Surname Racial Bias? Winners and Losers in 2012 Election

The first color a voter sees in studying the ballot might be the red or blue of the Republican or Democratic parties. But gender–and race–can be a significant factor in the power of choice and the ultimate composition of Congress.
Last month, 78 U.S. House contests pitted a white candidate against a person of color; 47 white lawmakers won, or 60 percent. (In 10 additional races, both candidates were minorities.)
“People tend to look at partisanship first,” explained Matt Baretto, a University of Washington political-science professor, “but there is additional evidence that … people do bring their racial bias to the voting process.”
Baretto researched (pdf)  voting bias in Washington state, where an appointed Latino judge ran to retain his Supreme Court seat. His opponent campaigned lightly, yet won in 30 of the 38 counties where racial tensions were high.  (The Seattle Times covered the outcome, and previously Baretto found evidence of “racially polarized voting” in more than 40 Los Angeles County elections since the mid-1990s; similarly, 2010 research conducted in Texas showed a propensity for Hispanic voters to back “Juan Martinez” over “John Morgan.”)
In the coming year, more and more ethnic-sounding surnames will appear on ballots, which is only one factor that partly defines candidates beyond party and gender. Below are visual representations of winners and losers in November races involving minority candidates, with red signifying Republicans, blue Democrats, and green independents.
See our full coverage of all minority candidates, with photos and winning margins, from the November election. Also learn more about our incoming lawmakers by reading their profiles.
This first visual representation is of the 10 minority winners of open seats, further evidence that the GOP fielded few successful minority candidates.

Here is a mashup of the names of minority winners.

A collection of surnames of the losers in contests when one candidate was white and his or her opponent was a person of color.


Districts and gerrymandering have much to do with the success of a candidate, but some districts had hotly contested races of minority candidates;
Puerto Rican immigrant Jose Serrano easily retained his District 15 seat, representing New Yorkers in upper Manhattan and parts of Queens. He beat Frank Della Valle, 97 percent to 3 percent, in the widest margin among minority candidates.
Conversely, in another race where one candidate was a minority, Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy defeated incumbent Allen West, R-Fla., by the narrowest margin--a mere 1,907 votes--in ousting the black House member in District 18, which encompasses parts of Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.
Here you can see the surnames of the winners and their parties.



And finally, take a look at an alphabetized list of winners by party; the names in italics are the minority candidates.
Barton beat Sanders 58-39
Osborne beat Bass 86-14
Beatty beat Long 68-27
Becerra beat Smith 85-15
Bentivollo beat Taj 57-44
Beutler beat Haugen 60-40
Blackburn beat Amouzouvik 71-24
Brooks beat Holley 65-35
Burgess beat Sanchez 68-29
Campbell beat Kang 59-41
Capps beatMaldonado55-45
Capuano beat Romano 84-16
Castor beatOtero 70-30
Chu beat Orswell 63-37
Clarke beat Cavanagh 87-12
Coble beat Foriest 61-39
Cole beat Bebo 61-39
Cuellar beat Hayward 68-30
DeLauro beatWinsley 75-25
Coble beat Foriest 61-39
Denham beat Hernandez 54-46
Duncan beat Doyle 67-33
Eshoo beat Chapman 70-30
Farenthold beat Harrison 57-39
Flores beat Easton 80-20
Forbes beatWard 57-43
Gerlach beat Trivedi 57-43
Gohmert beat McKellar 72-27
Gosar beat Robinson 67-28
Green beat Mueller 78-20
Grisham beat Arnold-Jones 59-41
Heck beat Oceguera 50-43
Hinojosa beat Brueggemann 61-37
Horsford beat Tarkanian 50-42
Huizenga beat German 61-34
Jeffries beat Bellone 90-9
Joyce beat Blanchard 54-39
Jackson Lee beat Seibert 75-23
Lujan beat Bryd 63-37
Lungren beat Bera 51-49
Matheson beatLove 49-48
McCaul beat Cadien 61-36
 McClintock beat Uppal 61-39
McCollum beatHernandez 62-32
McNerney beat Gil 55-45
Meng beat Halloran 68-31
Miller beat Fuller 69-31
Moore beat Sebring 72-25
Mullin beat Wallace 57-38
Murphy beat West 50-50
Nadler beat Chan 81-19
Napolitano beat Miller 65-35
O'Rourke beat Carrasco 66-33
Olson beat Rogers 64-32
Payne beat Kelemen 87-11
Pearce beat Ernard 59-41
Pompeo beat Tillman 62-31
Reed beat Shinagawa 52-48
Rice beat Tinubu 55-45
Rogers beat Harris 64-36
Royce beat Chen 59-41
Ruiz beat Bono Mack 52-48
Ryan beat Agana 72-28
Sanchez beat Hayden 62-38
Scalise beat Mendoza 67-21
Scott beat Rose 62-35
Serrano beat Della Valle 97-3
Sewell beat Chamberlain 76-24
Southerland beat Lawson 53-47
Takano beat Tavaglione 58-42
Terry beat Ewing 51-49
Thompson beat Dumas 63-37
Tiberi beat Reese 64-36
Vargas beat Crimmins 70-30
Velazquez beat Murray 94-12
Webster beat Demings 52-48
Yoho beat Gillot 65-32

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Fixing the GOP: Party Like It's 1949

