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The GOP Is Trying to Give the 25 Richest Americans a $334 Billion Tax Break

by DelilahRegister Posted on May 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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In mid April, the Republican-controlled House voted to repeal the estate tax, which, despite the GOP’s “death tax” messaging, affects only the superrich: Of the nearly 2.6 million Americans who died in 2013, just 4,687 had estates flush enough to trigger the tax. That’s because the bar to qualify for the estate tax is quite generous: The first $5.43 million of an individual’s wealth is exempt from the tax, and that amount goes up to $10.86 million for married couples. After that point, the tax rate is 40 percent.

The Center for Effective Government (CEG) calculated how much the 25 richest Americans would save if this repeal on the estate tax were to become law. The final tab: $334 billion.

Center for Effective Government

That’s a lot of cash! CEG calculated that $334 billion in taxes would be enough to:

  1. Cut the nation’s student debt by one-third: The total could be distributed by giving $25,000 in debt relief to each of the 13 million Americans trying to pay off student loans.
  2. Repair or replace every single deficient school AND bridge in America: Give kids more resources for a better education, and get the country’s structurally deficient bridges up to snuff.
  3. Give every new US baby a chunk of change: $1,000 at birth, and then $500 a year until their 18th birthday, making a $10,000 nest egg to put toward education, a home, or other opportunities.
  4. Repair all leaking wastewater systems, sewage plumbing, and dams: Thus improving the health of lakes, rivers, and oceans nationwide.

Of course, it’s unlikely the tax will actually get repealed. Even if the bill makes it past the Senate, President Obama has promised to veto it. But as the election season heats up with economic inequality at its forefront, the repercussions of the bill are likely to be more political than financial. As Robert J. Samuelson writes at the Washington Post, the GOP has “handed Democrats a priceless campaign gift: a made-for-TV (and Internet) video depicting Republicans as lackeys of the rich.”

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The GOP Is Trying to Give the 25 Richest Americans a $334 Billion Tax Break

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Rand Paul Blames the Baltimore Riots on Absentee Fathers

by ByronMcCoy Posted on April 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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As one of a growing number of GOP 2016 wannabes, Sen. Rand Paul has tried to sell himself as the best Republican candidate to reach out to African-American voters. He’s talked about the need for criminal justice reform. During the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, he called for demilitarizing police forces. Yet his response to the riots in Baltimore show that he has a long way to go. During an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday, the Kentucky senator blamed the turmoil not on the police brutality that resulted in the death of Freddie Gray, but on absentee fathers and a breakdown in families.

“It’s depressing, it’s sad, it’s scary. I came through the train on Baltimore last night, I’m glad the train didn’t stop,” Paul said, laughing at his own unfunny joke. He then pontificated of the unrest: “The thing is that really there’s so many things we can talk about, it’s something we talk about not in the immediate aftermath but over time: the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society. And this isn’t just a racial thing, it goes across racial boundaries, but we do have problems in our country.”

By the way, a week ago, Paul’s 22-year-old son William was cited for driving while intoxicated after he was in a car crash.

Listen to the audio of the interview, recorded by Media Matters (hat tip to TPM):

Paul wasn’t the only presidential aspirant to comment on the riots. Hillary Clinton sent out a tweet on Monday calling for peace but supporting the protestors who were upset by Gray’s death.

Former Baltimore resident and likely presidential candidate Ben Carson pleaded with parents in the city to keep their children away from the disorder. “I urge parents, grandparents and guardians to please take control of your children and do not allow them to be exposed to the dangers of uncontrolled agitators on the streets,” Carson said in a statement.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lamented the school closures across the city. “No man, woman, or child should fear for his or her safety in America—not in their schools, not in their neighborhoods, not in their cities—but today families are scared,” the GOP contender said.

But long-shot Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley went further than just a simple statement. O’Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore, canceled a string of paid speeches in Europe to return home.

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Rand Paul Blames the Baltimore Riots on Absentee Fathers

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Scott Walker May Have Just Scored 2016’s Biggest Sugar Daddies

by SarahTKTmunrv Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Charles and David Koch have already made it clear that they plan to do everything in their power to prevent Hillary Clinton (or, in case she stumbles, any other Democrat) from winning the presidency. The moguls hope to garner $889 million for the 2016 election from their networks, much of it bound to be channeled through their favorite Dark Money organizations. At one single summit in late January they managed to raise $249 million from friends and allies.

And now, it looks like the Koch brothers may have landed on their standardbearer for all that spending. As the New York Times reported:

On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.

“When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination,” Mr. Koch told the crowd, the billionaire brothers would support him, according to a spokeswoman. The remark drew laughter and applause from the audience of fellow donors and Republican activists, who had come to hear Mr. Walker speak earlier at the event, held at the Union League Club.

