So much for Google’s mantra of “Don’t be evil.”

Bloomberg has more…

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Wait, that’s just $3.1B. What about the other $56.9B?

Well, the rest isn’t Google’s. The other money comes from corporations who have followed a similar path. And that includes Facebook and Microsoft.

And so…

Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The method takes advantage of Irish tax law to legally shuttle profits into and out of subsidiaries there, largely escaping the country’s 12.5 percent income tax. (See an interactive graphic on Google’s tax strategy here.)

The earnings wind up in island havens that levy no corporate income taxes at all. Companies that use the Double Irish arrangement avoid taxes at home and abroad as the U.S. government struggles to close a projected $1.4 trillion budget gap and European Union countries face a collective projected deficit of 868 billion euros.

But wait. There is definitely much, much more…

The tactics of Google and Facebook depend on “transfer pricing,” paper transactions among corporate subsidiaries that allow for allocating income to tax havens while attributing expenses to higher-tax countries. Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue, according to Kimberly A. Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Is this fair?

Well, let me put it to you this way…

Is it fair that you pay your current tax rate, which includes local, state and federal income tax as well as FICA (Social Security) and Medicare withholdings, while Google pays an effective corporate income tax rate of 2.8%?

Discuss.

Over the past two years I wrote, produced and directed a film called “We Will Make You Whole Again” with my co-director, editor and cinematographer Trevor Hawkins of Mammoth Media. Some of you know this because a couple months back I shared the trailer for the film and told you a little bit about what it was all about.

So now I wanted to make sure you knew that the film is available for download for just $5.

Still, why should you spend your hard earned money to watch it? After all, it’s just another short film.

Well, here are some reasons why you should check it out:

1. The themes of illegal immigration, sexual identity, domestic terrorism, the casualties of war and a post-racial society are definitely top of mind these days, and the film explores all of these through characters who are universally relatable yet also surprisingly unique.
2. In the increasingly noisy world of radio shock jocks and talking heads, the film only has one line of dialogue and is driven almost entirely by an original score, which has been described by the Kansas City Star as “melancholic, majestic, ethereal, ominous, somber and beautiful.”
3. The title of the film comes from a phrase an Exxon representative said to fisherman in Alaska during their very first meeting back in 1989. And our film premiered about a week before the current tragedy in the Gulf struck. Eerie timing to say the least.
4. Maybe I’m naive, but I believe the work I produce has value. In particular, when I work this long and hard on something, I think giving it away for free is silly. And I hope you know that I wouldn’t ask you to spend $5 to purchase this film if I didn’t think it was worth it. So while I won’t guarantee that everybody who watches it will enjoy it, I’m confident that the vast majority will.

But hey, don’t just take my word for it. The following are reviews from some folks who’ve seen it locally here in Kansas City…

The Pitch:

Strangers cross paths. They brush shoulders or hold a glance a beat too long. In that brief moment, lives can be changed. By now, this set up is familiar — it’s a theme routinely seen in movies because it speaks volumes about the human condition. Kansas City acts as the backdrop for another such film, the beautifully shot We Will Make You Whole Again.

Shane Adams:

The movie is really great. They’ve did a terrific job telling a compelling story about 6 strangers that feel disconnected from the world and each other because of things like age, race, sexuality, gender, language and culture, while revealing the common, everyday actions and emotions that unite them all.

kckimchi:

enjoyed the local short film We Will Make You Whole Again (@wwmywa) + the Q&A w/ @jpgardner last night. Check it out if you haven’t yet

strangegirl76:

Saw @wwmywa last night & thought it was amazing! You can download it for $5. DO IT!

inaki:

Wow. Beautiful work. Really well done. :)

platterscratch:

@wwmywa moving and brilliant. Bravo.

As mentioned, the film is available for download for just $5. That gets you both a high quality .mov file that you can view on laptops and HDTVs and a medium quality .m4v file that you can use on most any portable media player, the most common being the iPod and iPhone.

So, if you’re a fan on independent film consider buying a copy. And if you’re a blogger, please consider writing about the film.

