Tag: GOP
Not Enough Cops on the Beat: IRS Cuts Have Benefited Wealthy Tax Cheats
Recently, high-profile investigations have brought tax evasion to the forefront of the public consciousness. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, confidantes of President Donald Trump, were found guilty on counts of tax fraud and evasion, among other crimes. These investigations raise questions about why these individuals thought they could get away with tax evasion and why they only got caught after becoming entangled in separate investigations. One reason seems to be that when it comes to policing high-end tax evasion, there are nowhere near enough cops on the beat.
Indeed, the IRS has faced a near decadelong retrenchment; in fiscal years 2010–2017, its budget was cut by 17 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. Over the same period, the largest cuts to the IRS were to personnel tasked explicitly with performing examinations. In fact, the employees who saw their numbers reduced the most were revenue officers and tax technicians—by 44 percent and 43 percent, respectively—both of which support enforcement activities by analyzing financial statements, conducting research and interviews, and resolving examination issues. The third-most severe personnel cuts were to revenue agents, who, among other things, conduct onsite interviews, which are extremely important for audits of both high-income individuals and businesses. (see Figure 1) Continue reading “Not Enough Cops on the Beat: IRS Cuts Have Benefited Wealthy Tax Cheats”
Report: GOP, Business Leaders Fear Trump’s ‘Increasingly Erratic Behavior’
Even President Donald Trump’s allies are getting nervous as his behavior — never restrained or deliberative — has become more unpredictable and tumultuous in recent weeks.
In a new report from the Washington Post documenting what it called his last “twelve days of chaos.” journalists David Nakamura, Josh Dawsey and Seung Min Kim found that officials and business leaders are frightened by what could happen next out of the White House:
Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior over the past 12 days — since he first threatened to seal the border in a series of tweets on March 29 — has alarmed top Republicans, business officials, and foreign leaders who fear that his emotional response might exacerbate problems at the border, harm the U.S. economy and degrade national security.
Continue reading “Report: GOP, Business Leaders Fear Trump’s ‘Increasingly Erratic Behavior’”
GOP fears Trump return to family separations
President Trump will be picking a new fight with Senate Republicans if he decides to renew his past policy of separating families detained at the border as a way of stopping the wave of immigrants.
Trump is expected to select a hard-liner to replace Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was ousted on Sunday — reportedly after she resisted returning to the policies that led to children being taken from their parents at the border.
The family separations created deep unrest among congressional Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, and Senate GOP sources warn that if Trump taps a hard-liner to replace Nielsen, it could lead to a brutal confirmation battle.
View the complete April 8 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.
How the Trump Era Is Molding the Next Generation of Voters
Recent data — and interviews with a dozen teenagers on the front lines of politics — show a decided leftward lean.
Jaden Rams used to be on fire for Donald Trump. Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, when he was 13, he put on a red MAGA hat and matching tie and yelled his support at a rally in his hometown, Grand Junction, Colo.
“I was getting politically charged around that time,” he said. “I was pretty passionate about a lot of the causes he was advocating for.”
Today he calls the presidential campaign and its aftermath “a travesty for American unity.” He believes President Trump has fulfilled his campaign promises, but added that “I don’t feel largely those have been positive.” Two years closer to voting age, he now leans left, and said he would register as an independent.
The Memo: GOP frets as Trump squanders advantages
Republicans are more worried than ever about a lack of discipline from President Trump and his administration as the 2020 election looms larger on the horizon.
A new outbreak of concern was sparked this week, when the political benefits from a favorable account of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings were undercut by several distractions.
The administration’s renewed push to undo the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — without any clear replacement in mind — was an unwelcome surprise to most Republicans.
View the complete March 30 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.
For Trump’s ‘Party of Healthcare,’ there is no health-care plan
Republicans have no intention of heeding President Trump’s urgent demands for a new health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, fearing the potential political damage that such a proposal could cause in 2020 and hoping he will soon drop the idea, according to interviews with numerous GOP lawmakers, legislative staffers and administration aides.
Not only is there no such health-care overhaul in the works on Capitol Hill — there are no plans to make such a plan.
Senate Republicans, who were caught off guard by Trump’s rapid shift to focus on health care last week, said the White House would need to make the first move by putting forward its own proposal. But administration officials said nothing firm is in the works.
Schiff angrily pushes back against GOP calls for him to step down
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) aggressively pushed back at calls for him to step down from President Trump and other Republicans, defending his past comments by lighting into the president and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia.
Schiff at the opening of an Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia listed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia that he described as being “not OK,” signaling he’ll fiercely defend himself from the calls to end his chairmanship.
“My colleagues may think it is OK the president’s son was offered dirt as part of an effort to help Trump,” Schiff said in his statement, pausing at times for dramatic effect.
View the complete March 28 article by Olivia beavers and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.
With Bill Barr’s fake Mueller report, the GOP is pulling out the playbook of lies it used to sell us on invading Iraq
It’s starting to look like the fix is in. For two years, special counsel Robert Mueller investigated the Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, and the possibility that Donald Trump’s campaign somehow colluded with this conspiracy. Now there’s a report, but whether we’ll actually get to see it is unclear, as the Republicans are rapidly working in formation to keep the actual contents of the report from public view.
The strategy they’re using will feel awfully familiar to those of us who lived through the George W. Bush administration’s conspiracy to bamboozle the American public into accepting a war with Iraq: Distort the existing evidence. Lie whenever necessary. Exaggerate any evidence, no matter how iffy, that supports the desired conclusion. Stifle any contradictory evidence as much as possible. And manipulate a gullible media into amplifying the spin instead of reporting the truth.
The Mueller report is weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, all over again. Republicans are using the same playbook to protect Trump that they used to hype the Iraq war, and the strategy seems, yet again, to be working.
View the complete March 26 article by Amanda Marcotte from Salon on the AlterNet website here.
Paul Krugman argues that right-wing ‘rage explosions’ and ‘demented anger’ show the GOP is the real party of snowflakes
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is best known for his economic analysis and his advocacy for broadly left-wing policies. But in his time as a public thinker, he’s also become a trenchant critic of the right wing, and in a new column Monday, he skewered the conservative impulse to be outraged about the most trivial and absurd perceived affronts.
As Exhibit A, Krugman pointed to the following bizarre outburst from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who has been one of President Donald Trump’s most vigorous protectors:
Devin Nunes✔@DevinNunes
At restaurant tonight waitress asks if we want straws. Says she has to ask now in fear of “THE STRAW POLICE”. Welcome to Socialism in California!
47.3K people are talking about this
“If this seems like a weird aberration — he wasn’t even denied a straw, just asked if he wanted one — you need to realize that rage explosions over seemingly silly things are extremely common on the right,” wrote Krugman. “By all accounts, the biggest applause line at the Conservative Political Action Conference — eliciting chants of ‘U-S-A, U-S-A!’ — was the claim that Democrats are coming for your hamburgers, just like Stalin.”
View the complete March 12 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.