Americans by a 15-point margin in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the Republican Party needs less conservative policies that are more focused on middle- and lower-income Americans, rather than better leaders to sell its existing positions.
And 63 years ago, Americans by an 11-point margin said precisely the same thing.
See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.
Mark it up to the swinging pendulum of American politics: Six decades after Republican presidential nominee Thomas Dewey's unexpected loss to incumbent Democrat Harry S. Truman, the GOP is back in the same doghouse.
The question last was asked in 1949, months after Truman's victory in what's widely considered to be the greatest upset in presidential election history. The GOP, at that point, had lost five presidential races in a row, leading Gallup to ask:
"One group holds that the Republican Party is too conservative - that it needs a program concerned more directly with the welfare of the people, particularly those in the lower- and middle-income levels. The other group says that the policies of the Republican party are good - but the party needs a better leader to explain and win support for these policies."
In 1949, respondents, asked which view best fit their own, took the first option by 41-30 percent, with an additional 12 percent volunteering that both applied equally.
Fast forward to 2012. Defeated last month by an incumbent Democrat, the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. After hitting a 20-year high in 2003, allegiance to the GOP has dropped and shows no sign of recovery.
This poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, repeated the 1949 Gallup question. The result: Fifty-three percent of Americans say the Republicans need to work on their policies. Thirty-eight percent see it, instead, as a leadership problem.
THEN/NOW - There are other parallels between 2012 and 1948. Mitt Romney came across as a stiff candidate, lacking the common touch - much the same commentary that described Dewey. Truman directed his fire at the "do-nothing" 80th Congress; Barack Obama, while stressing it less, benefitted from comparisons to the deeply unpopular 112th Congress.
And the 1948 economy was recovering after the recession of 1946-7; in the run-up to the 2012 vote the economy was recovering as well, with newly revised figures showing a 3.1 percent gain in GDP in the third quarter.
Finally, there was the sense in the 2012 election that Romney, one of the wealthiest men ever to seek the presidency, would, if elected, pursue policies that favored the well-off - a view expressed in the results of this survey, as it was about the Republican Party in 1949.
It should be noted that both parties have had their share of soul-searching: The Democrats also lost five of six presidential elections in recent times, from 1968 to 1988.
GROUPS - There are differences, of course, among groups. It's noteworthy that even among conservatives, 30 percent say the GOP is too conservative and insufficiently focused on lower- and middle-income Americans, as do 35 percent of evangelical white Protestants, a core Republican group, and nearly a quarter of Republicans themselves.
Those numbers rise sharply among other groups, for instance, to 53 percent of independents and 60 percent of moderates, peaking at 79 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of liberals. There was, notably, much less partisan polarization on this question in 1949.
Other differences largely follow partisan and ideological patterns. While 49 percent of whites say the Republican Party needs less conservative policies and a greater focus on middle- and lower-income Americans, that jumps to 66 percent among nonwhites, a growing share of the electorate. It's also much higher in the Northeast than in the South or Midwest, and higher among younger and the most highly educated Americans.
There's less of a difference, perhaps surprisingly, by income levels. Among people earning less than $50,000 a year, 55 percent say the GOP needs greater focus on lower- and middle-income Americans. But among $100,000-plus earners, essentially as many, 53 percent, say the same.
METHODOLOGY - This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone Dec. 13-16, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,002 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including design effect. Partisan divisions are 31-24-38 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y.

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Obama nominating Kerry for secretary of state

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday will nominate Sen. John Kerry as his next secretary of state, a senior administration official said, making the first move in an overhaul of his national security team heading into a second term.
If confirmed, Kerry would take the helm at the State Department from outgoing Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has long stated her intention to leave early next year. Kerry, a longtime Massachusetts senator, is expected to be easily approved for the Cabinet post by his Capitol Hill colleagues.
That would open up the Senate seat Kerry has held for nearly three decades. Recently defeated Republican Sen. Scott Brown might contest it.
Obama will announce Kerry's nomination from the White House Friday afternoon, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the president's decision before the announcement. Clinton was not expected to attend. The secretary fell and suffered a concussion last week, State Department officials said, and hasn't made public appearances since.
Word about Kerry's nomination — Washington's latest worst-kept secret — came at a somber and unusual time, with both the president and Kerry attending a memorial service for Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. At the same time, leaders of the nation's divided government were in utter limbo about how to head off the "fiscal cliff" looming Jan. 1.
Kerry's nomination could bring to a close what has become for the White House a contentious and distracting effort to find a new secretary of state.
Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, losing a close election to incumbent George W. Bush. He's a decorated Vietnam veteran who was critical of the war when he returned to the U.S., even testifying in front of the Senate committee he eventually chaired.
Kerry's only other rival for the job, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, faced harsh criticism from congressional Republicans for her initial accounting of the deadly September attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Obama vigorously defended Rice, a close friend and longtime adviser, but GOP senators dug in, threatening to hold up her nomination if the president tapped her for the post.
Rice withdrew her name from consideration last week, making Kerry all but certain to become the nominee. People familiar with the White House's decision-making said support within the administration was moving toward Kerry even before Rice pulled out.
The Cabinet nomination of Kerry, 69, is the first Obama has made since winning a second term, and the first piece in an extensive shuffle of his national security team. The president is also expected to nominate a new defense secretary soon to take over for retiring Leon Panetta and a new director of the Central Intelligence Agency to replace former spy chief David Petreaus, who resigned last month after admitting to an affair with his biographer.
The White House had hoped to introduce Obama's national security team in a package announcement. But those plans were scrapped as the fiscal cliff negotiations consumed the administration and questions arose about the front-runner for the Pentagon post, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Hagel has been dogged by questions about his support for Israel and where he stands on gay rights, with critics calling on him to repudiate a comment in 1998 that a former ambassadorial nominee was "openly, aggressively gay."
As the nation's top diplomat, Kerry will be tasked with not only executing the president's foreign policy objectives, but also shaping Obama's approach. The senator offered some insight into his world view on Thursday during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing he chaired on the deadly September attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Kerry called on Congress to put enough money into America's foreign policy objectives and said doing so is an investment "in our long-term security and more often than not it saves far more expensive expenditures in dollars and lives for the conflicts that we failed to see or avoid."
And he emphasized the importance of U.S. diplomats being able to work freely in places like Benghazi, despite its dangers.
"There will always be a tension between the diplomatic imperative to get 'outside the wire' and the security standards that require our diplomats to work behind high walls," he said. "Our challenge is to strike a balance between the necessity of the mission, available resources and tolerance for risk."
Kerry, the son of a diplomat, has long sought the nation's top diplomatic post. Obama considered him for the job after the 2008 election before picking Clinton, his defeated rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, in a surprise move.
Since then, Obama has dispatched Kerry around the world on his behalf numerous times, particularly to tamp down diplomatic disputes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was also part of Obama's debate preparations team during the 2012 election, playing Republican challenger Mitt Romney in mock debates.
Kerry also won praise from Obama aides for his sharp national security-focused speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. He told delegates: "Ask Osama bin Laden if he's better off now than he was four years ago."
Before nominating Kerry, the White House consulted with congressional Democrats about the fate of the Senate seat he has held for five terms. Democrats have sought to assure the White House that the party has strong potential candidates in the state.
Kerry has pushed the White House's national security agenda in the Senate with mixed results. He ensured ratification of a nuclear arms reduction treaty in 2010 and most recently failed to persuade Republicans to back a U.N. pact on the rights of the disabled.
The senator was also outspoken in pushing for a 2011 no-fly zone over Libya as Moammar Gadhafi's forces attacked rebels and citizens.

