Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM:

• Volume I “The First Team” –Brian, Chad and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I hold forth from 1-3.  We’ll be talking about the Edwards/Hunter kerfuffle, Governor Pawlenty’s week in the news, and the leftymedia’s whinging about having the operate in the same conditions all the rest of us will have to operate in during the Convention next month.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King is off on assignment, so Michael will be dishing the Minnesota smack from 3-5.

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. On the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

And don’t forget the David Strom Show, with David Strom and Margaret Martin, from 9-11!

With DNC in mind, city bans carrying urine, feces

Poo and pee dominated a public hearing Monday on a new law that prohibits people from carrying certain items if they intend to use them for nefarious purposes.

What other purpose might there be for carrying these “products”? I’d say monger away. This is a law whose time has come!

Representatives from some of the groups planning large-scale protests during the DNC this month said the ordinance was unnecessary and accused city officials of fear mongering.

No Pun intended? 

“The intent of this ordinance is to try to smear protesters and make them look as if they are somehow criminal or somehow going to engage in some kind of gross conduct,” said Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer with the Re- create 68 Alliance.

The ordinance makes it illegal to carry certain items, such as chains, padlocks, carabiners and other locking devices. It also prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a “feces bomb.”

Police have to prove that people carrying such items intend to use them to block public access or emergency equipment or to thwart crowd control measures.

“Our intent for this bill is not about suppressing or chilling First Amendment rights,” he said.

“Young man!”

“Yes Officer?

” Just exactly what do you intend to do with that shit?”

“Exercise my first ammendment rights?”

“Put down the poop son. Before I get pissed!”

If you happy about Obama, “O” your hands…:

Seriously.  It’s the sign you’re supposed to put above your head at Obama rallies if you really really double-dog love The One.

But…it looks familiar.

Where have we seen this before?

Oh, yeah:

Enh.  X, O – whatever.  Close enough for tic-tac-toe…

Ryan from Rambling Rhodes Back Porch Banjo Strumming – long-time MOBster and one of the world’s great scatological bloggers, is getting married today.

Best wishes!

In related news, Kool Aid Report has exclusive rights to the photos.  No, not all that safe for work, on the off-chance you needed the reminder as re KAR. 

…that Bun came into the world after about a zillion hours of labor (not that I’m the one to complain about that).

Seventeen?

No way.

(Checks calendar).

Wow.  No kidding.  Seventeen.  Yowza.

Happy Birthday, Bun!

Colonel Joe Repya burst onto the regional scene close to six years ago, with his “Liberate Iraq” signs.  In the run-up to the war (which would eventually be Repya’s third war, after Vietnam and Desert Storm), the Colonel gave away thousands of the big, paper-on-corrugate signs, which popped up all over the city and showed people that not everyone in the Twin Cities supported leaving Hussein in power.

The Colonel is at it again.

As the Twin Cities prepares to welcome the Republican National Convention in three weeks, the Cities are also getting ready to be swamped with demonstrators.  And it’ll be nice to show the world that not everyone in the Twin Cities is a kool-aid-drinking, chimpy-mcbushitler-chanting, wide-stance-giggling, patchouli-reeking, terrorist-coddling cut-and-runner.

So it’s time for another giveaway:

From the Colonel’s press release (I’ve added emphasis):

At noon on September 1, the anti-war crowd claims they’ll have upwards of 50,000 marching from the Minnesota Capitol Building to the Excel Energy Center where the Republican National Convention, at the Excel Energy Center in Saint Paul.

We are asking everyone who supports our men and women in uniform defending America in the War on Terror to line the streets from the Excel Center with our signs. It is our way of being “Minnesota Nice” and wishing these protesters a “nice day in Minnesota.” We encourage no discussion or verbal exchange with the demonstrators – only a pleasant “smile!

Here’s the fun part:

You can pick up a sign as long as the initial order lasts on Saturday, August 16th, in the parking lot of STEPHANO’S Restaurant, the corner of Highway 13 and Cliff Road (across from Walgreen’s) from 12:00 Noon to 3:00 PM. Please arrive early since we are printing a limited number. Your donations will be greatly appreciated and will allow us to print more signs.

