Did you make that up, or did you have someone else make it up for you? Apple has thousands of employees in Ireland. http://www.independent.ie/busi...

It's not a race to the bottom, it's an optimization. If corporate tax rate is X and total tax revenue is Y, past a certain point as X goes up, Y goes down because of competitive forces elsewhere.

What lesson is that? Would Ireland have been better off if Apple and Microsoft and Google moved those jobs to Wales or France or Spain? Ireland is collecting income tax from all those employees, and sales tax from everything those employees buy. Why push employers away out of some fashionable drive for 'social justice'?
For perspective, this same line of thinking comes up around here all the time. The county granted some tax incentives to an automotive factory to come in and unemployment dropped, new business opened up to support all the new faces and new incomes, and the county revenues went through the roof. Every now and then I hear somebody in a bar complaining about how Toyota isn't paying their fair share but most of us are too busy enjoying all the new parks and schools and better roadways.

This happens all the time.
Some county or city negotiates lowered taxes for some factory to move in.
20 years later the mayor gets greedy and lets those agreements lapse.
The company builds a shiny new factory in the neighboring county or across the country.

Competitive forces don't only apply to widgets in micro econ.

They do pay taxes. They just negotiated lower taxes in exchange for bringing those jobs to Ireland. It's a WIN-WIN solution for Ireland and Apple. Ireland still collects more revenue due to all the new jobs. The only losers are the countries who want to maintain a high tax rate and don't appreciate competition from Ireland, hence the EU getting their panties in a bunch.

Since when is 200k a small town? If I can't take a piss in my back yard, it's not a small town. That's Shatrat's Piss-Test of Town-Significance.

It's not about what they 'need'. That word's almost as arbitrary and useless as 'deserve'. This is about incentivizing people who can afford to buy the Tesla Model 3 instead of the V8 sports car they might otherwise be showing off.

Only in the USA. In other parts of the world the NSA collaborates with like-minded agencies from allies like the UK and Germany, and in parts of the world that are unfriendly they do rely heavily on backdoors.

But, German law is not infallible. "German law disagrees" doesn't have any bearing on whether or not this is logical.

The ubiquitous surveillance that this measure would also advocate...

You're so set on your conclusion you don't even see that your arguments contradict it directly? ISIS united in opposition to the Syrian government and spilled over into Iraq from there. Al Qaeda formed in opposition to the Soviets and thousands of miles and decades separated from either Iraq war.

Also what is happening in the Ukraine is a clear message about what happens to countries stupid enough to take Nuclear Disarmament seriously.

You should check out MotoGP next spring as well. It's got all the noise and power of F1, but with actual overtaking.

My brain totally skipped over the word 'change.org' in the post I replied to. Once again this proves that nobody pays attention to change.org.

Well, there was the Declaration of Independence, but those people followed up the petition with gunfire.