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Obama nominates Kerry for secretary of state

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, one of Washington's most respected voices on foreign policy, as his next secretary of state.
The move is the first in an expected overhaul of Obama's national security team heading into his second term.
As the nation's top diplomat, Kerry will not only be tasked with executing the president's foreign policy objectives, but will also have a hand in shaping them. The longtime lawmaker has been in lockstep with Obama on issues like nuclear non-proliferation, but ahead of the White House in advocating aggressive policies in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere that the president later embraced.
"He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training," Obama said, standing alongside Kerry in a Roosevelt Room ceremony. "Few individuals know as many presidents and prime ministers or grasp our foreign policies as firmly as John Kerry."
He is expected to win confirmation easily in the Senate, where he has served since 1985, the last six years as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Kerry would take the helm at the State Department from Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has long planned to leave the administration early next year. Clinton is recovering from a concussion sustained in a fall and did not attend the White House event.
In a statement, Clinton said, "John Kerry has been tested — in war, in government, and in diplomacy. Time and again, he has proven his mettle."
Obama settled on Kerry for the job even though it could cause a political problem for Democrats in Massachusetts. Kerry's move to State would open the Senate seat he has held for five terms, giving Republicans an opportunity to take advantage. Recently defeated GOP Sen. Scott Brown would be his party's clear favorite in a special election.
Kerry would join a national security team in flux, with Obama expected to choose a new defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the coming weeks.
The 69-year-old Kerry already has deep relationships with many world leaders, formed both during his Senate travels and as an unofficial envoy for Obama. The president has called upon Kerry in particular to diffuse diplomatic disputes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries that will be at the forefront of Obama's foreign policy agenda early in his second term.
At times, Kerry has been more forward-leaning than Obama on foreign policy issues. He was an early advocate of an international "no-fly zone" over Libya in 2011 and among the first U.S. lawmakers to call for Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak to leave power as pro-democracy protests grew. Obama later backed both positions.
Kerry would take over at a State Department grappling with the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans during a September attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Kerry, during a hearing on the attacks Thursday, hinted at how he would manage U.S. diplomatic personnel working in unstable regions.
"There will always be a tension between the diplomatic imperative to get 'outside the wire' and the security standards that require our diplomats to work behind high walls," he said. "Our challenge is to strike a balance between the necessity of the mission, available resources and tolerance for risk."
His only other rival for the job, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, faced harsh criticism from congressional Republicans for her initial accounting of the consulate attack. Obama vigorously defended Rice, a close friend and longtime adviser, but GOP senators dug in, threatening to hold up her nomination if the president tapped her for the post.
Rice withdrew her name from consideration last week, making Kerry all but certain to become the nominee. People familiar with the White House's decision-making said support within the administration was moving toward Kerry even before Rice pulled out.
The son of a diplomat, Kerry was first elected to the Senate in 1984. He is also a decorated Vietnam veteran who was critical of the war effort when he returned to the U.S. He ran for president in 2004, losing a close race to incumbent Republican President George W. Bush.
Obama and Kerry have developed close ties in recent years. It was Kerry, during his 2004 presidential run, who tapped Obama as the party's convention keynote speaker, a role that thrust the little-known Illinois politician into national prominence.
Kerry served on Obama's debate preparation team during the 2012 election, playing Republican challenger Mitt Romney in mock debates.
"Nothing brings two people closer together than two weeks of debate prep," Obama joked on Friday. "John, I'm looking forward to working with you rather than debating you."
Kerry is Obama's first Cabinet appointee following the November election. The president is also mulling replacements for retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA director David Petraeus, who resigned last month after admitting to an affair with his biographer.
Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is a front-runner for the Pentagon post, but has been dogged by questions about his support for Israel and where he stands on gay rights, with critics calling on him to repudiate a comment in 1998 that a former ambassadorial nominee was "openly, aggressively gay."
Hagel apologized for that comment Friday.
Former Pentagon official Michele Flournoy and current Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter are also under consideration to replace Panetta. Obama is also considering promoting acting CIA Director Michael Morell or naming White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan as the nation's spy chief.

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Son says Romney was reluctant to run for president again: report

 Republican Mitt Romney's family had to convince him to make a second bid for the presidency because he was reluctant to run again after failing to secure his party's nomination in 2008, Romney's son told the Boston Globe on Sunday.
In an article that examined what went wrong with Romney's losing 2012 presidential campaign, Tagg Romney said his father Mitt said he had no intention of running again after he did not become the Republican presidential nominee in 2008.
Arizona Senator John McCain secured the Republican nomination that year and lost to Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election.
In order to overcome his father's reluctance, Tagg Romney told the Globe he and his mother Ann worked to change his mind.
"He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life," Tagg Romney told the paper. "If he could have found someone else to take his place ... he would have been ecstatic to step aside."
Despite predictions that the 2012 election would be close, Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and businessman, fell well short of the 270 electoral votes needed to defeat President Obama.
In November, Obama won re-election with 332 electoral votes and won most of the battleground states, including Ohio and Florida.

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Two directors resign from Best Buy board

One of the more interesting companies to watch in 2013 is Best Buy (BBY), and the show started right from the get-go in 2013. As most people were getting ready to enjoy New Year’s Eve celebrations, this struggling retailer was busy confirming that two key board members were resigning, Reuters reported. Among those leaving Best Buy’s board of directors is G. Mike Mikan, who served as interim CEO between April and September this year after former CEO Brian Dunn resigned amid scandal. Director Matthew Paull is the second departure, and he is leaving in April following his retirement from the role of chief financial officer at McDonald’s in April 2008. Best Buy’s corporate policy indicates that directors must relinquish their board seats within five years of retiring from their primary careers. The struggling nationwide retailer now has four vacant seats on its board.

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Turkish agency blamed by U.S. companies for intercepted Web pages

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An agency of the Turkish government deployed a deceptive version of some Google Inc web pages, possibly to monitor activity by its employees, major Internet companies said on Thursday.
The reports are the latest in a series of incidents in which hackers or governments have taken advantage of the loose rules surrounding the standard security for financial and other sensitive sites, those with Web addresses starting with Https.
In the most recent case, an Ankara public transit agency known as EGO, obtained the capacity to validate such Web pages from a Turkish Internet authority called TurkTrust, which is among the hundreds of entities treated as reliable by all major Internet browsers, Microsoft Corp said in a blog post.
Last month, EGO issued an improper certificate that told some visitors to Google they had reached it securely when they had not, Google said. The ruse was detected because unlike other browsers, Google's Chrome warns users and the company if an unexpected certificate is authenticating a Google site.
Google asked TurkTrust, which said it had "mistakenly" granted the right to authenticate any site to two organizations in August 2011. Google also warned browser makers including Microsoft and Mozilla, makers of Internet Explorer and Firefox, and all three will now block sites that were authenticated by EGO and another TurkTrust customer.
Though only Google was demonstrably faked, giving EGO access to Gmail and search activity, many other pages could have been faked without any of the real companies knowing about it. Spokesmen for the Turkish Embassy in Washington and the consulates in New York and Los Angeles could not be reached for comment.
Few details were provided by the technology companies, but one person involved with the issue said that it appeared that the fake Google.com had been displayed on one internal network.
"The logical theory is that the transportation agency was using it to spy on its own employees," said Chris Soghoian, a former Federal Trade Commission technology expert now working for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Validation authority alone isn't enough to intercept traffic, the most likely goal of the project. The authenticator would also have to come in contact with the Web user.
A similar situation developed in 2011, when Dutch certificate authority DigiNotar said it had been hacked and that certificates had been stolen. Google later warned that a fake certificate for its site was showing up in Iran, and it warned Gmail users in that country to change their passwords.
Soghoian and other technologists have complained for years that the system behind Https sites is broken, but the industry has been slow to change.
Among other issues, the certificate authorities can resell the right to authenticate and don't have to disclose who their customers are.
"The entire Web relies on every single certificate authority being honest and secure," Soghoian said. "It's a ticking time bomb."