If the Kochs do decide to back Scott Walker, according to the Times, the money would come from them personally, rather than their network of affiliated groups. But with a combined net worth of over $85 billion, Charles and David could set up a vehicle that would outspend nearly anyone while barely tapping into their bank accounts. Seeing the brothers get behind Walker isn’t terribly surprising. The pair invested heavily in his initial gubernatorial campaign and have aided him in his subsequent elections.

Not so fast, though, Politico‘s Mike Allen cautioned this morning. Despite David Koch’s remarks, he provided Politico a statement disavowing any endorsement. As Allen wrote, the brothers say they are undecided and still plan to hold “auditions” at their summer donor conference. In addition to Walker, the lineup of people under consideration reportedly includes Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and, most surprisingly, Jeb Bush.

Whoever ends up gaining the Kochs’ support would have unparalleled fundraising might, and would have to be considered a favorite for the Republican nomination. And their ascent would be the latest example of the power of the ultrarich in the age of the super PAC: Winning broad support from small donors doesn’t matter when the affections of two individuals willing to spend astronomically could upend the entire campaign.

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Scott Walker May Have Just Scored 2016’s Biggest Sugar Daddies

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The GOP’s Campaign to Make You Hate The IRS Is Kind of Genius

by ChristaWrigley Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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People hate the IRS. Of course they do! When Pew Research asked people earlier this year how they feel about various parts of the government, every agency received positive marks—except the IRS. And last month, Rasmussen found that a scant 31 percent of voters trust the tax agency to fairly enforce the law. Let’s face it: the agency tasked with taking money out of paychecks is never going to be popular.

But people have even more reason to despise encounters with the agency these days, thanks to a concerted effort by Republicans in Congress to slash the tax collector’s budget. From the front page of today’s Washington Post:

Since 2010, Republicans on Capitol Hill have slashed the IRS budget by $1.2 billion, or about 17 percent, adjusting for inflation. Just this fiscal year, $346 million was cut.

By contrast, cuts across the rest of the government have been far more modest and concentrated. Between 2012 and 2014, automatic spending reductions shrank non-defense spending, as adjusted for inflation, by 1.3 percent, while IRS spending was chopped 5.6 percent, according to Scott Lilly, a budget expert at the Center for American Progress.

Those budget cuts have made dealing with the IRS this tax season a true pain in the ass. As the Washington Post details, just four in ten callers to the IRS’s help line are actually able to get assistance from a real human, while the number of unintentional hang-ups from an overworked phone system have ballooned. And the cuts are actually costing the government: thanks to a 5,000-person reduction in the agency’s staff over the past four years, tax cheats can more easily skate by.

Attacking the IRS is one of the simplest lines a politician can roll out. It’s a favorite rhetorical turn for presidential candidate and senator Ted Cruz, who’s said he’d like to “abolish the IRS, take all 125,000 IRS agents and put them on our southern border,” to applause at this year’s CPAC.

Meanwhile, Democrats are wary about offering an equally vocal defense of the IRS, hesitant to be tarred as just typical tax-and-spenders. Sure, President Obama has included increases for the agency in his congressional budget requests, but it’s never been a major issue that he’d consider wielding his veto pen over. But without a more robust defense, the IRS could wither away and replace the DMV as a punch line for why government doesn’t work.

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The GOP’s Campaign to Make You Hate The IRS Is Kind of Genius

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The Iranian Nuclear Deal: What the Experts Are Saying

by PreciouKKNV Posted on April 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Shortly after the participants in the Iranian nuclear talks announced that a double-overtime framework had been crafted, I was on television with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who is something of a celebrity rabbi, a failed congressional candidate, and an arch-neoconservative hawk who has been howling about a potential deal with Iran for months. Not surprisingly, he was not pleased by the news of the day. He declared that under these parameters, Iran would give up nothing and would “maintain their entire nuclear apparatus.” Elsewhere, a more serious critic, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who last month had organized the letter to Iran’s leaders signed by 47 GOP senators opposed to a deal, groused that the framework was “only a list of dangerous US concessions that will put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons.”

These criticisms were rhetorical bombs, not statements of fact. Under the framework, Iran would give up two-thirds of its centrifuges used to enrich uranium and would reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (which is the raw material used to develop bomb-quality highly-enriched uranium) from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kilograms. These two developments alone—and the framework has many other provisions—would diminish Tehran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. Its nuclear apparatus would be smaller, and under these guidelines, Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons, while certainly not impossible, would be much more difficult. Yet because politics dominates the debate over this deal—as it does so often with important policy matters—foes of the framework could hurl fact-free charges with impunity.

