Republicans: continued

[Sean Hayden]

[Seabass]

The Laffer Curve jackass blames Obama for the recession that happened before he took office.

On Monday, right-wing economist Arthur Laffer went on Fox News and warned that if Bernie Sanders is elected president, he would cause a financial crash just like the one Barack Obama caused in 2007 — two years before he took office.

“Whenever you redistribute income, you reduce total income, and that is what [Sanders is] doing, and I’m very afraid that if he were elected, we would have an enormous crash in the market,” said Laffer. “Now that crash would come in anticipation of his election, but it’s much like Obama, who I believe was the reason we had the Great Recession. As he got closer and closer to winning, the markets collapsed.”
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/notori ... s-elected/

So Obama is to blame for the recession that happened before he took office, and Trump gets credit for the recovery that happened before he took office. How can democracy survive such rampant, widespread stupidity?

[Brian Peacock]

"Whenever you redistribute income, you reduce total income" but you increase collective wealth.

[Seabass]

Republicans poison everything.

The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well.
Ten years ago, the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation’s wealthiest people. But with big money — and Congress — arrayed against the team, it never had a chance.
https://www.propublica.org/article/ultr ... lth-audits

...

In 2009, the IRS had formed a crack team of specialists to unravel the tax dodges of the ultrawealthy. In an age of widening inequality, with a concentration of wealth not seen since the Gilded Age, the rich were evading taxes through ever more sophisticated maneuvers. The IRS commissioner aimed to stanch the country’s losses with what he proclaimed would be “a game-changing strategy.” In short order, Charles Rettig, then a high-powered tax lawyer and today President Donald Trump’s IRS commissioner, warned that the squad was conducting “the audits from hell.” If Trump were being audited, Rettig wrote during the presidential campaign, this is the elite team that would do it.

The wealth team embarked on a contentious audit of Schaeffler in 2012, eventually determining that he owed about $1.2 billion in unpaid taxes and penalties. But after seven years of grinding bureaucratic combat, the IRS abandoned its campaign. The agency informed Schaeffler’s lawyers it was willing to accept just tens of millions, according to a person familiar with the audit.

How did a case that consumed so many years of effort, with a team of its finest experts working on a signature mission, produce such a piddling result for the IRS? The Schaeffler case offers a rare window into just how challenging it is to take on the ultrawealthy. For starters, they can devote seemingly limitless resources to hiring the best legal and accounting talent. Such taxpayers tend not to steamroll tax laws; they employ complex, highly refined strategies that seek to stretch the tax code to their advantage. It can take years for IRS investigators just to understand a transaction and deem it to be a violation.

Once that happens, the IRS team has to contend with battalions of high-priced lawyers and accountants that often outnumber and outgun even the agency’s elite SWAT team. “We are nowhere near a circumstance where the IRS could launch the types of audits we need to tackle sophisticated taxpayers in a complicated world,” said Steven Rosenthal, who used to represent wealthy taxpayers and is now a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.

...

The IRS’ new approach to taking on the superwealthy has been stymied. The wealthy’s lobbyists immediately pushed to defang the new team. And soon after the group was formed, Republicans in Congress began slashing the agency’s budget. As a result, the team didn’t receive the resources it was promised. Thousands of IRS employees left from every corner of the agency, especially ones with expertise in complex audits, the kinds of specialists the agency hoped would staff the new elite unit. The agency had planned to assign 242 examiners to the group by 2012, according to a report by the IRS’ inspector general. But by 2014, it had only 96 auditors. By last year, the number had fallen to 58.

The wealth squad never came close to having the impact its proponents envisaged. As Robert Gardner, a 39-year veteran of the IRS who often interacted with the team as a top official at the agency’s tax whistleblower office, put it, “From the minute it went live, it was dead on arrival.”

full article: https://www.propublica.org/article/ultr ... lth-audits

[JimC]

Wealth buys political power, political power buys wealth. Rinse and repeat...

[Tero]

It is quite well known that wealth/lobbyists buy all the politicians. in the case of Trump, it is interesting that they could not block his tariffs which cause some loss to many industries. Vote for a whacko, you get whaco, and billionaires can't control all.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Erik Prince, sleazeball brother of sleazeball Betsy DeVos, was pinned down for lying to Congress in a televised interview and in the Mueller report. Now it seems possible that his lawyers will be busy for a while.

'Schiff: House panel to recommend DOJ open investigation into Erik Prince testimony'

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his committee would make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) recommending President Trump ally, Erik Prince, be investigated for lying to Congress.

Schiff said at a Washington Post Live event that the evidence is “very strong” that Prince lied to his committee about his meeting in Seychelles with a Russian financier with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I do believe that there was very strong evidence that he willingly lied to the committee,” Schiff said. “Later today, we are going to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department.”

Prince, the founder and former CEO of security firm Blackwater, interviewed with the committee behind closed doors as part of the panel’s original investigation into Russian interference, which was led and shuttered by Republicans in the last Congress.

Schiff said Tuesday that the redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report demonstrates that Prince likely “willingly misled” the committee about the Seychelles meeting. Schiff said that Prince told the committee that his meeting with Russian banker Kirill Dmitriev was “purely by chance.”

“We know from the Mueller report now that it was not a chance meeting,” Schiff said, adding that it will now be up to the Justice Department to decide whether the allegations rise to the level of criminal prosecution.

[Seabass]

They're all freaks. Every last goddamn one of 'em.

The sanctification of Donald Trump

For his closest advisers, President Donald Trump is a godsend — literally.

Trump’s campaign manager says the president was sent by God to save the country. The White House press secretary thinks God wanted Trump to be president. And the secretary of state believes it’s possible that Trump is on a holy mission to protect the Jewish people from the threat of Iran.

Forget the allegations of extramarital affairs, the nonstop Twitter insults and the efforts to close off the border to migrants. Trump’s allies insist that his presidency is divinely inspired.

“There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again,” Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, wrote Tuesday morning on Twitter. “Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation and only God could allow me to help. God bless America!”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/ ... od-1294578

[pErvinalia]

Nothing to worry about here as you have separation of Church and State. Unlike theocratic Europe.

[JimC]

In the US, the separation is official but the influence of Christians is massive. In Europe, there are empty words tying church and state together for historical reasons, but the christian influence is small and waning...

[Seabass]

Republican lawmaker tells crowds to arm themselves for civil war

[JimC]

It's going to end in tears...

[Scot Dutchy]

In the US, the separation is official but the influence of Christians is massive. In Europe, there are empty words tying church and state together for historical reasons, but the christian influence is small and waning...

Just say non existent Jim.

[Animavore]

Inciting violence is free speech and must be defended at all costs.

[Brian Peacock]

If snowflakes are offended by the threat of civil war then that's their problem