RVC--the sideshow with Apple is just a bit of political theater. They are simply using Apple because they don't have the lobbying corps that any of the Petrochemical companies which use actual tax gimmicks to convince the government that the company is owed money by the state rather then visa versa. What they are trying to say with Apple is that Apple should be taxed for the intellectual property generated by their operations here in the US, which is a radical re-envisioning of the relationship between business and state--can't call it a sales tax anymore and do we really want to tax entrepreneurship?