Amazing how the language of the news carries it's own conclusions.

More amazing are the number of people on this board who wax eloquent about taxes without a clue of what they are talking about.

The foreign tax deferral has been around almost as long as the tax code - nearly 100 years. Foreign governments more often than not restrict cash repatriation in order to encourage more investment in their countries. The profits are taxed by those governments. Once repatriated, there are additional taxes rendered to the US Treasury. Frequently the operating entity must delay repatriation of offshore cash balances to fund operations there, and in so doing accomplishes a natural hedge against currency moves...not just for 'today', but for future viability. This is a long run strategy that makes sense - it is not a loophole or haven. The current law was put in place for a reason. Anyone who thinks it was put in place to 'screw other taxpayers' is an idiot. There are solid economic reasons for the deferral.

Obama wants to tax domestic corporations even if the cash is not repatriated. Then he says this is to encourage more domestic production. Except that he's raising taxes on landed manufacturers, as well. The National Association of Manufacturers is going nuts: if one wanted to design a tax code to destroy US manufacturing and the US economy, one could do no better than the Obama plan. This guy is truly dangerous.

Might be good if a lot of you actually read the article. While the legal 'expectation of privacy' is constantly eroded by the internet, the issue is not use of 'public' information, fair use, etc. The issue is the reliability of the information, the protection provided to the user of the information, and whether or not use of the information could inadvertently damage someone and create a liability.

Infonaut - you are exactly correct. The telecom market is and always has been a textbook natural monopoly. It was treated as such at inception almost a century ago, in the form of a regulated monopoly. It stayed this way for 70 years until it became a regulated competitive market. Then the regulation was removed, but with a completely perverse affect. Now, thanks to the like of Rep. Pete Sessions, useless Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and others of that ilk (along with corrupt government at both the state and federal level) it has come full circle to become a government protected monopoly.