Thanks much and I hope you enjoy, “We Will Make You Whole Again.”

Ironically, the star of Waterworld (which I like…by the way) might be just the guy to help save the water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Check out the nifty gadget he and his brother has been funding the development of (to the tune of $15M) for the past 15 years. Apparently, it can remove between 99 and 97 percent of the oil from the water.

So the demonstration is obviously on a very small scale, but the larger versions can collect 3,000 gallons of oil a day…and there are 31 machines available. So you’re looking at 93K gallons of oil being pulled out of the Gulf by these machines per day, and that’s significant.

And here’s the thing…apparently BP thinks so. Because they’re going to use the devices to help with the cleanup.

More as it develops…

The title says it all. If you tweet or have been thinking of a good excuse to get on Twitter, follow us @thedonklephant. We tweet all of our posts and some other fun facts too.

Now, if you’re new to whole “twitter” thing, this article provides some good pointers: What Should I Tweet About?

Also, Twitter has a Downloads Page that’s full of applications to make the service more useful. Personally, I use a site called Hootsuite and I like it because you don’t have to open an external application. It’s all right there in your browser.

Hope you’re having a great holiday!

I hadn’t, but when I did…wow.

First, right there on the front page you have a map that details the total dollars announced, available and spent on the both the national and state levels (when you mouse over each graph or state).

But the most impressive feature by far is when you enter in your zip code and find out where the recovery dollars are going in your area.

Upon doing so, this prompt pops up and tells you where the data is coming from…

Then, the dollars spent are geolocated to specific businesses, not for profits, etc., and they’re clickable so you can see see how money is being given out and what it’s going for.

Here, the part circled in red details the amount in contracts, grants and loans that has been spent in the 64105 area code. The part circled in blue is the information that pops up after you click on a dot on the map.

And if you want even more info about how the money was spent, you can click on another link to pop open a new window that will give you all the details.

This is really unprecedented access to see how our tax dollars are being spent and I hope that we mandate that all big spending bills carry this level of transparency in the future.

Thoughts?

A new website for the controversial, popular program is up and it includes some things you need to know if you’d like to take advantage.

• Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
• Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify
• Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
• Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
• You don’t need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
• Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
• The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle, and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

So what are your thought about the program? Will you take advantage of it?

After the release of a study that showed somebody is 23 times more likely to get into an accident, Dems in Congress are working on legislation that would make it illegal across the country.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON — States would be required to ban driving while texting or face the loss of highway funds under legislation being pushed by a group of Democratic senators.

Aimed at reducing driver distraction and highway deaths and injuries, the proposal follows a series of studies showing the dangers of drivers taking their eyes off the road to operate the handheld electronic devices.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal.

“The federal government ought to pass a law banning this dangerous and growing practice to protect the millions of Americans on our nation’s roads. It is a matter of public safety,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who was to unveil the legislation Wednesday along with Democrats Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

Here’s more about that study…

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which compiled the research and plans to release its findings on Tuesday, also measured the time drivers took their eyes from the road to send or receive texts.

In the moments before a crash or near crash, drivers typically spent nearly five seconds looking at their devices — enough time at typical highway speeds to cover more than the length of a football field.

Even though trucks take longer to stop and are less maneuverable than cars, the findings generally applied to all drivers, who tend to exhibit the same behaviors as the more than 100 truckers studied, the researchers said. Truckers, they said, do not appear to text more or less than typical car drivers, but they said the study did not compare use patterns that way.

Listen, nanny stateism or not, this is legislation that needs to be passed. Those of us who’ve texted while driving know how ridiculously dangerous it is and we’ve all thought, “Man, if something had jumped out in front of me…”

The upside of a federal mandate? I smell a business plan…

Another day, another incredibly questionable Wall Street practice. And this one is particularly galling.

Basically, some of the stock exchanges allow companies to see trades 3 milliseconds before they hit the market. It’s called “flash” trading, and the only folks who can take advantage of such information are the ones who pay a fee (of course) and have computers powerful enough to parse the data and make automatic trades of their own before the first trades hit the market.