So I’ll see you on the 16th at Stephano’s – and, naturally, at and around the convention.

Leave a comment here and/or at the Colonel’s blog if you plan on showing up.

I’ll be bumping/reprising this post many, many times in the coming week. 

And if you’re a regional blogger who supports the Colonel’s effort, shoot him a link.

NYT Front Page on the Pawlenty Vice Presidency:

Outside his home state, Mr. Pawlenty is among the least-known of the prospects Senator John McCain is said to be considering as a vice-presidential partner. But those who have followed his political rise here say Mr. Pawlenty’s personal story — his direct, everyman appeal to ordinary people — is among his most powerful attributes.

Long before the polls began suggesting that Republicans could face trouble in November, Mr. Pawlenty, now in his second term, was urging his party to become “the party of Sam’s Club,” not just the country club.

“We need everybody — to grow the party and to move forward,” Mr. Pawlenty explained in a recent interview. “One of the most powerful reasons people go to Sam’s Club or Target or Costco is they want value, and Republicans are well suited to be the party that says, ‘We’re going to have a limited but also effective government.’ ”

Mr. Pawlenty can talk about such things from experience. He now lives in the well-off suburb of Eagan, but holds blue-collar credentials. He grew up in South St. Paul, then a working-class town where life revolved around the stockyards, where his father drove a truck, where he played hockey, where his mother died of cancer when he was still a teenager, and where he went on to become the first in his family to graduate from college.

A damn good goalie…

If anything, Mr. Pawlenty’s critics say, he is too prepared for this moment; they say he has been so conscious of the possibility of higher office that he has been overly careful as governor. This year, he vetoed 34 bills passed by a Democratic-dominated Legislature, more than any other Minnesota governor had vetoed in a year since at least World War II, leading his most fervent critics to describe him as more of a goalie fending off pucks than a leader rushing the net.

You call that a mullet?

Some critics even note changes in his haircut — once a mullet-style, now a cropped conservative look less common at a Minnesota hockey rink — as evidence of his political calculations.

Mrs. Pawlenty dismissed claims that her husband’s ambitions had driven policy choices. “That’s not who he is,” she said.

Nor, for that matter, she added, has Mr. McCain’s vice-presidential search driven her husband’s hairstyle. The governor has cut and grown out his hair at various times over the years, she said.

Sour Grapes?

“He’s done popular stuff, easy stuff, symbolic stuff,” said Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman who lost the governor’s race to Mr. Pawlenty in 2002 as the Independence Party candidate and who says he supports Mr. McCain for president. “I can’t think of a single issue in which he has been leading public opinion. What you find here is an unremarkable record.”

Classic Pawlenty

Asked at a press luncheon in Washington what the most important quality of a running mate would be, Mr. Pawlenty responded, “Discretion,” and walked away from the microphone.

…or haven’t hung around here a long time, he’s hard to explain the Twin Cities left.

I got this quote from an introduction thread of a local politics list-server; a regular is explaining his politics to the membership:

My politics are moderate.  That is, I view the current IR as an
extreme-right party and the DFL as a moderate-right party with some
progressive elements.  I’d call the Greens and Socialist Workers Party
moderate-left parties.

These are the people who think the media, the Strib, the school system and academia are moderate to conservative.

To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke; “You can have a discussion with these people.  You can also have a discussion with livestock, for all the good it’ll do you”.

My old pal Buzzy came up to me at a party the other day.

“I’m remodeling my kitchen!”, he exclaimed, showing me a bunch of cabinets and appliances from an Ikea catalog.  All very tasteful…

…well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I looked at Buzzy for a moment.  He’s a well-meaning sort, but he’s got his issues.  One of his issues is “context”.  I can think of two examples.

One of them; he doesn’t own a house.  He lives in a tent.  He has no “kitchen” to remodel, other than a camp mess kit and a Smokey Joe.

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”  I asked.

“Nah” he said.  “I wanna have this plan done before my wife can plan it”.

