A few quick notes on the #TrumpTaxScam and the #resistance

First, it's really, of course, a GOP Tax Scam. That said, I doubt they'd try it with Shrub Bush in office. I know they wouldn't with Poppy Bush and probably not with Reagan.

Of course, while Reagan was already trying to whittle away at America's safety net, it was around the edges, and he probably wouldn't have asked for that much with this Congress.

But, when the executive branch is led by an infant, with his on-the-ground Veep pandering to the worst of the Religious Right, the children are going to play in Congress, too.

And, the children got elected after Obama got elected.

I blame, for that:
1. Shrub, Poppy, and consiglieres of both for not calling out Tea Party Congressional candidates, or the entire movement, quickly.
2. Dear Leader for continuing to try to sing "Kumbaya" with them after more and more of them got elected to Congress specifically in backlash to him, and often in race-driven backlash.
2A. Preznit Kumbaya a second time for gutting the Democratic National Committee and doing nothing to help Democratic congressional candidates in 2010.
3. The few alleged GOP adults already in Congress.

Speaking of, vag-hat-wearing #Resistance folks, how do you feel now about your "normalizing" of both Schmuck Talk Express John McCain and Jeff Flake in the past few weeks?

Your "movement" is as thin as baby oatmeal with both of them, with Shrub Bush aforementioned, and others.

It's also as thin as oatmeal for those of you who rightly reject much of what Hillary Clinton stood for but still uncritically accept Obama. He rightfully earned the Dear Leader moniker for reasons like this.

I'll confess that I had some hope McCain would vote no, based on his Obamacare repeal stance. That said, this just proves again that he can be almost as much a weathervane as Trump himself at times.

I stopped the presidential campaign tax donation

You all probably know the one I'm talking about.

That little check box at top right of your federal income tax return where you can contribute up to $3 of your taxes to the federally-financed presidential re-election campaign fund.

Ever since Barack Obama escalated opting out of the system to a new level in 2008, and doing an ethnically dubious head fake on John McCain in the process, I've become less enamored of it.

The 2012 election, even setting aside Citizens United, raised those feelings even higher.

And, since things like the Federal Election Commission are stacked and biased in favor of the two major parties, why should I help something that Democrats as well as Republicans abuse, and that will never, ever, under current structure, help Greens.

Fuhgeddaboudit.

This year, for the first time since I became an even halfway liberal adult, I refused to check the box. And will continue to not check it in the future.

But, I'll still vote for third-party options, and tout them, whenever and wherever I can.

If nothing else, just to be a pain in the ass to the bipartisan political establishment.

That, too, is part of my First Amendment right.

For now, at least.

Let's end the charitable tax deduction

Why, you may ask? Because, if you understand the word “charity” the way I do, it’s not a “charitable” deduction, it’s a nonprofit deduction.

A New Yorker article about disgruntled billionaire financial mogul Leon Cooperman is interesting enough for showing him being moronic enough to claim Obama is "anti-private aviation." However, beyond that, the article in general is good for pointing out why we should probably just eliminate the charitable contributions income tax deduction.

Many billionaires have come to view charity as privatized taxation, paid at a level they determine, and to organizations they choose. “All things being equal, you’d rather have control of the money than the government,” Cooperman said. “Even if you’re giving it away, you’d rather give it away the way you want to give it away rather than the way the government gives it away.” Cooperman and his wife focus their giving on Jewish issues, education, and their local community in New Jersey, and he is also setting up a foundation that will allow his children and grandchildren to support their own chosen causes after he dies.

Foster Friess, a retired mutual-fund investor from Wyoming who was the backer of the main Super PAC supporting the Republican primary candidate Rick Santorum, expounded on this view in a video interview in February. “People don’t realize how wealthy people self-tax,” he said. “If you have a certain cause, an art museum or a symphony, and you want to support it, it would be nice if you had the choice.” The middle class anonymously and nervously pays its thirty-five per cent to the I.R.S., while the super-rich pay fourteen per cent, and are then praised for giving five or ten per cent more to pet causes, often with the perk of having their names engraved above the door.

It hugely favors the rich and their "charities" of choice, which are often fine arts groups, not real charities. Just nonprofits. Note that Friess’ two listed types of “charities” were actually nonprofit arts organizations. Not “charities” as I understand them and distinguish them from nonprofits. How much does he, or Cooperman, give to food banks? Goodwill or Salvation Army?

Beyond that, of course, this whole idea that giving to ANY nonprofits, even if they were true charities, is a “self-tax” is bullshit. And, the easiest way to prove it’s bullshit is to get rid of tax deductions for contributions to nonprofits.

True, that may hurt food banks’ middle-class contributions. We could address that by revamping the IRS code to put true charities in a class called human service organizations or something.

Tax the rich ideas and more for Labor Day

As we await Labor Day tomorrow, otherwise known as "The GOP deludes tea partiers into believing it cares about workers while Democrats hypocritically walk across the Mackinac Bridge day," let's think about ways to empower labor, whether its union-organized or not.

First, many people of intelligence recognize that  relatively unprogressive federal tax rates (combined with often regressive sales taxes at state and local levels) allow the rich to accumulate money which does little to stimulate a sluggish economy.

