United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

 

Bullshit! There will be no testing of loyalties. People here in Alabama will chose the vilest Republican over a Democrat. Democrats and liberals are very much hated here. Seriously, I cannot express how strong the hatred is. Please pray for Alabama (don't care to which deity), that they wake up and send Roy Moore packing. Alabama is a beautiful place that has been overtaken by lunatics.

Yeah, @RosyDaisyI know it well, I'm originally from Mississippi() just over the state line and my mother is still in Birmingham, practically a bastion of liberalism in the state. If there's such a thing. I'm hoping that lots of people who may have to leave Puerto Rico move to Alabama. Plenty of room, similar weather and they'll be voters.

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

I'm hoping that lots of people who may have to leave Puerto Rico move to Alabama. Plenty of room, similar weather and they'll be voters.

IF there could be a bright side to many Puerto Rico residents having to relocate to the US mainland, this would be it. They could have a significant effect on voter populations and possibly party outcomes if they resettled in places with existing PR communities.

You'd think the Rs would realize this, for all their efforts at disenfranchising non-R voters, and step up the aid to rebuild PR!

[Cartmann99]

17 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

Bullshit! There will be no testing of loyalties. People here in Alabama will chose the vilest Republican over a Democrat. Democrats and liberals are very much hated here. Seriously, I cannot express how strong the hatred is. 

Elections in my town:

Republican candidate: I'm a cannibal and a serial killer. If elected, I will kill and eat your entire family. *Shoots gun into air, while an assistant passes out Bibles*

Democratic candidate: I'm a third grade teacher. I also volunteer at the food bank, and I teach Sunday School. *Shoots gun into air and also has an assistant pass out Bibles, to try and compete with the Republican*

 

Election results:

Republican candidate   79% 

Democratic candidate   21% 

 

Election night reporting:

Television reporter: Ma'am, what issues made you decide to vote for the Republican candidate?

Voter: Because I'm a Christian, and Christians should always vote for the party that stands for Christian values. I think your eternal salvation is in question if you vote for a Democrat. Democrats are atheists who want to take your guns away and institute Sharia law because they are secretly Muslim.

Television reporter: I'm confused ma'am, how can one be an atheist and a Muslim?

Voter: Because they are! If you stopped paying attention to the lamestream media and watched Fox News and read Breitbart, you'd understand how Christians are under attack in this country!!!

Television reporter: Thank you for your time, ma'am. Back to you, Jim.

[RosyDaisy]

Roy Moore won the run-off because he told voters what they wanted to hear. He is considered a hero standing up for real Christian values. Trump's agenda and everything else was not and is not a factor at all.

[candygirl200413]

Was he the one who brought his pistol because murica and guns?

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Was he the one who brought his pistol because murica and guns?

Yeah, but it was really cold at the rally. That gun looks much bigger in a warm room. 

[GrumpyGran]

18 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Was he the one who brought his pistol because murica and guns?

Just so unbelievable. Strange tells the moronic 'Bama Repubs that Moore doesn't support everyone having a million guns. Who would believe that? This man is the poster child for far right-wing idiocy. He would have disappeared years ago if he wasn't a gun lover. So then said poster child decides it's a good idea to flash a gun around at a campaign rally just to prove what everyone already knows. It was like a stupidity contest.

[GreyhoundFan]

Here's a good analysis from the WaPo: "Pelosi was toxic with voters in 2010. Ryan and McConnell are facing the same problem."

Spoiler

Some members of Congress spend years, even decades, plotting their way up the ladder to become House speaker or Senate majority leader.

The reward? National ignominy is almost a certainty.

“Masochism. I always thought maybe that’s part of it,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, only half joking.

In 35 years on Capitol Hill, McCain has never run for a congressional leadership post, possibly one reason he remains an overall popular national figure.

That was once the case for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Now, just 31 percent of Americans approve of Ryan’s job performance while 51 percent do not approve, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Ryan’s base of support is almost nonexistent: Eight percent strongly approve of his performance; 31 percent strongly disapprove.

It’s safe to say that Ryan has now entered into the politically treacherous spot in which House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) found herself as House speaker in 2010 before Republicans took the majority. And it raises the question of when Democrats — and Ryan’s own party — will begin using the current speaker’s image against him.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is in a similarly perilous place — he has no base of support, literally. In the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from the middle of September, not enough respondents held a “very positive” view of McConnell to register even a single percentage point.

For Ryan and McConnell, President Trump has accelerated their dive into infamy. With each legislative battle they waged, liberals grew more angry at their proposal. But when these efforts ended in gridlock, the president went after the two leaders with sharp criticism that depresses their support among conservatives.

The drive toward becoming a despised figure almost certainly results in the other party spending tens of millions of dollars tarring and feathering the leader’s image in political ads.

Just before that 2010 midterm, Pelosi’s favorability with voters fell to 29 percent, according to a Post-ABC poll at the time. Her advisers estimated back then that Republicans devoted more than $50 million in negative advertising targeting her that election season.

“You go into this thing believing that on a good day, you’re unpopular. On a bad day, you’re really unpopular,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

Seven years after Republicans first started targeting her in ads, Pelosi is a little less toxic but not any more popular. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 25 percent of voters have a favorable view on her and 43 percent have an unfavorable view.

In that same poll, 24 percent of voters have a favorable image of Ryan, while 40 percent hold an unfavorable view on the speaker. He doesn’t quite provoke as much of an intense dislike as Pelosi — 20 percent of voters hold “very negative” views toward him, while 28 percent hold such harsh views toward Pelosi.

Still, he has been speaker for less than two years. Pelosi has been the leading face of House Democrats for almost 14 years.

In early November 2015, a week after he took the speaker’s gavel from John A. Boehner of Ohio, Ryan was a relatively popular figure, perhaps because he had never served in any leadership post and was drafted into the post by his colleagues.

Democrats believe Ryan would grow even more unpopular if they did to him what Republicans did to Pelosi. “She’s not spending any money saying, ‘Nancy Pelosi’s great,’ probably not even in the California markets,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said. “Nobody is running national money against Paul Ryan. Ryan has become unpopular, Brown said, “because he isn’t doing a very good job.”

In the Senate race in Alabama, Roy Moore, the arch-conservative who won the Republican runoff primary Tuesday, used McConnell as a punching bag against the appointed incumbent, Sen. Luther Strange (R). Moore’s consultants believe the McConnell attack line painted Strange as an establishment figure, propelling the former judge to victory.

McConnell’s allies believe that Moore’s background — he had been twice suspended from the state Supreme Court for actions applauded by religious conservatives — appealed to an electorate that wants to disrupt Washington.

Regardless of who is right, conservative activists have vowed to keep up those attacks against McConnell in primary races next year.

