Tax Cheat/Tax Cheat '08: That's McCain/Palin All Right

McCain is cheating on his taxes by not reporting his gambling income, or losses. Doesn't matter which, by law he has to report it.

Palin is cheating on her taxes by not reporting her per diem income. When you charge your state's taxpayers to live in your own home, that's taxable income to you. Dope.

Somehow I don't think George W. Bush's IRS is going to go after them, but they should. Cheating is cheating, no matter how rich or powerful you are. They're cheating the rest of us who play by the rules and pay our taxes.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Friday January 12, 2007

Crawford Caligula
Best post title of day: Brilliant at Breakfast:

Potent Military Victories To Make Benefit Glorious Image of the Crawford Caligula

Mmmmm.....Crawford Calugula....must use often.

The Left Coaster reports that Pelosi and Hoyer have sold out seniors by watering down Dem changes to the Medicare Part (D)isaster pharmaceutical bill. Since the bill will be vetoed by Crawford Calugula anyway, I can understand Dems saving their energies for more productive fights.

In case one of those lizard brain Bush supporters tells you the Congress gave Bush the authority to attack Iran, tell 'em they're wrong. The foolish Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq (AUMF) which all those dummies in Congress voted for, was the second draft of that bill: The first draft was not limited to Iraq, so it was soundly rejected by Congress. Crawford Caligula can't rely on the AUMF to attack Iran, therefore. Not that he cares about Congress. Link is to Dover Bitch, via Digby.

Steve Gilliard says Bush will leave in disgrace.

Glenn Greenwald, outlines Bush's belief that he has the power to attack Iran without Congressional authorization; he doesn't, but he thinks he does. Woe to the world.

Did anyone else hear Condoleeza Rice say 'augmentation, not escalation' yesterday, and think breast implants? Dependable Renegade did.

Greg Sargent eviscerates Tom Friedman, who really needs eviscerating. Is there a bigger waste of column space at the New York Times? Oh, there's David Brooks.

It's all about the corporate Benjamins: IRS closing corporate audits, taking a fraction of the millions US is owed. Expand this ThinkProgress post, 8th item down.

Tom: It's Called 'Vetting'. Try It

Massachusetts, while one of the most progressive and liberal states in the country, has had Republican governors for the last 20 years. We'd really like to end that streak. Why can't we get better candidates?

Yesterday's Boston Globe:

Reilly picks St. Fleur for campaign
Running mate is seen as rising political star

This morning's Boston Globe:

Reilly's pick delinquent on taxes, loans
St. Fleur says she is repaying debts

State Representative Marie P. St. Fleur, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's choice to be his lieutenant governor running mate, has had three delinquent tax debts in the last four years, including an April 2005 federal tax lien of $12,711 against her and her husband, according to records examined yesterday by the Globe.

St. Fleur, in an interview last night, disclosed that she also owes $40,000 in delinquent federally backed student loans.

St. Fleur told the Globe last night that she had paid down the federal tax debt to about $8,000 by making $500 monthly payments since last spring. But later last night, Corey Welford, a Reilly campaign spokesman, corrected her, saying that she had in fact made only one $500 payment last May and that the balance is still more than $12,000.

From boston.com this afternoon:

Rep. St. Fleur withdraws as Reilly's running mate

State Representative Marie St. Fleur today pulled out as a candidate for lieutenant governor after the Boston Globe reported that she has delinquent tax debts in three of the last four years and owes $40,000 in student loans, a senior Democrat said today.

The announcement came one day after Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly announced that St. Fleur was his choice to run as his running mate. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run separately until the party primary, and then run as a ticket for the general election.

Where do they get these people? Who thinks they can aspire to high public office while a tax delinquent? How can a career politician who's been our Attorney General for 8 years, before that Middlesex County District Attorney for 7 years, an attorney for 36 years, pick a running mate without a cursory reference check? They would have caught the delinquent loans on a routine pre-employment credit check.

As a result of this, and in what may be an opportune time for him to get this out, our other declared Democratic candidate, Deval Patrick, revealed today that he himself is also tax delinquent, though in his case it is 'former' tax delinquent. From the Boston Herald:

St. Fleur quits race; Patrick reveals tax delinquency

Deval Patrick, Reilly’s top rival for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, released a statement disclosing that he, too, had been a tax delinquent.