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Google emerges from FTC probe relatively unscathed

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has settled a U.S. government probe into its business practices without making any major concessions on how the company runs its Internet search engine, the world's most influential gateway to digital information and commerce.
Thursday's agreement with the Federal Trade Commission covers only some of the issues raised in a wide-ranging antitrust investigation that could have culminated in a regulatory crackdown that re-shapes Internet search, advertising and mobile computing.
But the FTC didn't find any reason to impose radical changes, to the relief of Google and technology trade groups worried about overzealous regulation discouraging future innovation. The resolution disappointed consumer rights groups and Google rivals such as Microsoft Corp., which had lodged complaints with regulators in hopes of legal action that would split up or at least hobble the Internet's most powerful company.
Google is still trying to settle a similar antitrust probe in Europe. A resolution to that case is expected to come within the next few weeks.
After a 19-month investigation, Google Inc. placated the FTC by agreeing to a consent decree that will require the company to charge "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" prices to license hundreds of patents deemed essential to the operations of mobile phones, tablet computers, laptops and video game players.
The requirement is meant to ensure that Google doesn't use patents acquired in last year's $12.4 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility to thwart competition from mobile devices running on software other than Google's Android system. The products vying against Android include Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad, Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and Microsoft's Windows software.
Google also promised to exclude, upon request, snippets copied from other websites in capsules of key information shown in response to search requests. The company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Nonetheless, even before the settlement, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or "scraping," of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation in 2011.
In another concession, Google pledged to adjust the online advertising system that generates most of its revenue so marketing campaigns can be more easily managed on rival networks.
Google, though, prevailed in the pivotal part of the investigation, which delved into complaints that the Internet search leader has been highlighting its own services on its influential results page while burying links to competing sites. For instance, requests for directions may turn up Google Maps first, queries for video might point to the company's own site, YouTube, and searches for merchandise might route users to Google Shopping.
Although the FTC said it uncovered some obvious instances of bias in Google's results during the investigation, the agency's five commissioners unanimously concluded there wasn't enough evidence to take legal action.
"Undoubtedly, Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers," said Beth Wilkinson, a former federal prosecutor that the FTC hired to help steer the investigation. "However, the FTC's mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors."
Two consumer rights groups lashed out at the FTC for letting Google off too easily.
"The FTC had a long list of grievances against Google to choose from when deciding if they unfairly used their dominance to crush their competitors, yet they failed to use their authority for the betterment of the marketplace," said Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute.
John Simpson of frequent Google critic Consumer Watchdog asserted: "The FTC rolled over for Google."
David Wales, who was the FTC's antitrust enforcement chief in 2008 and early 2009, said the agency had to balance its desire to prevent a powerful company from trampling the competition against the difficulty of proving wrongdoing in a rapidly changing Internet search market.
"This is a product of the FTC wanting to push the envelope of antitrust enforcement without risking the danger of losing a case in in court," said Wales, who wasn't involved with the case and is now a partner at the law firm Jones Day.
FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the outcome "is good for consumers, it is good for competition, it is good for innovation and it is the right thing to do." Before reaching its conclusion, the FTC reviewed more than 9 million pages of documents submitted by Google and its rivals and grilled top Internet industry executives during sworn depositions.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a technology trade group, applauded the FTC for its handling of the high-profile case.
"This was a prudent decision by the FTC that shows that antitrust enforcement, in the hands of responsible regulators, is sufficiently adaptable to the realities of the Internet age," said Ed Black, the group's president.
The FTC has previously been criticized for not doing more to curb Google's power. Most notably, the FTC signed off on Google's $3.2 billion purchase of online advertising service DoubleClick in 2008 and its $681 million acquisition of mobile ad service AdMob in 2010. Google critics contend those deals gave the company too much control over the pricing of digital ads, which account for the bulk of Google's revenue.
If Google breaks any part of the agreement, Leibowitz said the FTC can fine the company up to $16,000 per violation. Last year, the FTC determined that Google broke an agreement governing Internet privacy, resulting in a $22.5 million fine, though the company didn't acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Google's ability to protect its search recipe from government-imposed changes represents a major victory for a company that has always tried to portray itself as force for good. The Mountain View, Calif., company has portrayed its dominant search engine as a free service that is constantly tweaking its formula so that people get the information they desire more quickly and concisely.
"The conclusion is clear: Google's services are good for users and good for competition," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a Thursday blog post.
Google's tactics also have been extremely lucrative. Although Google has branched into smartphones and many other fields since its founding in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998, Internet search and advertising remains its financial backbone. The intertwined services still generate more than 90 percent of Google's revenue, which now exceeds $50 billion annually.
Throughout the FTC investigation, Google executives also sought to debunk the notion that the company's recommendations are the final word on the Internet. They pointed out that consumers easily could go to Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo or other services to search for information. "Competition is just a click away," became as much of a Google mantra as the company's official motto: "Don't be evil."
Microsoft cast the FTC's investigation as a missed opportunity.
"The FTC's overall resolution of this matter is weak and — frankly —unusual," Dave Heiner, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, wrote on the company's blog. "We are concerned that the FTC may not have obtained adequate relief even on the few subjects that Google has agreed to address."
FairSearch, a group whose membership includes Microsoft, called the FTC's settlement "disappointing and premature," given that European regulators might be able to force Google to make more extensive changes.
"The FTC's inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators," FairSearch asserted.
Yelp also criticized the FTC's handling of the case, calling "it a missed opportunity to protect innovation in the Internet economy, and the consumers and businesses that rely upon it."
Investors had already been anticipating Google would emerge from the inquiry relatively unscathed.
Google's stock rose 42 cents Thursday to close at $723.67. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., shed 37 cents, or 1.3 percent, to finish at $27.25.
In a research note Thursday, Macquarie Securities analyst Benjamin Schachter described the settlement as "the best possible outcome" for Google. "We believe that the terms of the agreement will have very limited negative financial or strategic implications for the company." Schachter wrote.