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The Iranian Nuclear Deal: What the Experts Are Saying

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With A Man Who Compared All Muslims to Nazis

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced his candidacy for President on Monday via Twitter, is expected to speak at the Young America’s Foundation’s “New England Freedom Conference” in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.

Also on the lineup is Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and director of the Jihad Watch blog. He is notorious for his attacks on Islam. “It’s absurd” to think that “Islam is a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by … extremists,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He has compared all Muslims to Nazis and demanded that Muslims take a loyalty test before being appointed to public office in America. He has told reporters that Islam is here to take over America, and that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. His book opens with the rallying cry of the Crusades, “God wills it,” and he calls for a second crusade against Islam.

The conference, to be hosted at the Radisson in southeast New Hampshire, bills itself as a conservative gathering on “why big government policies are a problem” and “ways to effectively push back against leftist, big government threats to your freedoms.” It’s hosted by The Young America’s Foundation, which has previously been linked to extremists. Young Americans for Freedom, which merged with The Young America’s Foundation in 2011, hosted an event in 2007 in which Nick Griffin— who was the chairman of the British National Party, a white supremacist group, and a Holocaust denier—spoke. Two board members of Young America’s Foundation, Ron Robinson and James B. Taylor, also ran a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to a white nationalist organization, the Charles Martel Society.

The Council on American Islamic Relations criticized Cruz for agreeing to speak at a conference that is providing a platform to Spencer. “If Senator Cruz believes that he can campaign for president while sharing center stage with a professional hate monger like Robert Spencer, I seriously doubt his ability to win the U.S. minority vote or unite the country as president,” said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw.

“Senator Cruz has been invited to speak to Young America’s Foundation,” says Rick Tyler, a spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign. “He intends to keep that commitment.”

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With A Man Who Compared All Muslims to Nazis

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With a Man Who Compared Muslims to Nazis

by IXYEmeryebk Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced his candidacy for President on Monday via Twitter, is expected to speak at the Young America’s Foundation’s “New England Freedom Conference” in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.

Also on the lineup is Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and director of the Jihad Watch blog. He is notorious for his attacks on Islam. “It’s absurd” to think that “Islam is a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by … extremists,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He has compared Muslims to Nazis and demanded that Muslims take a loyalty test before being appointed to public office in America. He has told reporters that Islam is here to take over America, and that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. His book opens with the rallying cry of the Crusades, “God wills it!” and he calls for a second crusade against Islam.

The conference, to be hosted at the Radisson in southeast New Hampshire, bills itself as a conservative gathering on “why big government policies are a big problem” and “ways to effectively push back against leftist, big government threats to your freedoms.” It’s hosted by the Young America’s Foundation, which has previously been linked to extremists. Young Americans for Freedom, which merged with the Young America’s Foundation in 2011, hosted an event in 2007 in which Nick Griffin— who was the chairman of the British National Party, a white supremacist group, and a Holocaust denier—spoke. Two board members of Young America’s Foundation, Ron Robinson and James B. Taylor, also ran a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to a white nationalist organization, the Charles Martel Society.

The Council on American Islamic Relations criticized Cruz for agreeing to speak at a conference that is providing a platform to Spencer. “If Senator Cruz believes that he can campaign for president while sharing center stage with a professional hate monger like Robert Spencer, I seriously doubt his ability to win the US minority vote or unite the country as president,” said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw.

“Senator Cruz has been invited to speak to Young America’s Foundation,” says Rick Tyler, a spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign. “He intends to keep that commitment.”

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With a Man Who Compared Muslims to Nazis

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Dismisses GOP Letter as "Propaganda Ploy"

by RalfZ36dqzjk Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif responded to a controversial letter signed by 47 GOP senators urging Iran to reject a nuclear deal with the United States, dismissing the message as “mostly a propaganda ploy” that aimed to undermine President Barack Obama’s diplomatic efforts. Zarif said in a statement:

It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history. This indicates that like Netanyahu, who considers peace as an existential threat, some are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content.

The Republican letter, which was organized by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, warned Iran’s leaders that a nuclear agreement with Obama could be scrapped by any president who succeeds him. The message was clear: if you accept this deal, you could end up screwed; so don’t do it. It was a brazen attempt to sabotage Obama’s attempt to curb Iran’s nuclear program through a negotiated accord between Iran, the United States, and other nations.

In his response, Zarif challenged Cotton and his fellow Republicans on their reading of international law:

The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.

Change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

This latest attempt orchestrated by Republicans to undercut the president’s negotiations with Iran angered the White House and sparked a furious response by Vice President Joe Biden, who slammed the GOP senators’ letter as “beneath the dignity of the institution I revere.” Several GOP senators also criticized the move, expressing concern that Cotton’s letter could backfire and spur additional support for a nuclear deal.