So, first, at the federal tax level:
1. We need more progressivity in income tax rates.
2. We need to tax capital gains and hedge fund money at the same rate as income.
3. When companies offshore more and more money, and then, like the non-liberal Apple, try to hold the federal government hostage by wanting a tax holiday to bring that money home, we need to instead have a surtax on such overseas, off-shored money.
4. If the rich claim that conspicuous consumption of trickle-down economics stimulates the economy, fine, let's up the ante and have a federal property tax. (Watch the Koch brothers shit bricks over that one.)
6. We of course need to up the amount of income covered by FICA taxes, eliminate loopholes in federal personal tax codes (including the mortgage interest deduction, which benefits the middle of the middle class rarely), as well as various corporate income tax loopholes. At the least, on homes, crack down on any deductions for buying second homes, whether they are vacation homes or income generators.

Second, at the corporations as persons level. If corporations want to continue to make that claim, and Supreme Court rulings continue to support it, here's a possible counter-action or two.
1. Put every single member of a corporation on trial whenever corporations allegedly commit criminal activity. People would simply refuse to work for unethical major businesses.
2. Reinstitute the draft and when we have another war, undeclared or not, draft entire corporations, i.e., the Halliburtons of the world. Or, wingnut think tanks.

At the state level:
1. At a minimum, stop making food subject to sales tax.
2. Put more progressivity into state income taxes.
3. On state income tax forms, require a state disclosure form about how much of state revenue comes from various types of taxes and how much comes from fees, licenses and other non-tax "taxes."

At the local level:
1. Have states do revenue sharing on local property taxes. Some states do this in part with school districts, but not municipalities.

WHAT 'debt problem'? There isn't one in the mid-term future

Type your summary here Type rest of the post here

All we have to do, per the top graphic, is let the Bush Obama tax cuts expire.

Hat tip Talking Points Memo, except for it continuing to call the Obama tax cuts the Bush tax cuts.

Well, we eliminate the mid-term future deficit if we let the Obama tax cuts expire AND actually enforce cuts in Medicare reimbursement to doctors that Congress passed 15 years ago.

That's actually a huge "if," since future Congresses have continually given one- or two-year waivers on implementing those fee cuts.

Obama full of hot air on CEO pay and tax reform?

Ted Rall notes that, behind the faux “cap” on CEO pay, mock outrage pours a new glass of Kool-Aid for Obamiacs while diverting his administration away from acting on what the real outrage is that his mock populism tries to cover up.

He also says that the cap itself, if real and not faux, would extend a few levels of executives deeper than I actually does.

On taxes, some Democrats note that Obama’s tax bill still has too many loopholes for the rich. BUT… which rich?

The ones like those at Goldman Sachs, Obama’s No. 1 contributor for most the election cycle?

That said, even Democrats haven’t made enough noise about regulatory reform of the financial system.

Snipes conviction could deter tax-rejection wingnuts

Movie star Wesley Snipes, not just a figurehead but an active player in the antitax movement, has been sentenced for tax nonpayment. His sentence, after a criminal trial in regular federal court rather civil tax court, is a three-year sentence, likely to be served on supervised release.

Snipes had a monetary surprise for the government at his sentencing (see below), but no philosophical remorse.

Snipes hadn’t submitted a tax return since 1998, and had engaged the services of codefendants Douglas P. Rosile and Eddie Ray Kahn.

Kahn was the founder of American Rights Litigators, and a successor group, Guiding Light of God Ministries, that purported to help members legally avoid paying taxes. Snipes was a dues-paying member of the organization, and Rosile, a de-licensed accountant, prepared Snipes' paperwork.

The actor maintained in a years-long battle with the IRS he did not have to pay taxes, using fringe arguments common to “tax protesters” who say the government has no legal right to collect. After joining Kahn's group, the government said, Snipes instructed his employees to stop paying their own taxes and sought $11 million in 1996 and 1997 taxes he legally paid.

Obvious proof of nutbarrery? Combining antitaxism with “God.”

The government claims Snipes owes at least $2.7 million in back taxes just from three years that were in question at the trial.

As for his attorney’s complaints about both the length of Snipes’ sentence and the selective prosecution of not going after any other Kahn clients, Judge William Terrell Hodges admitted as such on both counts. He said Snipes’ decade-long history was “serious” and that the selective prosecution was about “deterrence.”

Snipes had three checks totaling $5 mil ready to give the government at the Ocala, Fla., courthouse. But, even after his conviction, in a prepared statement, he refused to use the word “taxes.”

Hey, Wesley, way to prove Judge Hodges right after you’ve been convicted.

Snipes was acquitted on tax fraud and conspiracy charges, which some antitaxers are already hailing as a “victory.” (Wonder if Ron Paul visited Ocala recently?)

I can see beating the fraud charges, as, if you don’t submit any paperwork, there’s nothing to hang a fraud charge on. But the conspiracy charge, especially after telling his employees to not pay up? Beating that rap, I don’t get.

Coffee, marijuana, taxes make news roundup

An espresso-tasting machine? Yes

Researchers say they have created a machine that can taste espresso almost as accurately as trained espresso tasters and so should be shut down.

Not just U.S. DEA opposes medical marijuana machines

The U.N. says they violate international law and so should be shut down.

Why the GOP wouldn’t cave on jobless benefits in ‘stimulus’ package

That would dilute a GOP shibboleth, that a tax cut is the only real way to help the economy. Keeping an extension of jobless benefits out of the stimulus package kept it a tax cut.

What ‘marriage penalty’ on taxes?

I’m going to pay more than $400 more as a single than as a married filing jointly on the same income level, on my federal tax return this year. Add in the fact that singles are less likely to own houses and get a mortgage deduction, and we should be talking about the “singles penalty.”