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Lens maker Cooke Optics to receive technical Oscar

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The first Oscar recipients of the new year were announced Thursday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Lens makers Cooke Optics Limited will receive an Award of Merit Oscar at the academy's Scientific and Technical Awards banquet Feb. 9 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The academy says Cooke Optics is receiving the award "for their continuing innovation in the design, development and manufacture of advanced camera lenses that have helped define the look of motion pictures over the last century."
The academy announced nine recipients of awards honoring various other technical movie-making achievements. Portions of the Scientific and Technical Awards presentations will be included in the Academy Awards broadcast on Feb. 24.

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Sprint will reportedly launch its own prepaid plans on January 25th

Sprint
There are choices on the market if you are looking for prepaid options from Sprint (S). The carrier offers no-contract plans through two subsidiaries, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, and also has roaming deals in place with Republic Wireless, which provides $19-per-month unlimited service. According to alleged internal documents obtained by AndroidPolice, Sprint may be looking to enter the prepaid business itself and offer self-branded no-contract phones to consumers. The carrier will reportedly offer unlimited talk, text and web for $70, however there are a few catches. The prepaid service isn’t available with most Sprint smartphones such as the Galaxy S III and is only compatible with two 3G handsets: The LG (006570) Optimus Elite and Samsung (005930) Victory.

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Venezuelans obsess: Will Chavez live or die?

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — He's getting better. He's getting worse. He's already dead. The whole thing is a conspiracy and he was never sick in the first place.
The obsessive, circular conversations about President Hugo Chavez's health dominate family dinners, plaza chit-chats and social media sites in this country on edge since its larger-than-life leader went to Cuba for emergency cancer surgery more than two weeks ago. The man whose booming voice once dominated the airwaves for hours at a time has not been seen or heard from since.
His lieutenants have consistently assured Venezuelans over the last week that Chavez is slowly on the mend and will be back at the helm of the country he has dominated for 14 years. But when will he be back? Will he be well enough to govern? What type of cancer does he have? Is it terminal? If so, how long does he have to live?
Government officials have not answered any of those questions, leaving Venezuelans to their own speculations. The wildest conspiracy theories run the gamut from those who say there is no proof Chavez is even still alive to those who believe his illness is a made-up play for sympathy.
"Everything has been a mystery. Everyone believes what they want about the status of his health," said Ismael Garcia, a leftist lawmaker who belonged to the Chavez movement until a falling-out a few years ago.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro read out a New Year message from Chavez to Venezuelan troops on Friday, but for the fourth day in a row offered no updates on the president's health. Maduro had announced Monday night that Chavez was walking and doing some exercises.
The uncertainty comes with a sense of urgency because Chavez is scheduled to be sworn in for a new six-year term Jan. 10. The government and opposition disagree on what should happen if Chavez can't show up, raising the threat of a destabilizing legal fight. Beyond that, nobody knows if Chavez's deputies, who have long worked under his formidable shadow, can hold the country together if he dies.
Like everything else in this fiercely divided country, what people believe usually depends on where their political loyalty lies. Chavez opponents are mostly convinced that the president has terminal cancer, has known it for a long time and should not have sought re-election in October. His most fervent supporters refuse to believe "El Comandante" will die.
"Chavez is going to live on. He is a very important man. He has transformed the world with his ideology," said Victor Coba, a 48-year-old construction worker standing outside a Caracas church as government officials held a Mass to pray for the leader. "Anyone of us will die first before Chavez."
Coba scurried off to a street corner where officials were handing out a book of photographs of Chavez's recent presidential campaign. The comandante's grinning face looked out from the cover, alongside the slogan "Chavez, the heart of my country."
The same image looms from billboards erected all over Caracas, from freeway medians to the low-income apartment towers being built with Venezuelan oil wealth. Such services for the poor have helped Chavez maintain a core of followers despite high inflation, rampant gun violence, trash-strewn cities and other problems he has failed to fix.
For many, the attachment to Chavez borders on religious reverence. His supporters wish each other "Feliz Chavidad" rather than "Feliz Navidad," or Merry Christmas. Government officials have started talking about Chavez like an omnipresent deity.
"Chavez is this cable car. Chavez is this great mission. The children are Chavez. The women are Chavez. The men are Chavez. We are all Chavez," Maduro said recently while inaugurating a cable car to bring people down from one of the vast slums that creep up Caracas' hillsides. "Comandante, take care of yourself, get better and we will be waiting for you here."
Crowds of red-clad supporters roar their approval each time Maduro reassures them. But on the streets, confusion reigns.
"People say he's going to get better," said Alibexi Birriel, an office manager eating at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day.
Her husband Richard Hernandez shook his head. "No. Most people say Chavez is going to die and that Nicolas Maduro is going to take power."
Birriel paused, chiming in, "Well, some think this whole thing is theater and that there's nothing wrong with him."
Hernandez, who described himself as a Chavez supporter but "not a fanatic," shrugged. "The opposition thinks that if Chavez died they are going to win the elections. That is not going to happen."
There have been some official details. Chavez, 58, first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors had already been twice removed. Venezuelan officials said that following a six-hour surgery Dec. 11, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.
Just five months earlier, Chavez had announced he was free of cancer. But he acknowledged the seriousness of his illness earlier before flying to Cuba this month by designating Maduro as his successor and telling his supporters to vote for the vice president should new elections be necessary. Outside doctors have said that judging from the information Chavez has provided, his cancer is likely terminal, though the government has never confirmed that.
On Christmas Eve, Maduro surprised Venezuelans by saying he had spoken to Chavez by telephone and that the president was up and walking. With no other details, that only set off another round of furious speculation.
"I don't think he can be standing up walking," said Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas. "Unless ... there are a lot of lies in this and the surgery was not six hours ... but something else much simpler, much simpler, maybe a half-hour operation, or two hours, something like that and that he is now recovering. That is possible."
Chavez supporters tweeted their relief and joy. Opponents tweeted incredulity. They traded insults in the comment sections of newspaper websites. Some posters demanded to know where the proof was that the president was even still alive. Others wondered if he had ever been sick in the first place. Chavez supporters shot back that the rumor-mongering should stop.
One Chavez foe finally posted on the Ultimas Noticias newspaper website, "Bla, bla, bla ... He's getting better, he's dying, he has nothing, he's strong as a bull, he can't get of bed, all the hypotheses are valid because there is no proof of anything."
Amid the raging rumors, Chavez's daughter, Maria Gabriela Chavez, sent out a Twitter message from Havana last week pleading for it all to stop.
"Respect for my family and especially respect for my people. Enough lies! We are with papa. ALIVE, fighting and recovering. WITH GOD," she wrote.
Teresa Maniglia, a press officer at the presidential palace, has kept up a steady stream of cheerleading tweets.