From NY Times:

It is called high-frequency trading — and it is suddenly one of the most talked-about and mysterious forces in the markets.

Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange, enable high-frequency traders to transmit millions of orders at lightning speed and, their detractors contend, reap billions at everyone else’s expense.

These systems are so fast they can outsmart or outrun other investors, humans and computers alike. And after growing in the shadows for years, they are generating lots of talk.

Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer.

Now, the exchanges that take part in this practice argue that it’s about transparency, but who are they kidding? Showing a trade for 3 milliseconds only allows a computer to check it out and I think it’s pretty obvious what this was always intended to do. You think investment firms were calling for this information for a long time because they had powerful automatic trading algorithms developed that could utilize the data? Naw…

Understandably, people are saying “WTF?” and Chuck Schumer is already calling for a ban…

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the Senate rules and administration committee, said in a letter to the S.E.C. Mr. Schumer wrote that he intended to introduce legislation barring the technique, if the agency failed to act.

“The hallmark of our markets are that they are open and above board and the little guy has as much of a chance as the big guy,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. “This takes a dagger to the heart of that concept.”

Do know that this is BIG business and is said to be part of the reason why we’ve seen a 164% bump in the trading volume since 2005 and one of the reasons why a firm like Goldman Sachs continues to post profits during the downturn. In fact, firms that take part in this practice made $21 billion in profits in 2008 and high frequency trades accounted for half of their transactions.

More as it develops…

About a month ago, when most of the unrest in Iran was happening, I wrote about the fact that Nokia Siemens seemed to be helping the Iranian government track down protesters.

Well, it looks like the Iranian people are doing something about it and protesting with their wallets. Perhaps you should too?

Not so fast…

More at True/Slant.

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.

See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a fantastic piece of science fiction cinema and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and catch it while it’s still in theatres.

But after seeing it I discovered that not only is the energy source they talked about in the movie real, but it’s clean, supposedly economically viable and extremely plentiful on the moon’s surface.

More at True/Slant.

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten miles from the Nebraska/Iowa border, so I’ll try to keep an eye on 2012 developments as the contenders test the waters there as well, on top of other interests like election reform, social issues, polling analysis and any number of things that I come across while skimming the hundreds of tweets and RSS feeds I go through every day. I hope you enjoy it, and now… on with the show!

We’ve been hearing about cellulosic ethanol for several years now, generally with the caveat that were at least a few years, and a few scientific breakthroughs, away from it coming to market and helping wean us from foreign oil. Unlike corn, which breaks down into the sugars necessary to be processed into ethanol relatively easily, cellulose is a hardy material that takes time and energy to break down. Its upside is that there happens to be more cellulose present than any other organic molecule on the planet. This is why millions upon millions of dollars has been poured into cellulosic ethanol research, genetically modifying naturally occurring enzymes to break it down faster and looking for ways to bring the price per gallon down closer to the price of gasoline.

Unlike corn, which takes land out of food production, is inefficient as far as how much energy it takes to produce and is a high maintenance crop, finding raw material for a cellulosic plant is easy. Wood chips from sawmills, the kudzu scourge spreading through the hot and humid Southeast, agricultural waste and even up to 80 percent of what ends up in our landfills could be used to make cellulosic ethanol.  Thankfully, the millions of dollars in research and development have begun to bear fruit.

A gas station near Ottawa is the first in the world to begin selling a cellulosic blend, called CE-10, to the public. Iogen, the company behind the demonstration plant that produced the fuel, plans to build its first full scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Saskatchewan. It has reached an agreement with the local government and Royal Dutch Shell to convert an old Mill site to their purposes, with the government even agreeing to purchase any green energy produced at the site. The running demonstration plant only has the capacity to produce about 3 million liters of ethanol each year, using wheat straw agricultural waste, while the new plant will be able to pump out about 75 million liters. It will make use of a more diverse feed stock, including agricultural waste from other crops, grasses native to nearby areas and even wood chips from area mills.