Despite disparagement in conservative circles, Ryan has maintained some well of support among Republicans. In the Post-ABC News poll, 53 percent of Republican voters approve of Ryan’s job performance, while 31 percent disapprove.

That makes it more difficult to use Ryan in Republican primaries, but he will probably become a caricature in general-election campaigns — 31 percent of independent voters approve, while 52 percent disapprove of the speaker’s performance.

“I don’t consider it a thankless job; I consider it a hard job,” Brown said of these leadership posts. He won his first congressional race 25 years ago, and has he never served in leadership.

Graham first won a House seat two years after Brown, and the closest he ever came to a leadership seat were the times he participated in coup attempts against House leaders in the 1990s.

“I’d rather be in Gitmo than do that all day,” he said.

Praising McConnell’s patience, Graham said he never could have done the behind-the-scenes work of a floor leader, especially knowing the almost guaranteed result is that two-thirds of Americans will consider you a political villain.

“I don’t know how he does it, God bless him, because if I were in charge we’d be down to about 40 senators now,” Graham said.

Because he would have killed the rest of them.

I hope McTurtle and Lyan are toxic and the Dems can pick up enough seats to make a difference.

[GrumpyGran]

Just watched Lyan lyin' to John Dickerson regarding tax reform. Hilarious, he actually had a hard time getting some of the lies out. Some points:

Stop with the postcard thing. It makes you look like an idiot. How about single sheet of paper? You do realize, don't you, that you are appealing to a group of people with single-digit IQs? They will take this literally and it will be another broken promise. I'm sorry, I hate to be unAmerican but not writing my SSN on a postcard and putting it the mail.

And why the hatred for Americans who don't want to get married and/or have children? No breaks for them.

And more about those poor companies struggling to make money who have to compete with foreign companies, so they have to manufacture overseas to be successful. Two words: Ivanka Trump. Making money or not? Paying taxes or not?

[47of74]

Seriously? 

Spoiler

Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview on Sunday that he thinks President Trump's "heart's in the right place" when it comes to race relations in the U.S.

During an interview on CBS's "Face The Nation," the Wisconsin Republican was asked how he would rate Trump's ability to bring the country together after saying a year ago that he hoped Trump would be inclusive.

"He's learning. I know his heart's in the right place," Ryan said.

Ryan said he's had some candid conversations with Trump and reiterated that the president's "heart's in the right place."

Ryan, get your head out of fornicate face's hinder and you might be able to see that what passes for said fornicate face's heart is not even in the same stellar group as the right place. 

[GrumpyGran]

51 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Seriously? 

  Hide contents

Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview on Sunday that he thinks President Trump's "heart's in the right place" when it comes to race relations in the U.S.

During an interview on CBS's "Face The Nation," the Wisconsin Republican was asked how he would rate Trump's ability to bring the country together after saying a year ago that he hoped Trump would be inclusive.

"He's learning. I know his heart's in the right place," Ryan said.

Ryan said he's had some candid conversations with Trump and reiterated that the president's "heart's in the right place."

Ryan, get your head out of fornicate face's hinder and you might be able to see that what passes for said fornicate face's heart is not even in the same stellar group as the right place. 

It probably is in the right place. Somebody else's chest. He probably sold it early in his career, maybe as part of a deal for some land for a casino. It would appear he doesn't have a liver or intestines either. 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good (and true) opinion piece from E.J. Dionne: "The only thing the Republican Party knows how to do"

Spoiler

Add this to the growing file folder that can be labeled “Depressing but not Surprising”: The only thing today’s Republican Party knows how to do is cut taxes for the very rich.

It’s depressing because the GOP has abandoned roles it once played in our public life: pioneering programs aimed at assisting Americans of modest means in lifting themselves up, and supporting productive government investments that the private sector was unlikely to undertake.

The party of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell has abandoned the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, who championed the Homestead Act and land-grant colleges; Teddy Roosevelt, who protected vast tracts of nature on behalf of future generations; and Dwight Eisenhower, who pushed for student loans and the Interstate Highway System.

The heirs to Honest Abe, TR and Ike seem to believe in only one thing: throwing vast quantities of money at the already wealthy. And they have the nerve to pretend that they aren’t really trying to further enrich the moneyed classes. They claim that comforting the comfortable will someday, really and truly, help working people by creating jobs and economic growth.

They pretend a lot of other things, too. They say their goal is to “simplify” the tax system, so they reduce the number of individual income-tax brackets to three. Isn’t it funny that in their “simplification,” the tax rate for the richest among us (people earning more than $418,400 a year) would drop from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, but the tax rate for the poorest (those earning less than $9,325 a year) actually would go up , from 10 percent to 12 percent?

The GOP apparently believes that taxing the poor is part of the recipe for growth. Now there is an innovative idea.

The Republicans claim that this tax increase would be offset by other provisions. But there is no way to know exactly how their tax scheme would work because they have still not put out a full plan. All they have offered is a sketch.

For eight months, Republicans told us repeatedly that they would enact a tax bill. Yet they still can’t show us the whole thing.

In fact, for a large swath of the middle and upper-middle classes, this is not a tax cut at all, but a tax increase. Using the details available, the Tax Policy Center concluded that nearly a third of taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 would see their taxes go up, as would a majority of those making between $150,000 and $300,000.

There is much that is very bad here, but perhaps the most insidious aspect of the bill is the part that might be called the Punish Our Opponents Tax Act of 2017.

To pay for their tax cuts for the rich, Republicans propose to make the tax code “fairer” by getting rid of the deduction that people can take for the taxes they pay to state and local governments. Republicans rail against “double taxation” of income when it comes to capital gains. But they have no problem with double taxation when it hurts taxpayers in states that ask their citizens to pay a bit more to provide decent public services and stronger social safety nets.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, the states with the largest deductions for state and local taxes as a percentage of adjusted gross income are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California and Maryland. All voted against Trump.

Republican House members from the higher-tax states may yet scuttle this provision that belies the GOP’s devotion to “states’ rights.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called their bluff: “Republicans used to say that the best decisions are made locally, and now they want to tax local decisions.”

Naturally, a tax proposal designed to pamper the super-rich does exactly that for a man named Donald Trump. The New York Times estimated his savings at about $1 billion. But his refusal to release his tax returns conveniently clouds how much he’ll get.

Heather Long of The Post’s Wonkblog usefully listed “nine ways Trump’s tax plan is a gift to the rich, including himself.” One of the biggest boons to the wealthiest Americans is the complete repeal of the estate tax, which is paid on only the very, very, very largest fortunes. They account for only two-tenths of 1 percent of all estates. Talk about a carefully tailored benefit for the Savile Row suit crowd.

And imagine this: Republicans want to use this deficit-bloating, inequality-enhancing, inflation-courting, social-justice-insulting monstrosity to prove they can actually govern.

I can't imagine how a single person who is not a millionaire could think this "plan" benefits anyone other than the uber-rich.