Buzzy is also a liberal – a big DFLer.  Two years ago he was badgering all of us about the need to withdraw from Iraq.  When news broke that the Administration and the Iraqi government were on the brink of a deal, he jumped up and down, whooping and hollering like his team had just won on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: “Hah!” he yelled.  “I was calling for this withdrawal two years ago!”

“But”, his friends counsel, “two years ago, the situation in Iraq was horrible, and the war looked lost.  Today, it looks nearly over.  Withdrawing two years ago would have been irresponsible, would have had economic impacts around the world that’d make today’s oil price surge look like the good ol’ days, and would have led to staggering loss of life in Iraq.  Withdrawing today – well, the mission is looking pretty much accomplished”.
He stood there, eyes darting back and forth between us.

“Two years ago; wrong time.  Today; right time”.

He stands some more.  And some more.
His other friends moved on to another subject, before he chimed in.

“Chimpy McBushither Halliburton Butterfly Ballot Wide Stance 9/11 was an inside job!”

I saw John Stewart at Night Writer took the “Idiot Test“, and figured I had to give it a shot:

I am less than 0% Idiot.

Intelligence rolls off of me like fog off a lake in the early morning.  But be careful; if I ran into a Daily Kos diarist, there’d be an intellectual matter/anti-matter reaction, and  we’d both flash out of existence.   

Take the
Idiot Test
@ FualiDotCom

  Not bad, I tells ya.

When Barry Goldwater accepted the 1964 GOP nomination, he famously paraphrased Cicero in saying “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”  (Many liberals stop at the first sentence, a bit of context-mangling intended to make Goldwater sound like a wackjob). 

I’m reminded of this as I read this latest kefuffle; supposedly, the National Rifle Association co-opted a major gun-control advocate, who served as a “spy” in several gun-grabber organizations:

A gun-control activist who championed the cause for more than a decade and served on the boards of two anti-violence groups is suspected of working as a paid spy for the National Rifle Association, and now those organizations are expelling her and sweeping their offices for bugs.

 My first reaction:  Good.  Thank goodness.  The NRA needs to, and should, infiltrate orc organizations.  They should  be co-opting the bad guys.  Gun-grabber organizations routinely trample the boundaries of ethics to attempt to take our God-given right to defend ourselves; they lie about guns and the law-abiding gun owner; they lie about the record; they waterboard context. 

The best way, indeed, to tell if a gun control advocate is lying is to check to see if their lips are moving or their fingers are typing; it’s easier to count the times gun controllers tell the truth than to catalog the lies.  They will stop at nothing to squash our rights; it’s right to stop at nothing (short of violence) to defend them. 

Of course, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth…:

“It raises some real concerns with the tactics of the NRA. If they’ve got one person, maybe they have more. If they’ve done this dirty trick, what else have they done?” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, which planned to search its offices for listening devices and computer spyware.

The Brady Campaign and other groups said they are also researching whether McFate’s alleged spying constituted a crime.

“Under some circumstances, it could be trespass,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former prosecutor. But “if they’re open meetings, it may be underhanded and sneaky; it may not be illegal.”

Indeed, “spying” on other issue groups is far from uncommon; many issue-oriented groups have people attend other groups’ meetings.  It’s not talked about much, but it happens.

At any rate – kudos, NRA.  Keep it going.

Extremism in defense of liberty and justice should be the norm.

NEW YORK (AP) — Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt say their four previous children are adjusting just fine to the arrival of a twin brother and sister last month, with cupcakes and “Dora the Explorer” to help ease the transition.

Jolie and Pitt speak about their growing family, their charity work and their work-life balance in a question-and-answer in a special edition of People magazine that hit the newsstands Monday. A 19-page, $14 million-photo spread anchors the piece and gives a first look at the new babies interacting with the whole family.

The photos show Jolie and Pitt — each cradling a twin — sitting on a white bed with Zahara, 3, between them; Pax, 4, by Jolie’s side; and Shiloh, 2, lying on top of 7-year-old Maddox, who is plopped down by Pitt. There are close-ups of the twins, Knox and Vivienne, with their eyes closed, and photos of the older siblings gently holding the babies.

