Remember Republicans or Conservatives or Tea baggers - whatever they're calling themselves these days. You know the self described "patriots" that brought us the Great Recession and made American tax payers pay a trillion dollars to invade and rebuild Iraq and lots of other fun stuff that undermined our freedom and financial security. They're determined to stop new Wall St regulation that would stop another recession by too big to fail banks and financial institutions. The Battle Lines by Matthew Yglesias,
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/04/the-battle-lines.php
Back in January, Frank Luntz wrote a memo saying that the best way to defend Wall Street from any new regulation was to spuriously characterize efforts at regulatory reform as leading to “endless bailouts.” Then earlier this week, GOP Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn met with leading bankers and promised to defend their interests, asking only for huge sums of cash in exchange. Today, all 41 Senate Republicans have signed a letter promising to oppose the Democrats’ Wall Street reform bill with none of them offering any alternative proposals of their own.
They claim that the bill “allows for endless taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street and establishes new and unlimited regulatory powers that will stifle small businesses and community banks.”
Of course the status quo already allows for endless taxpayer bailouts. The point of the new regulatory powers it to (a) prevent the need for bailouts and (b) provide an alternative process to bailouts. The banks aren’t paying McConnell to put a stop to bailouts, they’re paying him to prevent the regulations that might stop bailouts.
* Another conservative gift that keeps on giving - giving America the shaft - the Right-wing Republican Media - About those 25 tax increases... http://mediamatters.org/blog/201004160049
Faced with the uncomfortable fact that President Obama lowered federal taxes for the vast majority of Americans this year, conservative media are looking to Congressional Republicans for talking points that harmonize better than reality with all those "Taxed Enough Already" people demonstrating on the mall this week. Fortunately, Michigan Republican Dave Camp released a document listing 25 "tax increases" signed into law by Obama since January 2009 "totaling more than $670 billion, or more than $2,100 for every man, woman and child in the United States." The next day, the "25 tax increases" claim appeared in the Wall Street Journal via Karl Rove. It jumped from there to Fox News, where Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade referenced Rove's column and said, "According to these statistics, there's been 25 tax increases since Barack Obama took office in 2008, so when people say wow, I feel overtaxed, they're pointing right to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue." Kilmeade repeated the statement on today's show, this time dropping the citation to Rove, let alone to the House GOP.
Camp's document does list 25 provisions from 5 pieces of legislation that taken all together, raise $670 billion over ten years. Most of these provisions won't go into effect for years and won't directly affect most of us. As the document itself notes, it is a list of "gross tax increases," not net tax increases, so it's really only a useful source of information for people like, well, Republican politicians and their media tools. It appears to count as a "tax increase" any provision that raises revenue relative to what would have otherwise occurred. And since it doesn't provide any information about provisions that reduce revenue -- such as the small business tax credits and exchange subsidies in the health care reform law or the tax cuts from the stimulus package -- it doesn't tell us much about how Obama is changing the country's tax bill overall. Nor does it attempt to weigh the merits of the revenue-raising provisions, which is something you'd think those concerned about the budget deficit would want to do.
Notably, several of the provisions listed would not be characterized as "tax increases" by most people. For example:
Eliminating the deduction for expense allocable to Medicare Part D subsidy. Camp lists this provision in the health care reform law as a "tax increase" that will raise revenue by $4.5 billion over ten years. The provision eliminates a loophole that allowed companies to take a tax deduction on a tax-free government subsidy. So not only does this not impose a new tax on businesses, it doesn't touch the chunk of taxpayer cash we give tax-free to companies for providing Medicare Part D benefits for their retirees. All it does is say that businesses can't then count that subsidy as an expense and deduct it from their taxable income. Funny I didn't see any signs demanding Congress reinstate corporate "double-dipping" at the tea party rallies.
