COPYRIGHT 2013 RIDGEWOOD TIMES PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO., INC. Schools Chancellor At R’wood. Meeting 5/27 As announced by CEC 24, the session will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium of P.S. 239, located at 1715 Weirfield St. Fariña was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in January to lead the city’s public school system. She will speak with the audience and field questions from the council, led by CEC 24 President Nick Comaianni. PAT BUCHANAN News & Opinion Members of school communities in District 24 who plan on attending the May 27 town hall who have questions for the chancellor are asked to submit them in advance by email to [email protected]. For additional information on the town hall meeting, call CEC 24’s office at 1-718-418-8160. dozens of U.S. companies have bought up foreign rivals, and then moved abroad to countries with lower tax rates, cutting revenue to the U.S. Treasury. But Pfizer is far and away the biggest. The real question, however, is not why companies are fleeing the USA, but why our politicians continue to drive them out of the country. Consider. Here in America we do not tax charities, churches or colleges. Yet these institutions produce a fraction of the jobs that businesses produce. If, as a nation, we are committed to “creating jobs,” does it make sense to impose the highest corporate tax rate in the Western world on our biggest and best job creators? Is this not economic masochism? Many governors understand that if you want something in your state, you do not drive it out with high taxes. You strengthen the magnet of low taxes. Florida wants residents of other states to move there and retire there, so it has no income, estate or inheritance tax. For years, Rep. Jack Kemp urged the creation of enterprise zones in poor communities like Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Harlan County, Kentucky. Businesses that relocated there would be exempt from corporate income taxes. Why not make the United States the largest enterprise zone on earth— by abolishing the corporate income tax? If the corporate income tax were repealed, no U.S. company would think of moving abroad, and every transnational company would think about moving to the USA. What a message this repeal of the U.S. corporate income tax would send to corporate headquarters worldwide: Relocate your company or next factory to the USA, keep every dollar of profit you earn, and either reinvest it here or take it home. Your call. How would America benefit? Every U.S. company, liberated from its corporate tax burden, would see its profits soar and have more cash on hand for cutting prices, raising wages and salaries, and new investment and hires. And every company that relocated here would create new U.S. jobs. This would be a stimulus package to end all stimulus packages. Isn’t this what we all want? Or are we not willing to create jobs here if the means of doing so conflict with redistributionist ideology? Consider the other benefits of abolishing the corporate tax. Corporate lobbyists, who spend their days walking Capitol Hill corridors seeking tax breaks, and their evenings at fundraisers handing $1,000 checks to congressmen who can create tax loopholes—in a form TIMES, THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2014 • 4 Since 1908 Published Every Thursday By RIDGEWOOD TIMES PRINTING & PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. General Publication Office: P.O. Box 863299 Ridgewood, N.Y. 11386-0299 60-71 Woodbine St., Ridgewood, N.Y. 11385 Periodicals Postage Paid At Flushing, N.Y. (USPS 465-940) TELEPHONE: 1-718-821-7500-7501-7502-7503 FAX: 1-718-456-0120 Or E-MAIL: [email protected] Or [email protected] WEB SITE: www.timesnewsweekly.com ON TWITTER @timesnewsweekly SUBSCRIPTION: $25 Per Year By Mail / $30 Outside Queens & Brooklyn Allow 2-3 Weeks For New Subscriptions. 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We regret that we are unable to accommodate requests for photos taken by photographers working on assignment for the Times Newsweekly/Ridgewood Times. MAUREEN E. WALTHERS.........................Publisher & Editor JOHN T. WALTHERS......................................Managing Editor ROBERT POZARYCKI...................................Associate Editor DEBORAH CUSICK.................................Classified Manager MARLENE RUIZ...........................Assist. Classified Manager TIMES NEWSWEEKLY Is Listed With The Standard Rate & Data And Is A Member Of The New York Press Association Reaching The Queens Homes Of Ridgewood, Glendale, Liberty Park, Maspeth, Middle Village, So. Elmhurst, Woodside, Sunnyside, Astoria, Long Island City, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Howard Beach, Richmond Hill, Rego Park, Forest Hills, Woodhaven, Elmhurst, And Kew Gardens. Reaching The Brooklyn Homes Of Ridgewood, Bushwick, Cypress Hills, East Williamsburg And Williamsburg. COMPOSITION RESPONSIBILITY: Accuracy in receiving ads over the telephone cannot be guaranteed. This newspaper is responsible for only one incorrect insertion and only for that portion of the ad in which the error appears. It is the responsibility of the advertiser to make sure copy does not contravene the Consumer Protection Law or any other requirement. Abolish Corporate Income Tax! News that Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, plans to buy Britain’s AstraZeneca for $106 billion, renounce its U.S. citizenship, and declare itself a British company, has jolted Congress. Pfizer is being denounced as disloyal to the land of its birth, and politicians are devising ways