[47of74]

On 10/1/2017 at 8:16 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

A good (and true) opinion piece from E.J. Dionne: "The only thing the Republican Party knows how to do"

  Reveal hidden contents

Add this to the growing file folder that can be labeled “Depressing but not Surprising”: The only thing today’s Republican Party knows how to do is cut taxes for the very rich.

It’s depressing because the GOP has abandoned roles it once played in our public life: pioneering programs aimed at assisting Americans of modest means in lifting themselves up, and supporting productive government investments that the private sector was unlikely to undertake.

The party of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell has abandoned the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, who championed the Homestead Act and land-grant colleges; Teddy Roosevelt, who protected vast tracts of nature on behalf of future generations; and Dwight Eisenhower, who pushed for student loans and the Interstate Highway System.

The heirs to Honest Abe, TR and Ike seem to believe in only one thing: throwing vast quantities of money at the already wealthy. And they have the nerve to pretend that they aren’t really trying to further enrich the moneyed classes. They claim that comforting the comfortable will someday, really and truly, help working people by creating jobs and economic growth.

They pretend a lot of other things, too. They say their goal is to “simplify” the tax system, so they reduce the number of individual income-tax brackets to three. Isn’t it funny that in their “simplification,” the tax rate for the richest among us (people earning more than $418,400 a year) would drop from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, but the tax rate for the poorest (those earning less than $9,325 a year) actually would go up , from 10 percent to 12 percent?

The GOP apparently believes that taxing the poor is part of the recipe for growth. Now there is an innovative idea.

The Republicans claim that this tax increase would be offset by other provisions. But there is no way to know exactly how their tax scheme would work because they have still not put out a full plan. All they have offered is a sketch.

For eight months, Republicans told us repeatedly that they would enact a tax bill. Yet they still can’t show us the whole thing.

In fact, for a large swath of the middle and upper-middle classes, this is not a tax cut at all, but a tax increase. Using the details available, the Tax Policy Center concluded that nearly a third of taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 would see their taxes go up, as would a majority of those making between $150,000 and $300,000.

There is much that is very bad here, but perhaps the most insidious aspect of the bill is the part that might be called the Punish Our Opponents Tax Act of 2017.

To pay for their tax cuts for the rich, Republicans propose to make the tax code “fairer” by getting rid of the deduction that people can take for the taxes they pay to state and local governments. Republicans rail against “double taxation” of income when it comes to capital gains. But they have no problem with double taxation when it hurts taxpayers in states that ask their citizens to pay a bit more to provide decent public services and stronger social safety nets.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, the states with the largest deductions for state and local taxes as a percentage of adjusted gross income are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California and Maryland. All voted against Trump.

Republican House members from the higher-tax states may yet scuttle this provision that belies the GOP’s devotion to “states’ rights.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called their bluff: “Republicans used to say that the best decisions are made locally, and now they want to tax local decisions.”

Naturally, a tax proposal designed to pamper the super-rich does exactly that for a man named Donald Trump. The New York Times estimated his savings at about $1 billion. But his refusal to release his tax returns conveniently clouds how much he’ll get.

Heather Long of The Post’s Wonkblog usefully listed “nine ways Trump’s tax plan is a gift to the rich, including himself.” One of the biggest boons to the wealthiest Americans is the complete repeal of the estate tax, which is paid on only the very, very, very largest fortunes. They account for only two-tenths of 1 percent of all estates. Talk about a carefully tailored benefit for the Savile Row suit crowd.

And imagine this: Republicans want to use this deficit-bloating, inequality-enhancing, inflation-courting, social-justice-insulting monstrosity to prove they can actually govern.

I can't imagine how a single person who is not a millionaire could think this "plan" benefits anyone other than the uber-rich.

If today's teabaggers were in charge back in the 50s things like the interstate highway system or other investments in infrastructure never would have happened.  I don't think we would've been first to the moon either since the groundwork for all that started in the 40s and 50s.  

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Collins agonizes over decision to ditch the Senate"

Spoiler

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was watching TV recently when she saw a report that Susan Collins was considering a run for Maine governor and soliciting advice on the decision.

The North Dakota Democrat quickly shot a text message to her Republican colleague: “Don’t do it.”

A move by Collins to seek the governorship would rock the Senate and the broader political landscape. In a chamber controlled by just 52 Republicans, Collins and a handful of other centrist senators can decide the fate of President Donald Trump’s agenda. And a run by Collins for governor could eventually cost the GOP one of its last congressional footholds in New England.

Collins is torn over whether to leave her prominent perch as one of the Senate’s few true moderate legislators, according to her colleagues. If Collins had made up her mind by now, said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), “she already would have announced it.”

In an interview, Collins said the buzz about her prolonged indecision is “accurate.” She initially planned to make up her mind by the end of September, but pushed back her deadline to mid-October as she wrestled with the GOP’s recent Obamacare repeal effort.

“Given the contentious environment in Washington right now, my voice and vote matter a great deal,” Collins said. “On the other hand, if I were fortunate enough to be elected governor, I could work more directly on job creation.”

She added: “That’s why it’s such a difficult decision to make. And I’m trying to figure out where I matter most.”

A Governor Collins would leave centrists like Heitkamp even more lonely in the Senate. But Heitkamp acknowledges that Collins is feeling a tug to return to Maine full time: “Fundamentally, she wants to go home.”

“She is [up in the air]. And I think she had hoped to make a decision before this,” said Heitkamp, who herself weighed retirement before announcing this year she'd run for a second term. “I desperately hope she doesn’t run.”

There’s also risk for the fourth-term senator. She could face a primary challenge in the gubernatorial race, fueled by term-limited Republican Gov. Paul Lepage’s open disdain for Collins’ opposition to Obamacare repeal proposals. And if Collins runs, it would likely fuel Democrats’ push to take back the Senate in 2020, since most Republicans believe she's the only person from her party who can hold the seat.

In 2012, when Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) retired, King walloped the GOP candidate. So the first thing Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) did when he took over as the Senate GOP’s campaign chairman was set out to persuade Collins to run again in 2014. She won reelection with 68 percent of the vote and Republicans took the chamber for the first time in eight years.

King is begging her not to leave. And in an unusual display of bipartisanship in the Senate, so are moderate Democrats.

“She’s so important to the country here,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “We don’t have enough folks like her.”

Republicans are fretting Collins will join retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and create a wave of pragmatic GOP senators fleeing the chamber. Though Collins holds sway as one of the chamber's few swing votes, she also faces the frustration of watching her party constantly doing the opposite of what she'd like — from trying to repeal Obamacare on party lines, to refusing to hold a hearing on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, to nominating Donald Trump.