"More than a decade ago, Diane and I had an installment agreement with the IRS to pay, on a monthly basis, an unexpected tax liability,” Patrick said in a statement issued to The Associated Press. “We missed one or two of our installments. This triggered an IRS lien. We took immediate steps to pay off the balance and within five months discharged in full the $8,778 we owed.

I thought the Republicans had the market on incompetence cornered. This is pissing me off. We'd better beat the empty dress (Kerry Healey, Lt. Gov. to the Mittwit) in November.

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism, January 19, 2006

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H.L. Mencken


The Incompetence:

The defining fiasco of the Bush Administration may prove to be the utterly disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit, formally known as Medicare Part D. Already the newspapers are filled with stories about Medicare-Medicaid patients, the poorest of the poor, being denied prescriptions by the thousands because the government, with only two full years to prepare, didn't have its computer systems tested, up, and running when the program launched January 1. The pain is just beginning.

What's instructive about this project is that it provides a concrete illustration of what Social Security would have looked like after a Bush privatization job: A program that should be designed to serve citizens turned instead into a plaything for lobbyists and business interests. Had Social Security privatization gone through, it's plain, the financial services industry would have had the green light to inundate citizens with flagrantly misleading brochures promising benefits that they couldn't deliver. There are many words for this in the thesaurus, but the first one that comes to mind is "disgusting."

Golden State Column: Bush's Catastrophic Drug Benefit (Part One) by Michael Hitzik.

See, also, Americablog: It's Medicare Part D for Disaster


The Corruption:

The K Street Project was a giant money laundering enterprise. Many of the beneficiaries were non-profits: either religious or charitable organizations. One was organized by the hateful Grover Norquist, of 'drown the federal government in a bathtub' fame. If Jack Abramoff directed monies to Norquist organizations in exchange for meetings with President Bush or other favors, that's tax fraud. I wonder who gets to investigate this: the prosecutor after Abramoff, or the IRS?

Stuart Levine:

Grover Norquist and the Tax Code

Did Grover Norquist Commit Tax Fraud?



The Cronyism:

The most incompetent White House spokesman since Ron Ziegler, Scott McClellan, has a brother, Mark McClellan. Guess what government fiasco Mark McClellan runs? The clue here is "incompetent". As in Medicare Part D.

And are you asking yourself, "What about the other McClellan brother?" You'll recall that Medicare Plan D isn't working well? And that seniors and pharmacists and medical professionals who are trying to make sense out of the entire mess can't get a straight answer from the 1-800 hotline, even after waiting forever on hold to get to a person who is supposed to help them? Guess who is in charge of coordinating this non-helpful service (via The Plank):

I have an article about what's going on with the Medicare drug benefit--and why--coming out in this week's edition of the magazine. But one tidbit I came across in my research seems worth sharing now. It's a Government Accounting Office report, issued in December, warning that the Bush administration hadn't done enough to make sure the most medically and financially vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries could actually get their drugs.

If you do get around to reading it, make sure to check out the part where Mark McClellan, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says the GAO has it all wrong--the part where he insists that "CMS has established effective contingency plans to ensure that dual-eligible beneficiaries will be able to obtain comprehensive coverage and obtain necessary drugs beginning January 1, 2006."

Well, maybe not entirely effective.

Firedoglake: Profiles in Cronyhood: The McClellan Brothers

When I Get Audited, I'll Know Why

From dailykos:

IRS tracked taxpayers' political affiliation

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

"The bottom line is that we have never used this information," said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. "There are strict laws in place that forbid it."

[]

According to Murray's office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

How can you believe the IRS when they say "strict laws" forbid using this information, when their bosses are illegally wiretapping us? Laws, schmaws, we know Bushco does what it wants, damn the laws and the Constitution.

The IRS itself is in open violation of a court order: Above the law: Bush's IRS defies court order

Better get my last 6 years of tax files in order.

President Dumbass Speaks

I couldn't let this little press conference snippet from Bush's trip to the Central American summit go unnoticed. From whitehouse.gov:

President's Remarks to the Travel Pool at Summit of the Americas in Argentina

Q Mr. President, you're likely to cross paths with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at this summit. How should Americans think about this President, who has said many hostile things about you and your administration? Do you think of him as another Castro? And if you see him this afternoon, do you have any words for him?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I will, of course, be polite. That's what the American people expect their President to do, is to be a polite person. And I will -- if I run across him, I will do just that.