“It is chaos, but we are managing it and having a wonderful time,” Jolie, 33, says in the interview, though Pitt jumps in: “(It’s) still a cuckoo’s nest.”

(I thought this time I would I would hijack a post before anyone else did)

Might I suggest: How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps!

(As Mitch says) That is all.

I spent yesterday working at a Habitat for Humanity project.  It was fun; I hadn’t done contruction work of any sort (beyond the odd bit of inept homeowner handimannery) in over twenty years.  

Most of the day was wrapped up in building things (and I did finally get the whole “hanging drywall” thing straight, thank goodness). 

But the folks at Habitat – a non-profit – did carve out a bit of the day for “education”.  Over lunch hour, we heard a bit about the “affordable housing” mission.  We also learned that Habitat houses – always built to the absolute latest in current safety codes, and they are doozies – take a lot of money to build, above and beyond all the donated labor (from three Twin Cities corporations at our site yesterday, totalling around thirty people, some of whom knew what they were doing). 

Naturally, my mind wandered a bit.

I remebered a lecture I attended, starring former Saint Paul mayor Jim Scheibel, the fellow who served the term before Norm Coleman was elected.  He’d been a dismal, malaise-prone mayor – but he had impeccable liberal credentials, so after he left office he went to work for one “affordable housing” group or another.  In the lecture, he stated his goal; that everyone in Saint Paul (and, naturally, elsewhere) have safe, attractive, up-to-code housing, convenient to mass transit and the amenities of city life, for less than 30-odd percent of their income.

I asked him where the money would come from for that vision.

I don’t think anyone needs me to tell them the answer, do they?

In pondering this, I thought back to the house we were living in when both of my kids were born (although we left when Zam was three months old).  It was drafty; the walls were made (it seemed) out of cardboard.  The carpet was dismal, the kitchen ancient, the windows leaky, the basement pungent.  Mice roamed the place like the buffalo herds in Dances with Wolves. 

But it was a three-bedroom house for $600, which at that time was about the ragged edge of what we could afford without government assistance (remember that last qualifier).  It was a dingy roof and four drafty walls and, most important of all, we could manage it on what we earned back then.  It was what you’d call a “fixer-upper” (and, indeed, someone bought the house from the landlord a few years back, and fixed it up; it looks nice today).  And when the opportunity came to find something better, we worked our butts off to make it happen. 

And that was a very good thing.

I thought, as I looked around the brand-new house taking shape in Frogtown, that this would be a much better way to be poor!  Of course, Habitat for Humanity gets about 500 applications a year; between new builds and renovations, they put about 50 units a year into commission.

Where does everyone else go?

Until recently, they rented cheap houses; plain asphalt-sided frame houses in Frogtown; old railroad houses with three feet of clearance between buildings in the North End; dilapidated, past-their-prime but livable Edwardians up on Dayton’s Bluff.

But the mortgage craze of the past ten years took a lot of those places off the rental market; the popping of the bubble has left 2,000 of them vacant in Saint Paul, with more coming every day.

As I noted in my “Saint Paul Land Grab” series (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and more to come),  The City of Saint Paul is requiring all rgistered vacant homes to be brought up to current building codes before issuing them a Certificate of Occupancy, which will, depending on who  you ask, revitalize the city with block upon block of safe, modernized, renovated homes (that was Councilman Bostrom and Councilwoman Lantry’s tack on the issue), or create neighborhoods strewn full of vacant lots, all ready for the city to seize for one project or another (largely to house the vast numbers of people who won’t be able to afford to live in Saint Paul because the cheap housing is gone).  Until these properties’ owners bring them up to current code – meaning $50,000-$120,000 work for a house that might be worth $20,000, counting the land, today – they’re off the market.

No crappy homes equal no cheap places to live.  What are the options for the poor if there are no cheap places to live? 