“It’s more appropriate for members of the Senate to give advice to the president, to Secretary Kerry and to the negotiators,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said. “I don’t think that the ayatollah is going to be particularly convinced by a letter from members of the Senate, even one signed by a number of my distinguished and high ranking colleagues.”

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Dismisses GOP Letter as "Propaganda Ploy"

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What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

by VicenteSommers Posted on February 27, 2015

Mother Jones

On Thursday morning, Thomas Schweich, Missouri’s auditor and a Republican candidate for governor, died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death—coming moments after he had invited two reporters to his home later that day—shocked Missouri political observers, who point out that in addition to his beloved family and distinguished career in public service, Schweich, 54, had just won re-election to a second term as state auditor and was leading in early polls of the 2016 governor’s race. Why he would have taken his own life is a mystery to those who knew him. Just as strange is the predominant theory of what may have provoked his apparent suicide: rumors that he was Jewish.

In the days before his death, Schweich had been worried that the head of the Missouri Republican Party was conducting a “whisper campaign” against him by telling people that he was Jewish. Schweich was, in fact, an Episcopalian, but his grandfather was Jewish.

The police were called to Schweich’s home in Clayton, Missouri at 9:48 a.m. on Thursday. Just seven minutes earlier, Schweich had left a voicemail for Tony Messenger, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, inviting him to send a reporter to his home that afternoon. That morning, Schweich had also invited an AP reporter to attend this interview.

According to Messenger, Schweich had hoped to counter rumors that he was Jewish, which he believed were being spread by Missouri GOP chairman John Hancock in a bid to damage his candidacy. He feared misconceptions about his faith might hurt him with evangelical voters, according to a report by the New York Times. Schweich had been “agitated” discussing rumors about his faith earlier in the week, according to the AP reporter who had spoken to him minutes before his death.

Hancock responded on Friday to allegations that he was spreading misinformation about Schweich’s faith: “It’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.”

But would rumors about Schweich’s religion really have hurt him politically? A Jewish background doesn’t appear to be impeding another prospective GOP gubernatorial candidate. Eric Greitens, a Jewish former Navy Seal, launched an exploratory committee for a statewide campaign in Missouri this week. The Washington Free Beacon described him as “the great Jewish hope” in a recent profile about his entry into politics. Reports note that he might enter into the gubernatorial race, though he yet to announce which office he has his eye on.

On Friday, Messenger, who had a close source relationship with Schweich, revealed that in the days leading up to Schweich’s apparent suicide, the Republican candidate had discussed a desire to go public with accusations against Hancock. He had told Messenger that “his grandfather taught him to never allow any anti­-Semitism go unpunished, no matter how slight.” Messenger noted that anti-Semitisim is a factor in Missouri, the state that “gave us Frazier Glenn Miller, the raging racist who killed three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas City.” And he wrote, “Division over race and creed is real in Missouri Republican politics, particularly in some rural areas. Schweich knew it. It’s why all week long his anger burned.”

Kevin Murphy, the Clayton police chief, told reporters that there is no evidence that Schweich was under political attack or suffering from mental illness. Murphy also said it did not appear that Schweich’s death was accidental. He noted that the ongoing investigation would include interviews with Schweich’s friends and family, which has yet make a statement to the media about Schweich’s death.

The Missouri legislature gathered on Friday to mourn Schweich, who, before becoming Missouri state auditor in 2010, had served as chief of staff to three different US Ambassadors to the United Nations, as well as working on anti-drug trafficking initiatives in Afghanistan under during the George W. Bush administration.

There remain more questions than answers about Schweizer’s apparent suicide. “I have no idea why Schweich killed himself,” Messenger wrote in the Post-Dispatch on Friday. The only thing that seems clear is that there’s much more to the story behind his death.

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What We Know About the Mysterious Suicide of Missouri Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Schweich

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Sean Hannity Said Some Something Really Creepy at CPAC Today

by MariettSorrells Posted on February 27, 2015

Mother Jones

In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference this morning, Fox News’ Sean Hannity had some downright creepy things to say about the “young, good-looking crowd:”

I can look out in the crowd, I kinda have Fox X-ray vision, and I can see that some of you women, you don’t even know it yet, but you’re pregnant. It’s not your fault. It’s not his fault.

The joke—if that’s what it was—bombed, drawing nervous laughter and groans from the crowd. The Twitter reaction was swift and perplexed:

Other CPAC attendees were apparently unfazed by Hannity’s claim that he could seen into women’s uteruses.

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Sean Hannity Said Some Something Really Creepy at CPAC Today

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