In the latest Obamacare repeal effort, even after party leaders had written her off as an automatic “no,” she came under unyielding pressure from the White House. Vice President Mike Pence called her last Saturday as she drove across the state, a conversation that got so in-depth that Collins pulled her car over.

They talked for 40 minutes. Not even two days later, Collins came out in opposition, delivering the knockout blow. And she says another party-line shot is unwise.

“I don’t think having a partisan approach to an issue that affects one-sixth of our economy and affects millions of Americans is the right way to go,” Collins said.

Collins is reevaluating her career amid some ominous developments for a politician with her profile. Prominent deal-makers in Congress are retiring just as a new wave of strident conservatives are trying to break in. Meanwhile, Republicans say they want to take another stab next year at a party-line repeal of Obamacare, and they're weighing doing the same thing on tax reform.

Collins would enjoy more autonomy and control over the agenda as governor of Maine, a job she sought unsuccessfully in 1994.

Asked whether she would run, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) cited his surprise with Corker’s decision and said: “You never know with these people."

“I always expect her to act in a way that she thinks is best for Maine,” said McCain, who is close with Collins and understands any aversion she might have to her current situation. “Am I happy with the environment here? Of course not. Nobody could be.”

Collins said her committee work and seniority “really matter” — but she is tantalized by the opportunity to help the less prosperous parts of the state, where shuttered paper mills and an aging population have devastated the economy.

“I’m from the northern part of the state, which needs a lot of help … two-thirds of the state is losing population and opportunity,” she said. “I have some ideas for economic development that only a governor can pursue.”

Maine Republicans say Collins would likely have to navigate the divide between the Trump and establishment wings of the Republican Party if she runs. LePage spent September slamming her opposition to the Graham-Cassidy health repeal bill as “shameful” as the two sparred over whether the bill would have been good for the state.

Phil Harriman, a political analyst and former Republican state senator, said LePage’s attacks on Collins could be damaging given his sway over the state party, though she’d be a clear front-runner in a general election.

“It would be more complicated, at least in the Republican primary,” Harriman said. “If it was today, I would say she’d probably face a primary challenge.”

Collins is cognizant of the state’s complicated political environment. In the past two decades, Maine has had Republican, Democratic and independent governors. Collins, Snowe and King have been among the most independent-minded senators in recent years. And Trump won an electoral vote in the northern part of the state, pushing Maine into swing-state territory.

Asked about LePage’s performance, Collins was diplomatic. But she acknowledged the yawning difference between her measured moderation and his bombastic sound bites.

“I support many of Gov. LePage’s policies,” she said. “Obviously, he and I have very different styles and we disagree on what the impact of what Graham-Cassidy would have been.”

While Republicans are fretting that the GOP’s flailing governance of Washington will push Collins to join the retiring Corker and Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent, it’s not uncommon for senators to mull leaving the dysfunctional chamber for executive office. Most, like Heitkamp and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), eventually decide to stay in D.C.

Manchin was the outlier among senators interviewed for this story, who hope that Collins will stay put. The West Virginia senator said she should run if “she thinks she has a shot for it.”

“Best job in the world. Oh my god. There’s no comparison,” said Manchin, a former governor. “You never deny somebody who has that opportunity to do something good for their state.”

Even though I am not a Maine resident, I am considering sending her an email, begging her to stay in the senate. The country needs her to be a voice of reason.

[GreyhoundFan]

"House Republicans’ unforgiving assault on the freedom to choose"

Spoiler

THE HOUSE on Tuesday voted to ban abortions of fetuses that have passed 20 weeks of gestation, sending to the Senate a bill purportedly about protecting fetuses capable of feeling pain. Among the reasons for skepticism: The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that fetuses cannot feel pain at 20 weeks, and the Senate almost certainly will not pass the bill. The House would have better spent its legislative time if it had renamed a post office somewhere. No matter: Republicans need money and passion from antiabortion groups, who insisted on moving the bill, and it passed by a 237-to-189 vote.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors was Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.). On the same day Mr. Murphy was voting for the bill, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published text messages that appear to show the congressman and a woman he had a relationship with discussing how he pressured her to get an abortion this year, when she had a pregnancy scare. On a day when the Republican Party was forcing a gratuitous vote on abortion, could there be a more exquisite reminder that politicians’ embrace of divisive cultural wedge issues is often less than principled?

Even if Mr. Murphy’s staunchly antiabortion stance had been sincere before he had to make a decision that would affect his own life, his example underscores a truth about the abortion issue. It is far easier to judge people struggling with whether to terminate a pregnancy than it is to personally embrace the decision that antiabortion activists would demand the government force them to make. Many in the antiabortion camp would struggle when confronted with the reality of an unwanted pregnancy. Some in this situation seek the aid of friends, family or religious counselors. With more and more restrictions on legal abortion, others would seek the help of unregulated and unscrupulous illegal abortion operations or dangerous at-home remedies.

Of course, there are antiabortion advocates who live their principles with more consistency than Mr. Murphy, who announced Thursday that he was resigning from Congress . People of goodwill disagree about when life begins and mourn what they see as the morally disturbing decisions others make. But in a free society, and in the absence of a clear scientific standard, such decisions should remain with the consciences of individuals, not a matter of federal fiat. The Constitution demands as much.

Mid- and late-term abortions are already extremely rare, and a common motivation is concern that fetuses are developing with severe abnormalities. The House bill would allow no exception for this circumstance. It would represent an unforgiving assault on the freedom to choose.

My rep voted against the Repug bill. I know both my senators will do so as well. I am past the age where I would have to consider an abortion, but my blood boils that a bunch of self-righteous cretins can say they are "pro-life" while they back policies that allow gun violence.

[bashfulpixie]

Not only allow gun violence, but offer no support to mothers once the child is born.  Get rid of every program that may make it easier for single parents to support their children.

[GreyhoundFan]

"In a switch, GOP deserts its budget-cutting mantra"

Spoiler

The Republican Party has largely abandoned its platform of fiscal restraint, pivoting sharply in a way that could add trillions of dollars in federal debt over the next decade.

Cutting spending to balance the budget was almost religion to the Republican Party for much of the past eight years. But all year long, despite their control of the White House and Congress, Republicans have not taken steps to balance the budget, to overhaul entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, or to arrest the growth of the country’s $20 trillion in debt.

With the House passing a critical budget resolution this past week, GOP lawmakers are charging forward next week with plans to cut taxes in a way that could add more than $1.5 trillion to the government’s debt over 10 years, with the goal of legislation by early next month. That is on top of an effort to significantly increase military spending. White House officials say their focus is on growing the economy now and dealing with the debt later.

The moves come as the federal deficit, the difference between what the government earns in revenue and spends on programs, is growing more quickly. It will be $600 billion this year and is projected to reach $1.46 trillion in a decade, even without additional policy actions.