Liberal governments have long declared war against things that are crappy; crappy jobs, crappy houses, crappy apartments.  “Living Wage” ordinances and minimum wage hikes decrease the supply of entry-level and subsistence jobs – meaning people can’t enter the market or subsist.  Have you seen the teenage unemployment rate lately? 

“Rent Control”, like New York’s infamous rent caps, dry up the supply of rental housing (which is why even twenty years ago it was impossible to find an inexpensive apartment in Manhattan even as huge swathes of the city were covered in slums).  Other cities that try to artificially spiff up the market – San Francisco, Portland – have similar results.

If the Saint Paul City Council’s latest bit of economic jiggerypokery continues as I predict, it’ll soon be impossible to get an “affordable” house in Saint Paul.  Without government assistance, anyway.

There is value to crappy things; jobs, houses, whatever.  They’re a place to start.  They’re a place to fall back to.  They’re something to fix, or to strive to get out of.

And when crappy jobs, houses and apartments are outlawed – what will be the alternatives?

Buh-Buh-Buh-Backfire

…for Brett

Clinton Leaves Convention Nomination Open

Observers have all but ruled her out as a potential running mate to Senator Barack Obama, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is not going away.

I got a little change in my pocket going jingle lingle ling
want to call you on the telephone baby I give you a ring
but each time we talk I get the same old thing
always no huggin no kissin until I get a wedding ring
my honey my baby don’t put my love upon no shelf
she said don’t give no lines and keep your hands to yourself

In a video clip making the rounds today, which, according to ABC News is from a fund-raiser in California on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton fielded a question about whether her name would be “placed in nomination” at the convention.

Cruel baby baby baby why you want to treat me this way
you know I’m still your lover boy I still feel the same way
that’s when she told me a story ’bout free milk and a cow
and she said no huggin no kissin until I get a wedding vow
my honey my baby don’t put my love upon no shelf
she said don’t hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself

“Well, I’m asked this question every day. And it is a question that I think is a very obvious one to ask. I mean, what will happen at the convention in respect to you know, my putting my name in nomination, the roll-call vote, you know, the usual kind of process that occurs at conventions,” she responded, emphasizing the word “usual.”

you see I wanted her real bad and I was about to give in
that’s when she started talkin’ true love started talkin’ about sin
I said honey I’ll live with you for the rest of my life
she said no huggin no kissin until you make me your wife
my honey my baby don’t put my love on no shelf
she don’t hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself.

We’re trying to work that out with the Obama campaign and with the D.N.C. I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views were respected. And I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified, because I know from just what I’m hearing that there’s just this incredible pent-up desire. And I think that people want to feel like, O.K., it’s a catharsis, we’re here, we did it, and then everybody get behind Senator Obama. That is what most people believe is the best way to go. No decisions have been made.

she said don’t hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself

This one (Via Anti-Strib) is on ones’ White Trash level:

I am 0% White Trash.

I, my friend, have class. I am so not white trash. . While Democrats consider themselves the paladins of class, I outclass them by superhuman margins. Not only do I not drink wine from boxes, I frequently bypass bottles and go directly to the vintner’s cask. I radiate class to the point where I am able to refine classlessness by simple exposure to me.

Take the
White Trash Test
@ FualiDotCom

North Dakota – where great things happen but D.nobody really pays it much attention:

Golfing for just the third time, 11-year-old Allan Saylor was whacking the ball around with a friend, not even keeping score. A hole-in-one? No big deal. The sixth-grader fired the ace Wednesday on the 150-yard, par-3 sixth hole at the neighboring Mandan Municipal Golf Course, using a driver borrowed from his buddy.

Just another day.

Every year on February 6th I do a tongue-in-cheek “Reagan’s Birthday” celebration.  Oh, we do do a special dinner at home, and I do talk about the Cold War, the demise of which President Reagan was the primary architect.  But that’s just being a good parent.

And while I make noise about wanting to make Reagan’s Birthday (formerly “Reaganmas”) a national holiday – c’mon.  Even Reagan wouldn’t want that. 

The tongue, in every case, is lodged firmly in cheek.