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Mexico finds smuggling tunnel near US border

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities have discovered a sophisticated smuggling tunnel equipped with electricity and ventilation not far from the Nogales port of entry into Arizona, U.S. and Mexican officials said Friday.
The Mexican army said the tunnel was found Thursday after authorities received an anonymous call in the border city of Nogales, Sonora, south of Arizona. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed that the Mexican military had discovered the football field-long tunnel with elaborate electricity and ventilation systems.
U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Victor Brabble said the tunnel did not cross into the U.S.
The army said the anonymous caller was reporting gunmen standing outside a two-story house in a hilly neighborhood near the international bridge where motorists travel between Mexico and the United States.
Inside the house, soldiers discovered a fake wall inside a storage closet under a staircase that led to a dark room with buckets and clothes. After lifting a drain cover in that room, soldiers found another staircase at the entrance of the tunnel that went 16 feet underground and measured a yard in diameter. Light bulbs lit the underground passage and pipes stretched across the 120-yard tunnel that Mexican army officials believe was built to smuggle drugs.
It was unclear whether officials made any arrests, but the house where the tunnel was found was seized by the local government. Military officials did not say how long they believed the tunnel had been under construction, but authorities say it can take six months to a year to build such a passage.
Sophisticated secret tunnels stretching across the international border have become increasingly common as drug cartels invent new ways to smuggle enormous loads of heroin, marijuana and other drugs into U.S.
More than 70 such tunnels have been found since October 2008, most of them concentrated along the border in California and Arizona. In Nogales, Arizona, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.

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Venezuelan VP heads to Cuba to visit ailing Chavez

HAVANA (AP) — Venezuela's vice president arrived in Havana to visit President Hugo Chavez as he recovers from cancer surgery, Cuban official media said early Saturday.
Communist Party newspaper Granma published online a photo of Vice President Nicolas Maduro being greeted at the airport in the Cuban capital by the island's foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez.
"From there, (Maduro) went directly to the hospital where President Hugo Chavez Frias is receiving treatment to greet his family members and Venezuelan Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza Monserrat, and to discuss with doctors the adequate moment to visit the President the same day," the paper said.
Granma added that Maduro was accompanied by Venezuelan Attorney General Cilia Flores.
The previous night in Caracas, Venezuela, Maduro did not specify how long he would be away but said Energy Minister Hector Navarro would be in charge of government affairs in the meantime.
Maduro's trip comes amid growing uncertainty about Chavez's health.
The Venezuelan leader has not been seen or heard from since undergoing his fourth cancer-related surgery Dec. 11, and government officials have said he might not return in time for his scheduled Jan. 10 inauguration for a new six-year term. There have been no updates on Chavez's condition since Maduro announced Monday night that he had received a phone call from the president who was up and walking.
Maduro is the highest ranking Venezuelan official to visit Chavez since the surgery. Bolivian President Evo Morales traveled to Cuba last weekend in a quick trip that only added to the uncertainty surrounding Chavez's condition. Morales has not commented publicly on his visit or even confirmed that he saw Chavez while he was there.
Earlier Friday, Maduro read a New Year message from Chavez to Venezuelan troops, though it was unclear when the president composed it.
"I have had to battle again for my health," Chavez said in the message. He expressed "complete faith in the commitment and loyalty that the revolutionary armed forces are showing me in this very complicated and difficult moment."
A group of opposition candidates demanded Friday that Maduro provide an official medical report on Chavez's health. Lawmaker Dinorah Figuera said the country needs "a medical report from those who are responsible for the diagnosis, evaluation and treatment of the president."
"The Venezuelan people deserve official and institutional information," Figuera told Venezuelan media.
Before leaving for Cuba, Chavez acknowledged the precariousness of his situation and designated Maduro as his successor, telling supporters they should vote for the vice president if a new presidential election was necessary.
A legal fight is brewing over what should happen if Chavez, who was re-elected in October, cannot return in time for the inauguration before the National Assembly.
National Assembly Diosdado Cabello insisted Monday that Venezuela's constitution allows the president to take the oath before the Supreme Court at any time if he cannot do it before the legislature on Jan. 10.
Opposition leaders argue the constitution requires that new elections be held within 30 days if Chavez cannot take office Jan. 10. They have criticized the confusion over the inauguration as the latest example of the Chavez government's disdain for democratic rule of law and have demanded clarity on whether the president is fit to govern.

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Bolivia expropriates Spanish energy subsidiaries

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — President Evo Morales nationalized the Bolivian electricity distribution subsidiaries of the Spanish energy company Iberdrola in a public ceremony Saturday.
Morales issued a decree allowing the takeover of shares in Empresa de Electricidad de La Paz (Electropaz) and Empresa de Luz y Fuerza de Oruro (Elfeo), which supply energy in this Andean nation.
Soldiers guarded the installations of the electricity distribution companies, marked with signs reading: "Nationalized."
In the ceremony at Bolivia's government palace, Morales also announced the expropriation of an investment management company and a service provider belonging to the Spanish energy giant.
Morales said he had "been forced to take this step" to ensure that electric service rates remain "equitable" in the regions of La Paz and Oruro.
The Spanish government said in a statement that it regretted Bolivia's decision to nationalize companies that included "Spanish, Argentine and American companies among its shareholders."
Spain said it hoped "the process of assessing the value of the nationalized company is done with high standards of objectivity that would establish the just compensation to which shareholders are entitled."
Telephone calls and emails seeking comment from Iberdrola in Spain were not immediately answered.
The decree read by Morales calls for Iberdrola to receive indemnification after an independent firm is hired within 180 days to determine the value of the nationalized shares.
Morales in May also nationalized Transportadora de Electricidad belonging to Spanish company Red Electrica, which controlled 74 percent of energy transmission in Bolivia.
In his first year in office in 2006, the Bolivian president nationalized the oil industry through a renegotiation of contracts with a dozen oil companies, including Repsol, Petrobras, BG and Total.
In 2009 Morales transferred to state control the country's largest telephone operator, which had been controlled by Italy's ETI, and in 2010 he did the same with the four largest power generators, which had belonged to French-owned Suez, Rurelec of Britain and Bolivian shareholders.

