Oh wait, the voices in my head are telling me that this article is actually just a report on the practices that pretty much every large corporation uses to “evade” taxation. Of course there’s no sizzle in a headline like “The U.S. Corporate Tax Code is Bollocks” So The Times needed to go in another direction.

But it’s really not The Times’ malfeasance that has me annoyed. What annoys me the most is one particular response to those who would point out that what Apple is doing is a) common and b) perfectly legal. It’s one of the same responses that was trotted out when (sane) people pointed out that pretty much all consumer electronics products are produced in China; mostly under conditions that make Apple’s Foxconn factories seem like a dream. The response goes something like this:

But is Apple not special‽ Should we not hold them to a higher standard than all others‽ Do they not have a greater responsibility to sacrifice on behalf of my middle-class entitled guilt‽

While there was some room for debate on those questions in regards to The Passion of Mike Daisey, there is little room to debate here. No, Apple is not under some moral obligation to avoid legal means of reducing their taxation rates. In fact, as a publicly held corporation Apple has a legal responsibility to maximize shareholder return. A duty that includes tactics such as reducing taxation expenses.

Before I continue let’s get something completely clear. I am no pro corporate, anti-taxation advocate. I am a huge fan of taxes. I think they are the entry-fee for living in a civilized society and, if anything, I’d prefer to see Apple—and the rest of corporate America taxed at rates that would probably cause Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer to piss blood.

Nonetheless I cannot find fault with Apple for doing all that it can within the existing legal framework to pay as little as possible in taxes; any more than I would find fault with a factory worker for taking advantage of every possible tax exemption and deduction on their personal income tax. It is not the individual’s responsibility—whether they be corporation or pipe-fitter—to make up for the deficiencies in local, state and Federal tax codes.

This is where I find fault with the common responses to articles like this one. In their sad attempt to gin up page-views by inciting the Apple haters and loyalists they ignore the actual problem. In this case, I’m sure we’ll see at least one call for a boycott of Apple products and a pointless Change.org petition calling for Apple to mend its evil ways. What I’m certain we won’t see is a rational discussion of corporate tax policy.

I’ll conclude with this: If you read The New York Times article and found yourself outraged at Apple, take a step back and realize that being angry at Apple does nothing here. Instead focus that anger toward electing representatives—at all levels of government—who are not beholden to corporate interests. That’s where the real change will come from.

Note: I don’t intend for this to become a general debate about tax policy—corporate or otherwise. Comments that insist on doing so will be treated…harshly.

A lot of people consider iOS to be some kind of retrograde step—a return to the bad old days of computing before we could run a whole bunch of apps at the same time. Me, I’m increasingly thinking the more ‘modern’ take of desktop computing was a mis-step. People aren’t programmed to cope well with multitasking; studies have shown that when we are distracted from a task it can then take tens of minutes to get fully back into the task at hand. To that end, any system that can help me concentrate and work better is a boon, not a hindrance, and so even if Apple went mental and allowed Quasar into the proper App Store, I’d still give it a miss.

I wrote a bit about this back when Apple revealed OS X Lion and I couldn’t agree more. A large percentage of computer users–perhaps even the majority of computer users just don’t work in the way that geeks and power-users think they should.

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Please re-read your work, or better yet, pass it off to an editor for review. There are numerous grammatical mistakes and sentence structure is poor at best. I haven’t even gotten to reviewing the actual content of the piece, though I assume it’s about as well thought-out as your use of semicolons.

In the “ragging on shitty tech blogger” community it’s generally considered bad form to harp on grammar and spelling but holy shit Zach is an abysmal writer. What boggles my mind, though, is this: It’s obvious that the jackholes running ZDNet have no interest in screening their stable of shitty writers for the ability to formulate a logical argument. After all, there’s plenty of page-views to be had in the ill-thought-out screeds that Violet Blue, Zach and the Tellarite crap out on a regular basis. However, you would think they would have some interest — even if only to maintain the façade of being a professional organization — in making sure that their acephalic morons can conform to the most basic rules of English grammar.

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At this point, I have to believe that all the people in the Pando Daily-TechCrunch-Uncrunched-whatever micro-universe have consciously incorporated their onanistic little circle jerk into their collective business model. You can almost picture it just that way: Michael Arrington, Sarah Lacy, MG Siegler, Paul Carr and whomever else, sitting in a circle, each gazing into a mirror as they handle each other’s nethers — sometimes gently, sometimes aggressively. Then they post the whole thing online and watch the clicks pile up.

Betteridge’s Law tempting headline aside, this is a wonderfully written look at the moral cesspool that is the TechCrunch/PandoDaily/CrunchFund axis. What I like best is that it doesn’t focus exclusively on these chumps’ horrific conflicts of interest. I mean, who doesn’t like a good grift. Instead it highlights the exact thing I despise about these people — the overwhelming narcissism.

via Glenn Fleishman on the Twitters

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From the Phoenix New Times:

Andrew Thomas, former Maricopa County Attorney, was disbarred today by the three-member disciplinary panel of the Arizona State Supreme Court.

So was his former deputy, Lisa Aubuchon.

Former deputy county attorney Rachel Alexander’s law license was suspended for six months and one day.

The disciplinary panel dismissed a few charges, but found “clear and convincing evidence” that Thomas and Aubuchon had abused their prosecutorial powers while trying to prosecute County Supervisors Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley, Judge Gary Donahoe and others. The panel found that Thomas and Aubuchon launched unethical attacks on their political enemies.