“I felt there was a period, two or three years ago, when there was a real seriousness about trying to solve our fiscal issues,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a longtime deficit hawk who is part of a scarce group of Republicans consistently preaching restraint. “When the election result turned out what it was [in November], any thought of fiscal responsibility has gone out the window.”

He added, “It’s very disheartening to me that when the other side of the aisle was in charge we cared about fiscal issues, and now that we’re in charge we don’t care about fiscal issues. It’s very disheartening.”

Republicans initially tried but failed to cut spending this year, stymied by intraparty divisions they could not rectify.

They could not unify behind an effort to slash the growth of Medicaid, a joint state and federal health-care program for low-income Americans. And Democrats unified to block other proposed spending cuts to programs for the poor.

Congress also twice agreed to raise the debt ceiling without putting any new restraints on spending.

Three devastating hurricanes in August and September ravaged Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, prompting emergency steps to seek $40 billion in new spending. A storm landing this weekend, Hurricane Nate, could create new spending pressure. In the past, some Republicans have sought to offset disaster relief spending with cuts in other areas, but no such demands were made this time.

Meanwhile, Trump rejected a proposal from White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to curb future Medicare and Social Security spending, saying he had promised voters in 2016 that he would not touch those programs.

But the most striking blow to the deficit isn’t what Republicans have failed to do, but the changes they are mulling.

Mulvaney — who was a leading deficit hawk when he served in the House of Representatives — and other White House officials are pushing hard for the tax-cut package, shrugging off the worry of growing the deficit in the next few years by saying that letting people keep their own money is much different than cutting government spending.

Mulvaney, like many in the White House, argues that the focus should be on taking steps to grow the economy, which officials say will create trillions of dollars in new revenue to offset the impact of lowering tax rates.

He said in an interview that the White House offered more than 50 areas in which specific spending programs could be cut from the budget earlier this year and that Congress only agreed to four or five of them. He said that the last time the budget was balanced, late in the Clinton administration, it was done through a combination of spending restraint and economic growth, a model the Trump White House wanted to follow.

“I have to work in the real world, and right now I just don’t think there’s the appetite to balance the budget based on spending alone,” Mulvaney said.

He added that if the House of Representatives wanted to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, “that’s great. But I don’t think they can do that. I have to live in a world where we can pass cuts out of the House and of the Senate. And so growth is going to be the best chance we have to balance the budget.”

Mulvaney’s more pragmatic approach marks a major evolution. Six years earlier, during a fight over whether to raise the debt ceiling, Mulvaney picked up a Bible and read a verse from Proverbs 22 to colleagues: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”

Corker said Mulvaney’s transformation from a budget warrior to allowing larger deficits is emblematic of others in the party.

“My gosh, this was a guy that had very much of the same feelings that I had about these issues, and obviously he’s ended up being in a different place,” Corker said.

Similarly, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett wrote an article for the National Review last year titled “We Ignore the Debt at Our Peril,” arguing that the “U.S. might be closer to the brink than mainstream forecasts tend to imply.”

But asked about this Thursday, he said that addressing the debt would be a focus later in the Trump administration, after the tax-cut plan was voted into law.

“I think the debt problems are severe,” Hassett said. “I think the president views it as a multistage thing. The first order of business is to get 2 percent growth back to a rate we’re used to seeing.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said the tax-cut plan could create $2.5 trillion in new revenue by lowering rates, a position many conservative and liberal economists dispute.

The tax-cut plan “will allow them to embark on a partisan product to cut taxes for the rich, raise them for the middle class and blow a huge $1.5 trillion hole in the deficit,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday.

The new GOP embrace of deficits and growing the debt is a whiplash from recent years, when Republicans frequently clashed with President Barack Obama about government spending and federal programs.

In 2010, a fiscal commission led by Democrat Erskine Bowles and retired GOP senator Alan Simpson sought to reduce the deficit over 10 years by $4 trillion, convinced that the combination of tax increases and spending cuts would stabilize the government’s debt as a share of the economy.

In 2011, 236 House Republicans and 25 Democrats voted to add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, a sizable group that fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to send the amendment to the states for ratification.

But now, Republicans are taking steps to cut taxes and expand spending, moving sharply in the other direction.

“They are taking the ostrich approach,” said retired Republican senator Judd Gregg, who served on the Bowles-Simpson commission and supported the changes. He said the tax cuts could help grow the economy, but the lack of a focus on changes to Medicare and Social Security would prohibit any meaningful change to the debt.

The federal government is projected to spend $4.1 trillion in 2018 and bring in $3.5 trillion through taxes and other revenue. That deficit is projected to expand each year if no changes are made to the budget, until it eventually reaches a deficit of $1.46 trillion in 2027. This adds to the debt, driving up the United States’ borrowing costs and making it harder for the country to respond to emergencies, especially during economic downturns.

Cutting taxes — in the scope envisioned by the White House — could further expand the deficit because it will lead to a reduction in revenue. And Congress is looking to authorize $640 billion for the Pentagon next year, close to $100 billion higher than caps set in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act, which put annual limits on government spending.

Budget officials believe the United States is in the midst of a problematic shift, with rising health-care costs and an aging U.S. population that increases costs for Medicare and Social Security.

The House of Representatives, led by the Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), narrowly passed a budget resolution Thursday that would require that any tax plan remain “revenue neutral,” which means it could not expand the deficit. It would also require $203 billion in spending cuts to programs such as Medicaid as part of any tax package, a provision demanded by conservatives.

But the Senate budget resolution would have much looser restrictions, allowing tax cuts to add $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years and waiving any requirement for mandatory spending cuts.

And the same House conservatives that demanded Black include the mandatory spending reductions in her bill have recently signaled that these changes aren’t necessary anymore, convinced that nothing should stand in the way of the opportunity to cut taxes.

Black, in an interview, said she would fight for changes to the Senate resolution during conference negotiation. But she also suggested that she would probably back away from the revenue-neutral provision in her House resolution.

“I think there is some openness to [see] how we can get in the middle there, understanding tax reform is something that we only have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do,” she said.

Corker warned that some Republicans might become desperate, looking at that once-in-a-generation opportunity, and pass whatever they can, even if it adds trillions of dollars to the debt.

He wants the tax changes to be permanent and reduce the deficit, not grow it. If the plan doesn’t meet those parameters, Corker won’t support it.

“I fear that Republicans feel like they have to deliver so badly that I’m just fearful that there may be a movement to do whatever, even if it’s harmful to our deficit issues, just to pass anything,” Corker said.

Tax cuts for the wealthy are the most important thing to Repugs. That, and restricting women's rights.

[GreyhoundFan]

No, just no: "Erik Prince, Blackwater Founder, Weighs Primary Challenge to Wyoming Republican"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the founder of the security contractor Blackwater, is seriously considering a Republican primary challenge for a Senate seat in Wyoming, potentially adding a high-profile contender to a fledgling drive to oust establishment lawmakers with insurgents in the mold of President Trump.