The march of progress continues, with a number of large companies making big investments into these technologies. Last year GM purchased a large share of Coskata, a big player in the emerging cellulosic ethanol industry, who claims to have developed a process that simplefies the complex and costly process of breaking down cellulose and brings the cost of production down to being competitive with gasoline. There are as many as two dozen companies with plans to build plants similar to Iogen’s, but the economic downturn is effecting their ability to finance these projects. Coskata is hoping to get some stimulus money, in the form of loan guarantees, to help finance its plant, with an estimated production of 50-100 million gallons a year.

As President Obama often says, if we intend to be a leader in the green energy industry of tomorrow, we need to move boldly in that direction today. Now is not the time to let companies who wish to lead us in there falter because of financing problems. Some are talking about a new stimulus bill, which most people reasonably see as a terrible idea, that would focus on these kinds of projects and job creation. The first should have done so, and I have little confidence that a new one would make it through congress without being similarly unfocused and pork laden.

We don’t get too many of these chances, where we can kill three birds with one stone. Job creation, independence from foreign oil and environmental progress can all be had with some smart funding priorities. Lets hope the administration recognizes this in time.

“Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive.”
- A recent Facebook status update by Mir Hossein Mousavi

Over the weekend, I touched on the significance social media is playing in this revolution, and Mashable has more details…

The status update, posted in Farsi and translated both in the Facebook comments and by CNN, reflects a radical shift in the way the media reports current events, with citizens themselves becoming the most prolific source of information on what’s happening in Iran.

The so-called “Twitter revolution” is also proving itself to be far more than that. [...] YouTube has also become a source of raw video from the ground, and Mousavi’s latest long-form statement wasn’t communicated as a release to the press: rather it was posted as a note on the candidate’s Facebook page today.

The Facebook post is a direct response to claims by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, that Ahmadinejad received nearly double the number of votes Mousavi garnered.

More as it develops…

Between the 2008 election and the current situation in Iran, social technologies have changed politics in very real, very meaningful ways.

Now, with these immediate, uncontrolled communication channels available (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook), citizens finally have the ability to share what’s really going on without the media filter.

Iranian leaders didn’t anticipate this, but other repressive regimes will. So we have to be on the lookout for when these channels get shut down or attempts are made to co-opt them by governments bent on spreading misinformation.

And yes, there’s a lot of noise, and that means we have to be vigilant about what we choose to to share with others. Because nothing will undermine these channels more than false info being spread. So you have a responsibility too to be a good reader and a good sharer.

But, obviously, there’s also a hell of a lot of signal too. And these channels will only get more sophisticated, users will only get more savvy and news will only get more instantaneous as things like streaming video becomes pervasive on mobile phones, computers, et al.

One thing’s for sure…as cliché as the following may sound, we’re witnessing history in the making and nothing will ever be the same again.

(Image: Sully)

Then here are 5 simple tips…

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.

5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind…

(h/t: Boing Boing)

And interesting little factoid in all of this Iran election stuff.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election.

Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran’s internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.

Twitter and Facebook have been used as a tool by many young people to coordinate protests over the election’s outcome.

Hey, if anybody understands the power of social networking tools, it’s these guys/gals. After all, it wasn’t just distaste for Bush’s policies that helped a junior Senator named Barack Obama win the presidency. Easy-to-use publishing and organizing tools that allow quick access to information were key to his victory, and I think this is a signal to Moussavi’s supporters that America is behind them.

But that begs the question…how will Ahmadinejad take this news?

O.k., this story is just cool:

Earlier this month, Wilson thought of a tweet (the name for a post to the social networking site) and poof, his computer read his mind and sent the darn thing. At just 23 characters, Wilson’s message, “using EEG to send tweet,” was done with a computer setup that interprets brain waves.

Well, it wasn’t that simple. You have to be hooked to a device which reads brain waves and stare at a screen containing the alphabet:

All the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually … And what your brain does is, if you’re looking at the ‘R’ on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the ‘R’ flashes, your brain says, “Hey, wait a minute. Something’s different about what I was just paying attention to.” And you see a momentary change in brain activity.

And so the computer knows that’s the letter you want.