For those who don’t follow Arizona politics, Andy Thomas basically acted as Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s right-hand-man. I’m fucking ecstatic to see this jackass and his lackey Aubuchon get disbarred.

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Chuq assumes, as does The Verge that McClelland is specifically referring to an Amazon fulfillment center:

The Mother Jones piece seems to be trying to demonize Amazon in a quiet way for how hard they work their warehouse people.

However, McClelland specifically states that she isn’t trying to demonize one specific company. She writes:

…I’d smudge identifying details of people and the company itself. Anyway, to do otherwise might give people the impression that these conditions apply only to one warehouse or one company. Which they don’t.

But that is really a minor quibble. It’s almost certain that, even if the warehouse McClelland worked in wasn’t contracting to Amazon, Amazon uses similar companies. My real issue with Chuq’s analysis is that is interprets the Mother Jones article as some sort of “war on work.” Chuq writes:

Are we as first worlders getting to the point where hard physical work is somehow evil? Maybe we need to get out from behind keyboards more often, then. Sit down and talk to your plumber, next time you hire them to root out a clogged sewer. Or your gardener, next time they come in to mow and blow your lawn. Or when you go to a restaurant, sit where you can watch the kitchen and see just how hard the wait staff and line cooks work — for a lot less money than they deserve. And don’t be stingy on the tip…

I’m really kind of confused by the Mother Jones piece. It seems to be demonizing — work. have there been abuses at some of Amazon’s warehouse facilities? yes. Well, guess what. abusive bosses exist. they exist in high tech as well, but here in Silicon valley, when you keep a sleeping bag under your desk, it is a badge of honor to some (hint: the company is still taking advantage of you).

There is no doubt that many — far too many — so-called “white-collar” workers look down on physical labor with disdain. That is a real problem and one that I agree needs to be stamped out. However, that absolutely not the take-away that I got from McClelland’s report. When I read passages such as:

They need you to work as fast as possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. So they’re gonna give you goals, and then you know what? If you make those goals, they’re gonna increase the goals. But they’ll be yelling at you all the time. It’s like the military. They have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. So they’re going to tell you, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough,’ to make you work harder. Don’t say, ‘This is the best I can do.’ Say, ‘I’ll try,’ even if you know you can’t do it. Because if you say, ‘This is the best I can do,’ they’ll let you go.

…and…

In the center of the room, a video plays loudly and continuously on a big screen. Even more than you are hurting the company, a voice-over intones as animated people do things like accidentally oversleep, you are hurting yourself when you are late because you will be penalized on a point system, and when you get too many points, you’re fired—unless you’re late at any point during your first week, in which case you are instantly fired. Also because when you’re late or sick you miss the opportunity to maximize your overtime pay. And working more than eight hours is mandatory.

…and…

“Well, what if I do start crying?” I ask the woman who warns me to keep it together no matter how awfully I’m treated. “Are they really going to fire me for that?“

“Yes,” she says. “There’s 16 other people who want your job. Why would they keep a person who gets emotional, especially in this economy?”

…and…

Inside Amalgamated, an employee’s first day is training day. Though we’re not paid to be here until 6, we have been informed that we need to arrive at 5. If we don’t show up in time to stand around while they sort out who we are and where they’ve put our ID badges, we could miss the beginning of training, which would mean termination.

…and…

The programs for our scanners are designed with the assumption that we disposable employees don’t know what we’re doing. Find a Rob Zombie Voodoo Doll in the blue section of the Rockies sector in the third bin of the A-level in row Z42, my scanner tells me. But if I punch into my scanner that it’s not there, I have to prove it by scanning every single other item in the bin, though I swear on my life there’s no Rob Zombie Voodoo Doll in this pile of 30 individually wrapped and bar-coded batteries that take me quite a while to beep one by one. It could be five minutes before I can move on to, and make it to, and find, my next item. That lapse is supposed to be mere seconds.

…and…

It’s brave of these women to keep their phones in the break room, where theft is so high—they can’t keep them in their cars if they want to use them during the day, because we aren’t supposed to leave the premises without permission, and they can’t take them onto the warehouse floor, because “nothing but the clothes on your backs” is allowed on the warehouse floor (anything on your person that Amalgamated sells can be confiscated—“And what does Amalgamated sell?” they asked us in training. “Everything!”)

…and…

Temporary staffers aren’t legally entitled to decent health care because they are just short-term “contractors” no matter how long they keep the same job. They aren’t entitled to raises, either, and they don’t get vacation and they’d have a hell of a time unionizing and they don’t have the privilege of knowing if they’ll have work on a particular day or for how long they’ll have a job. And that is how you slash prices and deliver products superfast and offer free shipping and still post profits in the millions or billions.

I don’t hear the whine of the privileged — afraid of a little physical labor. I hear a complete disregard for human dignity which, had the company been named “Apple” and the reporter been a bloated, self-absorbed stage actor, would have resulted in howls of slacktivist rage and at least one online petition. No, this is a portrait of an industry that treats human beings like automatons because it has realized that in this economy human beings are cheaper and more easily replaced than robots.

If you are the kind of person who really has a “shaving problem” — Brother, you had better see a psychoanalyst.

Hells yeah! Fuck your fancy creams and 19-blade razors.

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