Mr. Prince appears increasingly likely to challenge John Barrasso, a senior member of the Senate Republican leadership, according to people who have spoken to him in recent days. He has been urged to run next year by Stephen K. Bannon, who is leading the effort to shake up the Republican leadership with financial backing from the New York hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah.

Over the weekend, Mr. Prince traveled to Wyoming with his family to explore ways to establish residency there, said one person who had spoken to him.

If he runs, Mr. Prince would face formidable obstacles in seeking to unseat Mr. Barrasso, a popular and genial but low-profile senator who will have the full backing of Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and the well-funded political committees loyal to him. Mr. Prince, who has never run for public office, has been a controversial figure for years, as Blackwater faced a welter of ethical and legal problems over its work for the military in places like Iraq, including an episode in 2007 in which its employees killed 17 civilians in Baghdad.

While his ties to Wyoming are thin, the state is attractive to Mr. Prince because it has none of the personal political entanglements he would face in his home state of Michigan. Public records show that Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy SEALs who has lived all over the world, had an address in Wapiti, Wyo., in the state’s northwest corner, for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Though Mr. Prince carries some baggage, Republicans have privately said that a primary challenge against a lawmaker like Mr. Barrasso is the kind they fear most: an out-of-the-blue run by a renegade from the right against a senator whose sin is not a lack of conservative credentials, but an association with Mr. McConnell and other party leaders.

Those anxieties became all the more serious late last month when Roy Moore, a conservative firebrand, defeated Senator Luther Strange, a McConnell ally, in an Alabama Republican primary. Allies of Mr. McConnell spent tens of millions of dollars defending Mr. Strange, but Mr. Moore won by nine percentage points.

Mr. Prince, 48, has strong ties to the Trump administration. He served as an informal adviser during the transition, and he is the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary. He has told his sister that he would like to run against Mr. Barrasso, a person with knowledge of the conversation said.

In 1997, Mr. Prince founded Blackwater as a private, for-profit force to aid the military, and he is wealthy enough to self-finance his race. For months this year, Mr. Prince — with Mr. Bannon’s support — pushed a plan to replace soldiers with contractors in Afghanistan. The proposal, which would have radically changed the way the fight in that country is conducted, was vehemently opposed by the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and the defense secretary, Jim Mattis.

Beyond his support of the use of contractors in war zones, Mr. Prince’s views on political issues are less widely known. He has been described as a libertarian. In 1992, he supported Pat Buchanan’s run for president.

Mr. Prince is emblematic of the type of parallel government apparatus that Mr. Bannon built inside the administration during his time as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist. Mr. Bannon, with help from the Mercer family, is now trying to build the same kind of parallel structure inside the Republican Party. And Mr. Prince is not the only candidate on his wish list.

Mr. Bannon is expected to throw his support behind Chris McDaniel, a conservative state senator from Mississippi who is considering a primary challenge to United States Senator Roger Wicker, who has served since 2007 and is close to Republican leaders.

Mr. Bannon is also hoping to persuade Ann LePage, the wife of Maine’s outspoken governor, Paul LePage, to run for the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Angus King, an independent who is up for re-election in 2018.

We truly don't need Erik Prince in elected office.

[JMarie]

Rep. Marsha Blackburn is running for Senator Bob Corker's seat next year.  She's already in trouble with Twitter.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election/twitter-blocks-blackburn-campaign-video-fetal-tissue-claim-article-1.3552310

Quote

Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn's Senate campaign announcement ad has been blocked by Twitter over a statement the abortion rights opponent makes about the sale of fetal tissue for medical research.

Blackburn, who is running for the seat being opened by the retirement of Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, boasts in the ad that she "stopped the sale of baby body parts." A Twitter representative told the candidate's vendors on Monday that the statement was "deemed an inflammatory statement that is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction:

Twitter said the Blackburn campaign would be allowed to run the rest of the video if the flagged statement is omitted. While the decision keeps Blackburn from paying to promote the video on Twitter, it doesn't keep it from being linked from YouTube and other platforms.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Alexandra Petri: "The good news about Bob Corker’s comments? Everyone in the Senate agrees!"

Spoiler

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Lame Duck, Tenn.) recently gave an explosive 25-minute interview to the New York Times describing the president as being in need of constant supervision who is liable to get us into World War III. Great. He said, among other things: “Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here … of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

A rough summary of his comments follows.

The president? Oh, no, he’s totally unfit. I am terrified for this country. Everyone in the Senate agrees. That is why we have, so far, not really said or done anything to contradict his agenda (except by a margin of one or two harrowing votes after receiving approximately 1,850,000 irate phone calls apiece).

But you have to understand: We are all constantly terrified. We all should be terrified. It’s even worse than you realize. Picture what you think it is, and then light it on fire and toss rusty nails and loose plague rats everywhere.

Listen, this is a living nightmare. The president no longer speaks in complete sentences, if he ever did. The last time we visited together he was gnawing on what appeared to be a severed human leg. You know that painting of Saturn devouring his children? That’s his bedtime ritual.

Chief of Staff John Kelly is very faint and weak because he doesn’t know what would happen if he ever slept when the president was awake. He is squatting on top of a giant throne of empty Red Bulls hissing at anyone who approaches, and he is still the sanest man in the building. I don’t know how much longer he can stay awake, or what will happen when he shuts his eyes.

The last time I visited the White House, they had put those little plastic things in all the sockets, and when I casually went to plug in my cellphone, three different aides screamed at me not to touch anything because of “what happened last time.” I don’t know what happened last time. After looking into an aide’s haunted eyes, I don’t think I ever want to know. I think the only thing that lets me sleep at night is that I have not seen what he has seen.

That is why I have voted with President Trump more than 80 percent of the time.

Look, everyone in the Senate agrees. We all know how bad it is. Whole subcommittees have gone in on time-share bunkers together. World War III is a real possibility. Fortunately, the contractors who will supply weapons for World War III are in one of my colleagues’ home state, and the individuals whose charred, bleeding hands will supply arrows and stones for World War IV are in all of our states. So there’s a slim upside there, I guess. But we know by what a pathetically thin thread the country is hanging. We all know.

The Senate halls are full of screaming all the time because we are so afraid, so so afraid. We scream from morning until night until our throats are raw. We scream from the moment we arrive in the morning until the second someone turns on a camera so that we can make a statement offering the president our public support.

But the strain is unbearable. We can’t live like this. I am just saying what we long have thought. Everyone agrees with me, which you can tell from almost zero of their public actions and on-the-record statements, but trust me, we all have our eyes open to the full horror of it all.

It’s like being in Caligula’s court, except Caligula’s court had nice sculptures and sometimes you got to hang out with a horse. It’s like being trapped in a Tudor novel. I can’t read “Wolf Hall”; my hands just start shaking and shaking.