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Mexico City orders prison in animal cruelty cases

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico City lawmakers have approved prison terms for animal cruelty, previously considered a civil offense sanctioned with fines and detentions.
The capital's legislative assembly unanimously agreed that people who intentionally abuse and cause animals harm will face up to two years in prison and pay up to $500. If the animal is killed, they can face up to four years in prison and a $2,000 fine.
Antonio Padierna, president of the assembly's law enforcement and justice committee, said late Friday that if animals are killed for food, the death must be quick and not cause pain.
The lawmakers agreed current administrative laws weren't doing enough to end animal cruelty. In Mexico City, animals are sometimes killed by being burned, beaten or shot.

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"Fiscal cliff" creates waiting game for payrolls firms

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - At payroll processing businesses across the United States, the "fiscal cliff" stalemate in Washington means uncertainty over tax-withholding tables just days before the start of 2013.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service still has not issued the tables for next year that show how much money employers should hold back from workers' paychecks to cover federal income taxes.
Payroll processors need the tables to get their systems geared up for the new year. The tables are set by many factors, including tax rates and annual inflation adjustments.
In anticipation of late-breaking developments, Rochester, New York-based Paychex Inc will be serving Buffalo chicken wings for staffers working late on New Year's Eve, said Frank Fiorille, an executive at the payroll processing giant.
"Our systems are flexible enough that we can wait almost up until the last minute and still make changes," he said.
The IRS appreciates of the impact of Congress' inaction.
"Since Congress is still considering changes to the tax law, we continue to closely monitor the situation," IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said in a statement. "We intend to issue guidance by the end of the year on appropriate withholding for 2013."
Tax rates are slated to rise sharply for most Americans if Congress and President Barack Obama fail to reach an agreement that averts the "fiscal cliff" approaching at year-end.
"The political process will determine one way or the other what" the IRS must do, said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a business-oriented tax research group.
For now, he said, from the tax-collection agency's viewpoint, "doing nothing is probably the best course." This would be because withholding tables distributed now might only have to be revised if Congress acts in the next few days.
Some payroll servicers are not waiting for formal IRS guidance. The American Payroll Association, which represents about 23,000 payroll professionals, told members on Friday to rely on 2012 withholding tables until the IRS releases the new forms for 2013.
The association said its decision was based on a statement earlier this month from an IRS official.
The agency would not confirm that policy on Friday.
Tax preparer H&R Block Inc said it will use 2012 tax-withholding tables if the 2013 tables are not issued.
Executives said they were frustrated with the uncertainty in Washington, but were doing their best to cope.
"We are not doctors or surgeons and this is not life threatening," said Rob Basso with Advantaged Payroll Services, an Auburn, Maine-based payroll processor that serves 30,000 businesses. "It is annoying and disruptive to people's lives, but we will get through it.

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Future of state estate taxes hangs on U.S. "fiscal cliff"

Not necessarily for some state governments that could begin collecting more in estate taxes on wealth left to heirs if the United States goes over the "cliff," allowing sharp tax increases and federal spending cuts to take effect in January.
In an example of federal and state tax law interaction that gets little notice on Capitol Hill, 30 states next year could collect $3 billion more in estate taxes if Congress and President Barack Obama do not act soon, estimated the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
The reason? The federal estate tax would return with a vengeance and so would a federal credit system that shares a portion of it with the 30 states. They had been getting their cut of this tax revenue stream until the early 2000s. That was when the credit system for payment of state estate tax went away due to tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush.
With the return of the credit system next year as part of the "cliff," states such as Florida, Colorado and Texas - which have not collected estate tax since 2004 - could resume doing so. California Governor Jerry Brown has already begun to add the anticipated estate tax revenue into his plans, including $45 million of it in his 2012-2013 revised budget.
Brown may or may not be jumping the gun.
CLOUDY CLIFF AHEAD
The outlook on the "fiscal cliff" coming up at year-end is uncertain. Democratic President Barack Obama has said he hopes for a last-minute deal to avert it. That would need to get done soon, with Congress just now coming back from its holiday break.
Chances of an agreement became more remote last week after Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives fumbled their own legislative attempt to prevent the fiscal jolt that economists say could trigger a recession.
House Speaker John Boehner abruptly adjourned the chamber for the holidays after failing to gather the votes from within his own party to pass legislation he and other Republicans had drafted, after walking out of negotiations with Obama.
Weeks of inconclusive political drama over the "cliff" have focused largely on individual income tax rates and spending on federal programs such Medicare and Social Security, but many tax issues are also involved, including the estate tax.
At the moment, under laws signed a decade ago by Bush, the estate tax is applied to inherited assets at a rate of 35 percent after a $5 million exemption. That means a deceased person can pass on an inheritance of up to $5 million before any tax applies. Inherited wealth passed to a spouse or a federally recognized charity is generally not taxed.
Obama wants to raise the rate to 45 percent after a $3.5 million exemption. Republicans have called for complete repeal of the estate tax, which they call the "death tax," though Boehner earlier this month called for freezing the estate tax at its present level. It was difficult to determine what the Republicans want after last week's events in the House.
STATES STAND TO GAIN
If Congress and Obama do not act by December 31, numerous Bush-era tax laws will expire, including the one on estate taxes. That would mean the estate tax rate will shoot up next year to the pre-Bush levels of 55 percent after a $1 million exemption.
It would also mean that for the first time in years, a portion of that estate tax would go to the states, through the return of the credit system.
Under that old law, estates paying the tax could get a credit against their federal tax bill for state estate tax payments of up to 16 percent of the estate's value.
If the fiscal cliff were allowed to take hold unaltered by Washington, 30 states would again automatically begin getting their share of federal estate taxes. The state laws are generally written so the state estate tax amounts are calculated under a formula based on the amount of the federal credit.
This would help states that have struggled with lower tax revenues since the 2007-2009 financial crisis and resulting recession, according to research by the Pew Center on the States, though painful federal spending cut backs would also hurt the states.