Making "black liquor" ineligible for cellulosic biofuel producer credit. Camp has this down as a $23.6 billion tax increase over ten years. "Black liquor" is a wood byproduct burned by paper companies to generate electricity. In recent years, papermakers realized that they could get a hold of some taxpayer handouts by mixing diesel fuel into the black liquor, rendering themselves eligible for an alternative fuels tax credit. This provision ensures that papermakers using black liquor do not get tax breaks that were never meant for them. I can almost feel my freedom shrinking.
Codifying economic substance doctrine and imposing penalties for underpayments. This provision raises $4.5 billion over ten years. According to the Tax Policy Center, codifying the "economic substance" doctrine is part of an effort "to address the problem of abusive tax shelters." The measure aims to make it easier for courts to judge when a company is involved in a bogus transaction designed to reduce their tax bill. I think most would dispute the claim that encouraging companies to pay their fair share of taxes amounts to a "tax increase."
Repealing guidance allowing certain taxpayers to claim losses of an acquired corporation. This provision raises around $7 billion and has a complicated history. Presumably in order to encourage mergers, in the midst of the financial crisis the Bush administration issued a "sweeping change to two decades of tax policy" that gave "banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion," according to The Washington Post. The change allowed firms acquiring failing banks to use the acquired company's losses to reduce their taxes. The Post reported that Republican senator Charles Grassley was "particularly outraged" about the change. The stimulus bill Obama signed last year prospectively repealed that taxpayer giveaway to the financial industry.
* And Rush Limbaugh stopped taking hillbilly heroin long enough to tell some lies over the gaves of the recently killed mine workers. Rush Lies Again: ‘There Were Union Workers’ At Non-Union Mine Explosion
Last Friday, Rush Limbaugh demanded to know why a coal miner union didn’t protect the 29 miners who were killed in one of Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s mines. After ThinkProgress reported that there was no union at the mine, Limbaugh claimed yesterday that it was a “fact” that “there were union workers there.” Limbaugh cited a news article that the “National Labor Relations Board has affirmed a decision that Massey Energy must rehire 85 coal miners who alleged they were illegally discriminated against because of their union affiliation.” Limbaugh concluded that “the left” who “are trying to blame the Massey disaster on its union busting” were wrong:
So there were union workers there, and so the United Mine Workers should have been overseeing their safety. United Mine Workers of America. There were union workers at that mine, and the left is trying to say, “You can’t say that, Limbaugh! Why it’s a nonunion shop. That SOB CEO got rid of all the unions!” No, no. He agreed to bring back 85 of them. You people, it’s been 21 years. At some point you are going to learn: If you go up against me on a challenge of fact, you are going to be wrong. It’s just that simple.
Watch video at link of this disgusting bag of Republican slime at work.
On this “challenge of fact,” Limbaugh is wrong once again. The 85 union coal miners were actually at a different Massey subsidiary at a different mine in a different county than the one where the disaster occurred. The coal miners that Limbaugh references were located at Mammoth Coal’s Mammoth (formerly Cannelton) mine in Kannawha County, WV, while the tragedy occurred in Performance Coal’s Upper Big Branch-South mine in Raleigh County, WV.
In fact, Blankenship successfully fought three different attempts by the United Mine Workers of America to unionize Upper Big Branch in the 1990s. After the last union drive failed, Blankenship cut bonuses in half and increased hours by fifty percent.
Update Andrew Tyndall observed the network nightly news coverage of the disaster and notes:
Not once, in all five days of coverage, did a single reporter mention the organization that has worked hardest over the decades to make sure that mining management does not cut safety corners and that miners can monitor their own working conditions with impunity. The union went unmentioned, as did the fact that the Upper Big Branch workforce went unorganized.
However, MSNBC's Ed Schultz has dedicated significant coverage to the lack of union representation at the mines.
Update Phil Smith, Communications Director for the United Mine Workers of America, tells ThinkProgress that Massey Energy is still appealing the NLRB decision, and that the 85 union miners have not been rehired. In fact, Massey Energy has not employed any union miners for over a decade. There are only about 80 UMWA members working for Massey, not in the mines but at two preparation plants in West Virginia.
