DL Open Thread: Friday, January 6, 2023
Remind me again–who were the Rethug House members who voted to throw out the Presidential election results from 2020? Never mind. Here they are. Gee, sure seems like it’s a whole lot more than the ‘bomb-throwers’ who the McCarthy forces are castigating. Including McCarthy himself and the so-called ‘compromise’ candidate Steve Scalise. I don’t think any of them should get air time unless reporters ask them about their 2020 insurrectionist positions.
House Rethugs’ First Priority: Make The World Safer For Tax Cheats:
In recent weeks, high-level Republicans have said their top legislative priority is clawing back the $80 billion that Democrats recently appropriated to the Internal Revenue Service over the next decade. About half of this money will go toward beefing up enforcement; the rest for other functions such as improving customer service and modernizing the agency’s embarrassingly decrepit IT systems.
Surely you’ve heard the scary stories about the “army” of 87,000 supposedly gun-toting IRS agents coming to terrorize you and your innocent, working-class neighbors.
None of that is true, not even the 87,000 figure (which refers to broader IRS hiring, not just hiring of auditors, and doesn’t subtract the many expected to retire over the next few years). But more to the point, the IRS desperately needs to increase enforcement, particularly against wealthy tax scofflaws.
By now, we know that the IRS mysteriously dropped the ball in auditing the highest-profile of tax targets, Donald Trump. Whatever happened there — and we still don’t know why the agency didn’t enforce its own policy of mandatory audits of the sitting president — Trump is far from the only deep-pocketed taxpayer with dodgy or aggressive tax practices who has escaped scrutiny in recent years.
Audit rates of mega-corporations and millionaires have plummeted over the past decade. In 2012, for example, 93 percent of companies with at least $20 billion in assets were subject to audit, versus just 38 percent by 2020, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC. We’ve seen even sharper declines in audits of millionaires.
‘The people’s business’. Right.
McCarthy’s DOOOOOOMED! Ginni Thomas Comes Out In Opposition:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, has jumped squarely into the battle against Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House.
The in-your-face activism comes in the wake of stinging criticism of Thomas’ high-profile support of extremist right-wing politics even as her husband continues to rule in support of some of the same issues, raising serious conflict-of-interest concerns.
“Conservative organizations and the millions of grassroots conservatives … are united in our support of the 20 courageous members of Congress seeking to change the status quo in Washington,” said an open letter published Wednesday by the Conservative Action Project organization and signed by Thomas and about 70 other right-wing activists and organization officials.
“We stand behind them and beside them in their courageous efforts to find a Speaker of the House who will represent the interests of conservatives,” the letter added.
Investors Urge Companies To Halt Production Of PFA’s. No, not because the investors have become ‘woke’, but because:
A letter circulated late this year and signed by largely European Union investment firms holding $8tn in assets cites a tsunami of recent litigation brought against PFAS manufacturers, ever-increasing regulation that imposes strict limits on the chemicals’ use, and the compounds’ public health threat.
Liability for PFAS contamination “of the entire planet is expanding”, said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director with the non-profit National Resources Defense Council. The letter was made public ahead of a decision by 3M, one of the world’s largest PFAS manufacturers, to discontinue making the chemicals by the end of 2025.
“There has got to be concern in boardrooms and among knowledgable and savvy shareholders that continuing to manufacture these chemicals that are creating the Superfund sites of tomorrow is really risky for them financially,” Olson added. “If people getting sick and dying of exposure to these chemicals wasn’t enough, the liability should be.”
Meet Delaware’s Most Notorious Insurrectionists.
What do you want to talk about?
Equally fucked up the Rethugs’ 2nd Priority was to remove metal detectors in the house to facilitate the next insurrection.
They’ve already accomplished that one.
Guess we’ll have to count on the good lawmakers with guns to stop the bad lawmakers with guns.
There’s always a Delaware angle. From the PFA story:
Here’s an article on the Delaware settlement:
https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2021-07-13/delaware-settles-with-pfas-linked-companies-to-fund-testing-cleanup
Interesting essay by Timothy Snyder, “Life as a Lie,” about Big Lie politics that examines the tactics common to Putin, Trump and Santos.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/life-as-a-lie?r=4bv4c&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Excerpt:
The Republican patron saint remains Joseph Goebels, the Nazi propaganda minister that gave us “The Big Lie” as a tactic, the best example of is say a lie is the truth enough and for the tiny minds it becomes truth. Can assure you in farm country said tiny minds doth abound.
The IRS desperately needs the funding. It is completely dysfunctional. The Employee Retention Credit is turning into fraud on an industrial scale. The “$26,000 per employee” ads you see and hear everywhere are ERC Mills ignoring the rules to file an inflated claim and taking 25% off the top. The IRS is handing out checks first and promising to audit later.
Word is the Republicans, the “moderates” , are eager to return to the Hunter Biden’s laptop game, interesting and pathetic all in one as said laptop has been out there for years, same for the “hard drives” that the Republicans were “finding” until they realized how pathetic the game was. But on to an armed congress and a potential gun fight on the floor of the house.
Man, these nominating speeches. As if any one of them will change a single vote.
Bloviation for the bloviators’ sake.
You have to give the repubes credit, they are great at losing
McCarthy has successfully picked off a few of the 20 on Ballot 12. Not enough, though, to win the Speakership.
McCarthy has made serious inroads this time. Only 7 or 8 holdouts remain.
Just think what was given away for those votes.
He’s given away so much that he’ll have nothing but a title. How long before they’re referring to him as the SINO of the House?
Hey, McCarthy shouldn’t feel so bad. Even the Yankees have lost 13 World Series.
Think they’ve won more than zero, though…
As long as we’re on baseball, McCarthy looks like the political equivalent of Anthony Young, the late Mets’ pitcher, who lost 27 consecutive decisions in 1992-1993.
Man, those Mets’ pitchers. Roger Craig lost 18 straight back in 1963. Back when the Mets played in the Polo Grounds.
Annd, it all comes down to Matt Gaetz. They’re BEGGING this serial criminal to utter the word ‘McCarthy’. Never seen anything like it.
From the Washington Post:
“This is a tense moment for Republicans, who thought they had this locked up. It looked like one lawmaker had to be pulled back from Gaetz earlier as tempers flared.”
Un-fucking-believable.
Looks like after a motion to adjourn that had the votes to pass, Gaetz comes down, and McCarthy files a red card.
They’re gonna vote again, and it looks like they’ve cut a deal with Gaetz.
One can only wonder what additional perks he got. I’m going to bed.
The insurrectionists are the keepers of the House! Let the shit show commence.