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Exclusive: Profits up, but Britain gets less tax from big firms

Big companies in Britain now pay less tax than they did 12 years ago despite a big jump in profitability, a Reuters analysis of official data shows. Tax campaigners say the trend is the clearest signal yet that tax avoidance has blossomed under a more business-friendly strategy at the UK tax authority Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
Large companies' payments of corporation tax - the UK equivalent of corporate income tax - totaled 21 billion pounds ($34 billion) in 2011/12, HMRC data shows. That was down five billion pounds or 21 percent since 2000/01 when the government, then controlled by the Labour Party, took the first steps towards a more collaborative approach to big business.
At the same time, the gross operating surplus for all companies in the UK - a widely watched measure of companies' profitability compiled by the Office of National Statistics - has risen 65 percent, to 329 billion pounds. The economy has grown by 55 percent over the same period, and receipts of both personal income tax and small companies' income tax are higher.
HMRC and the finance ministry denied the figures showed an increase in tax avoidance - legal tactics used by multinationals such as Google, Amazon and Starbucks. They cited recent economic weakness and lower corporation tax rates. The UK's official corporation tax rate was steady at 30 percent between 2000 and 2007 but has been gradually cut. In the last tax year it was 26 percent.
Reuters calculations show the lower tax rate and the weak economy account for about half the fall, leaving around 2.6 billion pounds of the difference in the amount of corporate tax paid between 2000/01 and 2011/12 unaccounted for.
John Christensen of Tax Justice Network, a tax campaigningoogleg group, said the figures show successive governments' attempts to create a more business-friendly administration - which includes a policy known as "enhanced relationship" based on mutual trust - have encouraged companies to use such tactics.
"These figures tell a more powerful story than any figures I have seen so far," he said, adding that senior HMRC staff had told him in recent years that they were "alarmed" at the drop in payments from large companies. HMRC defines these as firms with annual profit of more than 1.5 million pounds.
The finance ministry declined to comment on the calculations.
"PARADOXICAL"
Prem Sikka, a professor of accounting at Essex University who has written extensively about tax avoidance, said that even allowing for the tax cut, the figures were "paradoxical".
"How are they managing to reconcile higher profits with lower taxes?" he said. "It can't be done ... unless they are booking these profits somewhere else." Companies reporting for tax purposes are increasingly diverting UK profits to lower-tax jurisdictions, he said.
Google, for example, channels $4 billion of UK sales through Ireland each year, most of which ends up in Bermuda. Google said it complies with tax law in every country in which it operates but that it also has an obligation to its shareholders "to run our business efficiently".
When shown the calculations, an HMRC spokesman said the downward trend may also have been emphasized by a shift in the way taxes were paid from 1999 which led to "elements of double counting" in 2000/01 and 2001/02. That could make revenues in those years look artificially high. He declined to quantify the impact of this.
Sikka dismissed the impact of this change.
"That wouldn't make any difference to the total tax liability," he said.
HMRC's own data does not point to a spike in corporation tax payments over the period the changes were initiated.
Total corporation tax payments were just 2 billion pounds higher in 2001-2002 than in 1998-1999, a rise of 7 percent, while GDP rose 16 percent over the period.
The government's tax minister, David Gauke, who has described corporation tax as one of "the most economically damaging taxes", called the tax authority's current approach "very successful" in a September speech. He declined requests for an interview.

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House sets Sunday session as "fiscal cliff" deadline nears

 The House of Representatives will return to Washington on Sunday night, just over a day before income tax rates are set to spike higher, in a last-ditch chance to avert the year-end "fiscal cliff."
Senior Republican aides confirmed that House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday told members to be back in Washington in time for a 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) legislative session on Sunday.
The House may then stay in session until January 2, the final day of the current Congress, according to a Twitter message from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
That is the day that another component of the "fiscal cliff" - $109 billion in automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs - is set to start.
The House went on recess a week ago amid a deadlock over how to resolve ways to avoid the $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that could throw the U.S. economy back into recession.
Some media outlets reported that Obama would meet with congressional leaders on Friday, but several congressional aides said no such meeting had yet been arranged.
If a meeting occurs, Obama is not expected to offer a new "fiscal cliff" solution and he is instead likely to stick to the outline he set out a week ago for a stop-gap fix, according to a senior Democratic aide.
That would include legislation to shield most Americans from any income tax increase starting on January 1, except for those households with net incomes above $250,000 a year. Obama also wants an extension of expiring benefits for the long-term unemployed.
So far, the Republicans who control the House have refused to go along with any measure that would raise income taxes on anyone.
Meanwhile, House Republican leaders held an approximately 35-minute telephone conference call with rank-and-file members on Thursday, according to one Republican aide.
"There were a lot of different members who spoke on the call. All had questions. All had comments," the aide said, refusing to elaborate.

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New York City faces $811 million budget gap in FY 2014: report

 New York City faces an $811 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2014 and lowered revenue projections in part because of Superstorm Sandy, the city's Independent Budget Office said on Thursday.
The city's tax revenue collections are likely to grow by just 3.4 percent in fiscal 2014 to $44.8 billion. That figure is $347 million lower than the IBO projected in May, it said.
The dimmer outlook is due to slower expected economic growth, particularly in the banking and securities industries, the IBO said. Near-term losses from Sandy, which ripped into the East Coast on October 29, also dampened projections for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2013.
In June, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council agreed on a $68.5 billion fiscal 2013 budget that spared 20 fire companies from closing and increased funding for day-care and after-school programs.
To close the projected budget gap, the city is likely to cut spending further and raise fees and fines, among other measures, according to a financial plan proposed by Bloomberg in November.
That plan includes cutting 1,340 jobs through 2014, mostly through attrition, the IBO said.
The city also expects to save $230 million in 2014 by borrowing and refinancing outstanding bonds at low interest rates.
GAP IS SMALL, BUT LABOR PROBLEMS LOOM
Even so, the gap -- which amounts to 1.6 percent of projected revenues -- is small enough to be closed largely through normal year-end accounting procedures, said IBO head Ronnie Lowenstein.
The city has not set aside money for a possible settlement in ongoing negotiations with organized labor, she said.
"There is, at this point, no money set aside in the city's labor reserve to pay retroactive wage and salary increases," she said.
Nearly all of the city's unions have been working without a current contract. The teachers' contract ran out in October 2009.
Under one settlement scenario, the city could owe wages and back pay of more than $5 billion through June 2013, the IBO's report said.
STORM COSTS UNCERTAIN
Before Sandy slammed into the U.S. East Coast, the IBO forecast the gross city product to grow at an annualized rate of 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013.
Now, the city's economic output is likely to shrink by 1.0 percent at the end of 2012 and rebound with growth of 1.9 percent in the beginning of 2013 as storm victims repair homes and businesses, the IBO said.
It said Wall Street's importance as an economic driver for the city is expected to continue waning, as it has since the recession.
The financial sector will account for 26.1 percent of aggregate wage growth during from 2013 to 2016 -- compared to pre-recession levels of nearly 60 percent.
Yet New York City could be on track to gain nearly 480,000 payroll jobs from the end of 2009 through late 2016, which would be the greatest employment expansion since 1950, the IBO said.
Medicaid and public pensions cost increases are expected to slow. But spending on debt service payments and health and other benefits will rise, the IBO said.
The city's general obligation bonds are rated AA by Fitch Ratings and Aa2 by Moody's Investors Service.

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