Polite? What, is he regressing to grade school? First thing that jumped into his little head? This is the best he can do to avoid the question? Sad.

My attitude toward any leader -- toward leaders, and I judge leaders based upon their willingness to protect institutions that will -- for a viable democratic society.

Is there a coherent sentence, or thought, in the future of this answer?

And to the extent that any leader undermines the free press, we will speak out. To the extent that any leader makes it difficult to worship freely, we will make our positions known. To the extent that the judiciary is not an independent organization -- in other words, to the extent that there's not proper checks and balances, we will express our positions.

Undermines the free press? You mean like having your own Assistant (Libby was Assistant to the President, as well as Cheney's Chief of Staff) use the press to play politics with national security? Difficult to worship freely? Like siccing the IRS on a liberal church for opposing your illegal and immoral war? The judiciary is not independent? Like bypassing your judiciary completely for shadowy secret trials? Oh yeah, we'll speak out. Do as we say, not as we do.

And there's ways to do so. We can do so through our embassies, we can do so in forums -- not necessarily singling out a particular country or person, but talking on the positive

Talking on the positive? A new circumlocution from our President Malaprop...

about how important it is to have checks and balances in society, about how important it is to have these institutions so that a single person cannot become the ruler of all people.

Oh, wish that it were so...

I will remind people today at this important summit that -- as we talk about poverty and minority rights, which is of concern to many countries here, that one -- such concerns are our concerns, and that if you're interested in minority rights, the best way to allow minorities to have rights is in a democratic society, where the people actually make the decisions for government.

And so it's a -- I think this is a good forum and a good opportunity to express -- for me to express our country's values. But they're not American values, I keep telling you, these are universal values that are true. That's why my meeting with President Kirchner was -- one of the reasons it was so positive is because Argentina shares the same values that America shares.

Ah, Argentina, bastion of liberal values. The country that took in the Nazi war criminals and barred Jews from immigrating after the Second World War, the country of the the dirty war, the military junta, torture and death. Or maybe that's the value he thinks we share? Life is so simple when you are an incurious man who knows nothing of history!

They've been through some difficult experiences

Oh, so that's what you call decades of repression and murder...

and making sure that those values are rooted in their societies. Of course I've reminded others, we went through difficult experiences in the past. And we had a Constitution that said everybody is free, but they weren't.

And that was the original intent of the Constitution, no? For you originalists out there...

And so it's a -- so what I'll search for in the world, as I think about world leaders, is that commitment, firm commitment to values and institutions that make democracy viable.

World leaders with firm commitment to democratic values, like the Saudis and the Pakistanis?

Thank you all very much, thanks.

Maybe SCOTUS Nominee has a Nanny Problem?

White House To Withhold Nominee's Tax Returns
Document Release Excludes First Bush Administration

The Bush administration will not give Senate investigators access to the federal tax returns of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., White House and congressional officials said yesterday, a break with precedent that could exacerbate a growing conflict over document disclosure in the confirmation process.

Although nominees to the high court in recent decades were required to provide their three most recent annual tax forms, the administration will neither collect such documents from Roberts nor share them with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the officials said. Instead, the Internal Revenue Service will produce a one-page summary.

The White House yesterday began releasing the first of 75,000 pages of documents stemming from Roberts's service as a lawyer in President Ronald Reagan's administration two decades ago but refused to release papers from his time as deputy solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. These papers, Bush aides said, concern internal executive branch deliberations that remain privileged.

Senate Democrats and liberal interest groups immediately assailed the decision to withhold the more recent files, sharpening a dispute over the nominee's record.

Many a rich person has faltered at the Senate confirmation door for failing to pay Social Security taxes. I remember my public schoolteacher parents struggling with the SSA and IRS paperwork for the neighbor who cleaned our house once a week during the school year. They felt it was important that she get credit with the Social Security Administration for her work, so she would get the largest social security benefit possible. Now that's a family value. Caring about your neighbors and the people who work for you.

I have no idea why they're not releasing Roberts tax returns. Maybe they're thinking about their next nominee (Gonzales?) and some issue on his tax return. Just sounds fishy to me.

You heard it here first: It's a nanny.