This is not normal. This is not okay. And I am doing what it takes: giving an interview to a media outlet stating my concerns! And uh, no that’s, that’s sort of it, but that’s doing something, I feel. It’s still more than anyone else has done.

For too long, this has been an open secret that no one does anything about, but now it will just be an open — thing that no one does anything about.

That’s progress, I think.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Shady, shady, shady: "Undisclosed deal guaranteed Roy Moore $180,000 a year for part-time work at charity"

Spoiler

Former Alabama judge Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, once said publicly that he did not take a “regular salary” from the small charity he founded to promote Christian values because he did not want to be a financial burden.

But privately, Moore had arranged to receive a salary of $180,000 a year for part-time work at the Foundation for Moral Law, internal charity documents show. He collected more than $1 million as president from 2007 to 2012, compensation that far surpassed what the group disclosed in its public tax filings most of those years.

When the charity couldn’t afford the full amount, Moore in 2012 was given a promissory note for backpay eventually worth $540,000 or an equal stake of the charity’s most valuable asset, a historic building in Montgomery, Ala., mortgage records show. He holds that note even now, a charity official said.

A Washington Post review of public and internal charity documents found that errors and gaps in the group’s federal tax filings obscured until now the compensation paid to Moore, whose defeat last month of President Trump’s choice for Republican nominee in the Senate race will likely embolden far-right challengers to the party’s mainstream incumbents. Moore is the front-runner in the race to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The charity helped Moore thrive - financially and otherwise - after his ouster from the state’s Supreme Court in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the courthouse. The group has filed scores of legal briefs in cases involving conservative Christian issues, but it was in many ways built around Moore himself.

At a time when Moore was running for other public offices in Alabama, the charity kept him in the public eye and helped establish a nationwide network of donors while he took on controversial positions against same-sex marriage, Islam and the separation of church and state. Over the years, it has provided him with health-care benefits, travel expenses and a bodyguard, documents show.

The Foundation for Moral Law’s website routinely promoted Moore’s speaking engagements and his book, “So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom.” In his last two years as president, as fundraising dwindled, Moore’s compensation amounted to about a third of the contributions to the group, tax filings show.

The charity has employed at least two of Moore’s children, although their compensation is not reflected in tax filings. Moore’s wife, Kayla, who is now president, was paid a total of $195,000 over three years through 2015.

Moore’s charitable and political activities have also overlapped in significant ways. The former longtime executive director of the charity now serves as Moore’s campaign manager. The charity retained the same fundraising firm used by three of Moore’s most recent campaigns for state office, public records show.

An Internal Revenue Service audit of the Foundation for Moral Law’s 2013 finances, provided by the charity, concluded that it left out information about fundraising and other activities on its public tax filings and also identified discrepancies between those filings and its internal books. The IRS wrote that the issues “could jeopardize your exempt status.”

...

Seven charity and tax law specialists consulted by The Post said the nonprofit’s activities raised questions about compliance with IRS rules, including prohibitions on the use of a charity for the private benefit or enrichment of an individual.

“The biggest issue is the benefit to Roy Moore,” said Paul Streckfus, a former tax lawyer at the IRS and editor of the EO Tax Journal, when told of The Post’s findings.

In interviews with The Post, Alabama Circuit Court Judge John Bentley, a longtime member of the charity’s board and its former chairman, denied that the Foundation for Moral Law served Moore’s personal or political goals. He said the group’s officials did not intentionally do anything wrong. 

 But he said that he could not fully explain inconsistencies in audits and public tax filings, and that he and other board members did not provide enough oversight. He acknowledged the nonprofit was essentially run by Moore and his family.

“That’s my fault,” he said. “I should have been a lot more active than I was.”

Roy and Kayla Moore did not respond to interview requests. Kayla Moore provided answers to detailed questions in a statement, and the charity gave The Post internal documents to clarify why Moore received the promissory note. The agreement that he would receive compensation of $180,000 a year, described in those documents, has not been previously reported.

A year after his election to the state Supreme Court in 2000, Moore drew national attention and controversy for installing a 2.6-ton monument of the Ten Commandments in the court’s building. His ouster from the bench in 2003, after he refused to obey a federal court ruling to remove the monument, made him a hero among some evangelical Christians. 

As he fought against litigation to move the monument, friends and allies created an organization they called the Roy Moore Legal Defense Fund and began raising money. The organization’s first application to be recognized as a charity was rejected in 2004 because the IRS determined that it “operated for the benefit of private interests.” 

The group renamed itself the Foundation for Moral Law and broadened its mission, saying it would promote the idea that “our rights are given to us by our Creator.” The following year, the IRS approved it as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity, allowing contributors to deduct donations. 

Moore became its chairman and traveled the country, giving speeches and making media appearances. He received no compensation at first, although the charity provided health insurance and covered travel expenses. The organization also gave him VIP-level security, paying for bulletproof vests and a bodyguard, a martial arts expert and cousin of former heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield, records show.

“Judge was traveling the country speaking. He needed protection due to threats,” Kayla Moore said in her statement to The Post.

Political observers considered the nonprofit a showcase for the former judge.

“It was a platform for Roy Moore to advance himself on any possible front, whether it was political or oratorical,” said William Stewart, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alabama and a longtime observer of Moore’s career.

Joining Moore at the nonprofit were two other state Supreme Court employees who also lost their jobs over the monument controversy. One of them, Richard Hobson — now Moore’s campaign manager in the Senate race — became the charity’s president. Moore’s daughter, Heather, became its receptionist. 

In an interview, Bentley, the board member, played down the hiring of Moore’s family members, describing them as “cheap labor.” He said he did not know exactly how much they were paid.

With donations pouring in — more than $1.5 million in 2005 — the charity bought a pre-Civil War office building in downtown Montgomery for $546,000 and began renovations costing hundreds of thousands more, records show. 

The charity hired the Richard Norman Company, a fundraising firm in Virginia that raised money for conservative candidates. Months later, as Moore launched a campaign for Alabama governor, he turned to the firm for his political fundraising as well, drawing donors from across the country.

In an interview, founder Richard Norman said his firm kept the charitable and political operations separate. But he acknowledged that in both contexts Roy Moore’s defiance of the federal government was a central selling point.

“He's known as ‘The Ten Commandments Judge,’” he said. “That story was an important part of every fundraising appeal we did.” 

Moore lost the race.

In 2007, Moore became the charity’s president, committing himself to 20 hours a week, according to tax filings. The board agreed to pay him; the question was how much. They considered a figure as high as $500,000 annually, according to an internal letter the charity provided to The Post.

...

On March 5, they decided to follow Moore’s lead. “Judge Moore has recommended a salary of $180,000,” Bentley, then the chairman, wrote to other board members. 

