing during which the apple c_e_o_
defended the company against accusations that they were dodging
taxes now regardless the senator stock holdings according to a spokeswoman
don't pose any kind of a conflict they said
uh... what is the quote here they said her position on the committee
is in no way impacted by her personal financial holdings
i feel that they should be in allo allo after that mike is just such a obvious
bs
so sir to believe this right guys we have to believe lobbying doesn't work a
lot makers would be hit we often hear lawmakers behave identically
when it comes to passing laws are not passing laws of what laws they propose
whether they did or didn't receive a pile of money from particular lobbyists
are companies nobody believes that delaying the time
no in fact i would go further and say the reason why uh... decisions like
citizens united and in general people don't seem to be as outrage about this
is because they calculate
in these terms they say will hold on a second hey i just invested in some
stocks it has nothing to do no one's pulling a gun to my head and saying you
have to vote this way which is strictly speaking obviously true however it's
also true that money talks and you don't need that's the beauty of the system you
don't need it to be uh... courses in the traditional sense of holding a gun
dealer had or actually you knows a c_e_o_ from a company telling a
politician out of they don't even have to answer because the aides are saying
hey look we should make sure we don't uh... lose this campaign money annex
election cycle the money speaks for itself in many ways
yes but we also
question whether or not
apple should be under investigation for his separate issue separate issue but
yeah but this is another reason why lawmakers as many as suggested shouldn't
be allowed to at least old individual stocks well you know the mutual fund
raising a certain things are maybe there's a specific a list of things that
as a lawmaker we we can identify would not uh... crm create a parent conflicts
of interest but the reality is this is not really a problem
with apple or with these individual members of congress right i mean it's
it's this kind of twisted
tax code combined with no real
provision to prevent these conflicts of interest if the system which allows this
and of course the people who
make the system
are benefiting from it so why would they ever change that they aren't good luck
getting congress to pass a law saying they can't hold stock