Sure, it’s hardly a practical way to write. But it does have exciting applications for those suffering from total paralysis. And, come on, tweeting with your mind? Welcome to the twenty-first century.

First, he talks about how he’s going to start talking about all the spending he’s going to cut in the coming weeks. I wonder if it’ll quiet critics who say he’s spending us into the poor house. Probably not, but I’ll keep my eye out nonetheless.

He also introduces the Chief Performance Officer and Chief Technology Officer, two brand new positions.

And here are their bios…

Jeffrey D. Zients – Chief Performance Officer
Zients has twenty years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur with a deep understanding of business strategy, process reengineering and financial management. He served as CEO and Chairman of the Advisory Board Company and Chairman of the Corporate Executive Board. These firms are leading providers of performance benchmarks and best practices across a wide range of industries. Currently, he is the Founder and Managing Partner of Portfolio Logic, an investment firm focused primarily on business and healthcare service companies.

Aneesh Paul Chopra – Chief Technology Officer
Chopra serves as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology. He leads the Commonwealth’s strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform, to promote Virginia’s innovation agenda, and to foster technology-related economic development. Previously, he worked as Managing Director with the Advisory Board Company, leading the firm’s Financial Leadership Council and the Working Council for Health Plan Executives

More as it develops…

(AP world headquarters)

A while back, the A.P. targeted a site called the Drudge Retort for using excerpts of its stories on the site. This caused quite an uproar among bloggers because they felt that excerpting portions of a story’s copy was considered “fair use”, and I let my feelings be known as well.

The A.P. subsequently backed off from any legal action and looked a bit silly in the process.

Well, they’re back and now they have their sights set on bigger targets.

From the NY Times:

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not.

A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.

They said they did not want to stop the appearance of articles around the Web, but to exercise some control over the practice and to profit from it.

Here’s part of the A.P.’s new policy…

As part of the initiative, AP will develop a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used. AP President Tom Curley said the initiative would also include the development of new search pages that point users to the latest and most authoritative sources of breaking news.

They’ve provided no details apart from that so the implications could be far reaching.

See, a lot of blogging I see these days starts off by reading a story from the mainstream media, excerpting a small portion of it and responding to it. That’s what we do here at Donklephant, with the exception of a few essays and video reports. But, by and large, the business of blogging is about quickly sharing information with our readers and providing commentary along with it.

I try my best to only include the most salient points and I discourage reprinting full articles because that’s clearly not fair use, but it has happened from time to time here. So this site could be in the A.P.’s crosshairs at some point. But we won’t know until they reveal what they do or do not think is fair use.

Now, if the A.P. really cracks down, what will most likely happen is bloggers will stop excerpting their stories and start excerpting somebody else’s. Or they’ll simply rewrite the content they found via an A.P. source. There will probably still be attribution of some sort, but the A.P. runs the risk of losing a lot of links back to its content and thus it could seriously fall in the search engine rankings since one of the ways Google determines authority is the amount of links a certain story gets.

In any event, it’s a slippery slope for them, so I hope they find a common sense way to work with bloggers. Otherwise I guarantee they won’t like the results.

Yet another step towards the goal to make the government’s actions more transparent than any other time in our history…

“In late May, Data.gov will launch, in what US CIO Vivek Kundra calls an attempt to ensure that all government data ‘that is not restricted for national security reasons can be made public’ through data feeds. This appears to be a tremendous expansion on (and an official form of) third-party products like the Sunlight Labs API.

Of course, it is still a far cry from ‘open sourcing‘ the actual decision-making processes of government. Wired has launched a wiki for calling attention to datasets that should be shared as part of the Data.gov plan, and an article on O’Reilly discusses the importance of making this information easily accessible.”

A brief aside…

It’s news like this that makes me get my back up when folks talk about how he’s going to turn this country into a dictatorship, police state, etc. Because they obviously aren’t paying attention to what’s actually being done by the administration. Hopefully at some point they will.

(Found on Slashdot, via Twitter)

If you use the Twitter as much as I do, like I do, then you’ll definitely want to check this out.

And scene…

(h/t: Mashable)