They agreed to pay him in an unusual way. Moore would be paid whatever speaking fees and donations to the charity he could generate through what was called “Project Jeremiah,” the group’s ministry to pastors and preachers. But he was guaranteed $180,000 a year under the agreement, with the charity making up the difference if Project Jeremiah revenue fell short. If the charity did not have the cash in a given year, the debt to Moore would accumulate.

The Foundation for Moral Law created a separate bank account and earmarked donations to “Project Jeremiah” specifically for Moore, Bentley said. 

“This is a very important project to restore a proper understanding of God to the preachers of our land, but I need your help!” Moore wrote in 2007 in a personal fundraising message about “Project Jeremiah” on the charity’s website. “My resources are limited.”

The salary agreement and “Project Jeremiah” were not disclosed in the charity’s tax filings that year. Moore’s compensation was reported as $105,500.

The charity’s descriptions on public documents of its payments to Moore varied greatly. In some years, including 2007, he was described as an outside legal contractor, tax filings show, and in others he was paid as president. His reported compensation ranged from $55,392 to $105,500 — and not until 2012 did the figure match the $180,000 the board had agreed to pay him.

...

Martin Wishnatsky, a spokesman for the charity, said Moore was never a legal consultant, despite the statements in tax filings.

“Judge Moore never received separate amounts for ‘legal work,’” Wishnatsky said in a statement. “That description was a shorthand for the services he provided to the Foundation that included overall supervision, educational programs, and participation in preparing amicus briefs on religious liberty and related issues.” 

By 2011, attention to Moore’s monument battle was waning. Donations to the Foundation for Moral Law were in a nose-dive, down by almost two-thirds from 2005. But the board stood by its pledge to give Moore $180,000 in compensation each year.

On Feb. 17, documents show, the board convened for an annual meeting in Gadsden, Alabama. There was only one item on the agenda: how to pay Moore for “arrearages of salary during the past four (4) years,” according to the board’s record of the meeting. 

Lacking the ability to pay him cash, the board agreed to give Moore a promissory note worth $393,000 that Moore could cash in on demand, documents show. The board backed up its promise with a second mortgage on the charity’s historic building. In effect, the board was giving him the opportunity to foreclose on its headquarters to collect what he was owed. It also authorized Bentley to increase the amount owed to Moore as needed.

Among the nine members on the board was Kayla Moore, who recused herself from the vote.

Later that year, while giving an opening statement on behalf of the charity in a legal dispute with a telemarketing company, Moore played down his financial arrangements.

“My salary does not come by way of a regular salary from the Foundation, but through a special project that I run so that I don’t inhibit the Foundation,” he told a jury in August, according to a transcript of the hearing in federal court in Ohio.

In December 2011, Bentley agreed to increase the amount of debt to Moore, anchored by the mortgage, to $498,000, records show. 

The back-pay arrangement was not disclosed to the IRS on annual tax filings until Nov. 14, 2012, one week after Moore won an election to return to Alabama’s Supreme Court. The tax filing, covering 2011, said he had been paid $393,000 in “retirement or other deferred compensation,” reflecting the amount in the original note, although mortgage records show the higher figure.

For 2012, Bentley bumped up the indebtedness to $540,000, mortgage documents show. On tax filings for that year, the charity said he was paid $138,000 in “reportable” compensation and $42,000 in “other” pay — for the first time reflecting the $180,000 total he was to receive each year under the agreement.

...

Moore’s full $180,000 compensation should have been disclosed each year, whether it was paid to him or accumulated as debt, said Marcus Owens, who led the tax-exempt organizations division at the IRS from 1990 to 1999.

“The treatment of the payments to him really is quite irregular,” Owens said.

Eve Borenstein, an expert on nonprofit tax law, said the annual tax filings, known as a Form 990, are the public’s only way to know how charities are spending donations and paying their employees each year.

“If people do not report what is intended to have sunlight on it, there’s no point in having the form,” she said.

Officials with the charity did not respond to questions about why its tax filings for the five years beginning in 2007 did not reflect the board’s obligation to pay Moore $180,000 a year.

Kayla Moore became the charity’s president when Moore returned to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2013, making $65,000 a year from 2013 to 2015. Roy Moore was kicked off the court for a second time last year for ordering state judges not to honor a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage.

In February this year, the IRS concluded its audit of the charity’s 2013 finances, according to the documents provided to The Post. The IRS identified problems that it said could threaten the group’s tax-exempt status if not resolved.

The IRS wrote that the charity “did not identify its special fundraising activities.” It also found that the group’s tax filings contained figures that “did not reflect those recorded on your books of account.” The document does not detail the activities or figures at issue.

In recent weeks, the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group in Washington, accused the charity of openly promoting Moore’s Senate campaign through a Facebook page titled “Foundation for Moral Law.” Charities are prohibited by law from supporting or opposing political candidates. 

Kayla Moore said in her statement to The Post that the Facebook page “is not an official page of the Foundation for Moral Law.”

In an interview, Bentley said he could not account for all of the gaps and inaccuracies in tax filings, audits and other documents, in part because he had devoted so little time to overseeing the group’s finances. 

“I can understand why that would raise some concerns,” he said.

 

[47of74]

Way to punt on this issue, you goddamn coward.

Quote

House Speaker Paul Ryan says bump stocks - devices that can effectively turn semi-automatic rifles into fully automated weapons - should be addressed through a regulatory change.

The devices have drawn attention because they were found among the arsenal of the killer in the Las Vegas massacre.

Legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate to ban their use. But Ryan says addressing the issue by regulation instead would be "the smartest, quickest fix."

He also questioned why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives approved the use of bump stocks in the first place. That happened under the Obama administration.

You know for a fucking fact that if a regulation was proposed to ban bump stocks Ryan and the rest of the GOP would be right there to oppose it. 

[CTRLZero]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Officials with the charity did not respond to questions about why its tax filings for the five years beginning in 2007 did not reflect the board’s obligation to pay Moore $180,000 a year.

Isn't there a "Thou Shalt Not" connected to this sort of thing?  Sigh...

[47of74]

29 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

Isn't there a "Thou Shalt Not" connected to this sort of thing?  Sigh...

Um, thou shalt not steal?  

I think The Lord should have made Thou Shalt Not Be A Fornicating Hypocrite one of the commandments instead of telling people not to take his name in vain or telling them to honor the Sabbath. 

[47of74]

And of course Iowa's own fucking idiot of a Congressman had to open his trap...

Quote

Republican Rep. Steve King says young immigrants brought to the United States as children and now here illegally would generate an economic lift for Mexico and other Central American nations if they were to return.

The Iowa congressman says "maybe the best thing we could do for our neighbors to the South is give them back their talent and restore our rule of law."

King is opposed to a program under former President Barack Obama that granted a deportation reprieve to about 800,000 young immigrants.