Because people who treat their leaders like subjects of cultish adoration?  They’re just plain wierd:

Wondering what to give a presidential candidate on his birthday? Minnesota supporters of Barack Obama are celebrating their guy’s 47th birthday today with “house parties” across the state.

As I sit trying to write this, a lot of snarky comebacks suggest themselves. 

None of them are any better than the vision of the “events” themselves.

Top Hamas leader’s son is now a Christian:

In an exclusive interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Masab Yousuf, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, slammed Hamas, praised Israel and said he hoped his terrorist father will open his eyes to Jesus and to Christianity.

“I know that I’m endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he’ll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I’ll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God,” Masab said.

Aside from the little bit of joy all of us Christians feel when someone accepts Christ (congrats, Mr. Yousuf!), it’s such a thumb in the eye for…well, you know who.

Which isn’t perhaps the reaction Christ wants us to have.  I guess I have to ask forgiveness right quick here.

(Via Heavy)

Demko at the Minnesoros “Independent” covers Franken at FarmFest.

Typical stuff.  But I caught this bit here, about a pheasant-hunting trip with 7th District congressional representative Collin Peterson:

Franken noted that it was his first time toting a rifle into the woods and that his staff needed to give him a tutorial in order to make sure he didn‘t accidentally shoot the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

Going after pheasant with a rifle?

If it worked, I suppose it’d be one way of impressing Republican voters.

Of course, Peterson wouldn’ve been in less danger than all the people half a mile downrange…

It was Friday, August 5, 1988.

I’d been job-hunting almost a year and half.

I had called – or at least tried to call – every talk radio station in the United States, or at least every one I could find evidence of.

With a few exceptions.

I figured there were a couple of markets into which there was no chance in hell I’d land; Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philly, and of course New York. Maybe I could get a producer gig – but even those, I figured, would hardly be worth the effort.
I was working in bars. I was living with a stoner sex addict and a speed metal singer. I was in a house where sewage oozed from the ceiling, and the landlord couldn’t be bothered.

I woke up this morning, and figured “what do I have to lose?”

I opened up my ratty, disintegrating copy of the SRDS, and called WMCA Radio in New York – a talk radio station.

To my amazement, I got through to the program director.

I did my patter. It was a short conversation…

“Send me a tape”, he said.

…but a good one.

Exhilarated – and not really expecting much – I picked out an audition tape, typed up a cover letter, and biked to the post office.

I actually had a spring in my step as I drove out to City Limits that night.

An analysis of the purchase of Anheuser-Busch, producer of America’s most iconic brew, by the Belgian firm InBev reveals there was more to the deal than a handsome payday for shareholders.

According to the Tax Foundation, Belgium’s corporate tax rate is 33%, but the effective tax rate can be half the nominal rate thanks to adjustments for something the OECD calls a “notional allowance for corporate equity.” Bottom line: InBev was paying around 20% of its profits in corporate taxes, compared to Anheuser-Busch’s rate of 38.4%. 

Things have gotten pretty bad when U.S. companies relocate to Europe to cut their tax payments. But a research analysis by Morgan Stanley finds the combined company’s corporate tax bill will be lower than in the U.S. and that the tax differential indeed figured into the economics of the sale.

So while John McCain may have benefited from his wife’s ownership of Anheuser stock (estimated at between 40,000 and 80,000 shares), the country will continue to see its competitive edge wither away without a corporate tax rate cut. Mr. McCain to his credit wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 25%, close to the global average. Senator Obama is more interested in raising tax rates than cutting them.

Does the Anheuser-Busch deal represent a precedent? Maybe not. Milller Brewing, long a Milwaukee fixture, is majority owned by SABMiller, the “S.A.B.” being South African Breweries.

Is there more of this to come? With Obama in the White House? Yes and definitely yes.

Wall Street dealmakers tell us to expect more sales of U.S. companies to European rivals thanks to the combination of America’s higher corporate taxes and the weak dollar. They’re right. New data from the OECD for 2008 indicate that the international average for corporate tax rates fell by another percentage point last year, meaning the U.S. is pricing itself out of the market as a corporate headquarters.