to stop Pfizer from departing. Yet Pfizer is not alone. Hedge fund managers are urging giant corporations like Walgreens to go nation-shopping for new residences abroad to evade the 35 percent U.S. corporate income tax. Britain’s corporate income tax is 20 percent, and Pfizer stands to save over $1 billion a year by moving there. In what are called “inversions,” -SEE BUCHANAN ON PG. 26- EDITORIAL A critical scene in the 1976 satire Network appears to have told the future of corporate America and the economy. Howard Beale, the newsman-turned-“mad prophet of the airwaves,” railed on his TV show against the sale of his network from an American corporation to an Arab entity. Arthur Jensen, a network executive, sought to set Beale straight and make him “atone” for his patriotism. “There are no nations. There are no peoples,” he tells Beale in a darkened board room. “We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies ... The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale.” It certainly seems that companies in 2014 embracing Jensen’s vision of a world divided not by boundaries but by corporations, putting profits ahead of any sense of nationalism. Take Pfizer, the drug conglomorate that once had a major foothold in Williamsburg. The company shut its Brooklyn factory six years ago, and now it seeks to buy out a rival—AstraZeneca— and relocate its operations to the United Kingdom. “The deal, if consummated, would most likely deprive the United States government of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade,” Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in a New York Times piece Tuesday, May 12, on the Pfizer deal. “Pfizer isn’t hiding this fact. Ian Read,” Pfizer’s chairman and CEO, “repeatedly told his investors about the tax-saving scheme. ‘It will liberate the balance sheet and tax of the combined companies,’ he said over the weekend.” American corporate taxes appear to be too much for Pfizer, and their cure is to relocate to a nation across the pond with lower corporate tax rates. Even the British are skeptical of the deal, fearing that the Pfizer-AstraZeneca merger would cost their nation jobs. Pfizer, however, reportedly vowed to preserve the jobs there. What about the American jobs about to be lost through this deal? Neither Pfizer nor anyone else seems to care enough to provide any prescription to that ailment. But this might be the first of many new blows to strike the American economy and government, Sorkin warned: “More ominously, the deal represents a potential tipping point in a trend among United States companies to acquire foreign competitors and reincorporate abroad in low-tax countries, a process known as an inversion.” Pfizer is exploiting a loophole in corporate tax law that opens the door for corporate inversion. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan has drafted legislation to close that loophole, but with Congress being a dynamo of dysfunction, it’s hard to imagine both Democrats and Republicans working together to stop the bleeding. The world may indeed be a business, but corporate expatriation poses a clear and present danger to an American economy reeling from decades of bad decisions. Inversion threatens to end the monetary ebb and flow, with wealth leaving the U.S. and little coming back in. In mere generations, it could reduce our economy to third-world status. It’s time for Washington to get “mad as hell” and stop this disaster from happening. Close the loopholes and remove any government privileges (such as patent protection and corporate welfare) from any business looking to divorce itself from our nation. by Robert Pozarycki Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña is scheduled to appear in Ridgewood on Tuesday night, May 27, for a town hall meeting hosted by District 24’s Community Education Council (CEC 24). News From The 112th Precinct COMMUNITY COUNCIL Basic Bike Safety Tips by Heidi Harrison Chain This weekend, when the weather was beautiful, I noticed lots of people riding bicycles. I hope that they all enjoy themselves and that everyone has the opportunity to ride their bike safely. That is the key for everyone—the cyclists, the pedestrians and the drivers. Unfortunately, some cyclists were going through the red lights. I posted some information on our Facebook page and our residents immediately commented that they saw bicyclists riding the wrong way on one way streets. There also were comments about people riding their bicycles on the sidewalk. According to the Department of Transportation (DOT) website, the operator of a bicycle must abide by the same traffic rules and regulations as the operator of a motor vehicle. Adults should not be riding bicycles on the sidewalk. Bicycles must travel in the same direction as traffic. Bicycles must stop at red lights and at stop signs. Here is the information from New York City Department of Transportation website: NYC biking laws Cyclists have all the rights and are subject to all of the duties and regulations applicable to drivers of motor vehicles. Ride in the street, not on the sidewalks (unless rider is age 12 or younger and the bicycle's wheels are less than 26 inches in diameter). Ride with traffic, not against it. Stop at red lights and stop signs. Obey all traffic signals, signs and pavement markings, and exercise due care to avoid colliding with pedestrians, motor vehicles or other cyclists. Use marked bike lanes or paths when available, except when making turns or when it is unsafe to do so. If the road is too narrow for a bicycle -SEE 112TH NEWS ON PG. 27-
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