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?