The Taxman Cometh for trump

Along with all the other bad news donald trump's been getting this month, this week revealed the US House Ways and Means Committee voted on making trump's federal income tax filings available to the public.

You might remember a while back, trump lost his fight to keep his tax returns private when the Supreme Court - even stacked with Far Right Republicans - said "Haha, no." As I noted at the time:

Although Reuters didn't go into the reason(s) why the Ways and Means were looking at trump's taxes, if I recall from other sources it was because the Committee was digging into trump's many violations of the Emoluments Clause. trump had been using his properties to entice and squeeze as much money out of the government (forcing the Secret Service to reside at his hotels at double-billing!) and foreign lobbyists since Day One. It had been this long going after trump on this open grift - delayed either by Republican control of Congress or trump's control of the Justice Department - that only now have the courts cleared this matter.

Problem is, the current Democratic control of Ways and Means is going to end in a month: Republicans won a narrow victory to control the House, and there is no way the MAGA wingnuts running the GOP caucus is going to expose their God-Emperor trump to public scrutiny. If there's anything the current committee can use the tax returns info they now have, they better make it quick before Christmas...

Ah, yes. They did. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh, that felt goooooood.

It turns out I was wrong on the reasons why the Ways and Means wanted to examine trump's tax returns. The House committee wasn't so much looking at if trump was violating the Emoluments Clause, but if the Internal Revenue Service was doing their job in automatically auditing trump as sitting President Loser of the Popular Vote.

Turns out there's an Executive standing order - due to Richard Nixon's brush with tax dodging back in 1973 - that mandates the IRS audit the President every year he's in office. And it turns out the Ways and Means' worries were legit: Turns out the audits were not happening to trump (via Dustin Jones at NPR):

The House Ways and Means Committee in its own report said it found that only one audit was started while Trump was in office and no audits were completed.

This is in violation of standing IRS policy.

"The Committee expected that these mandatory audits were being conducted promptly and in accordance with IRS policies," Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said in a statement. "However, our review found that under the prior administration, the program was dormant. We know now, the first mandatory audit was opened two years into his presidency. On the same day this Committee requested his returns."

This raises a few questions. Above all, the question "Who gave the order to stop auditing trump?" This is something either the IRS head (who was originally an Obama appointee up until 2018) or the Treasury Secretary (trump ally - and corrupt SOB - Mnuchin) interfered.

There's a bit of irony here in that - of all the Presidents and candidates for that office - trump is the only one since the Nixon era who both refused to publicly reveal his tax returns and then refused to let the IRS audit them. All the while excusing his refusal by claiming he was being audited (oops, he really wasn't) as though that would have stopped him (it wouldn't have. Presidents released their tax returns every year even as they were being audited by the rules).

Even as the tax experts start poring over the actual numbers in trump's filings, these failures of accountability are troubling signs that serious reforms towards transparency and Congressional oversight are needed. As Steve Benen notes over at Rachel Maddow's Blog on MSNBC: 

In the wake of Nixon’s resignation, a series of ethics reforms were created, including an automatic audit of every sitting president’s taxes, every year, regardless of circumstances. A president need not be suspected of any wrongdoing; the reform was simply created to help bolster public confidence.

Most modern presidents, eager to appear forthcoming, released their tax returns to the public anyway. Trump — the only modern major-party presidential nominee to refuse to disclose his tax returns — used the post-Watergate reform as an excuse to justify secrecy.

Indeed, even after taking office in 2017, the Republican refused to release the materials, insisting that he couldn’t because he was under audit. Even at the time, the argument didn’t make sense: Trump was free to release the documents anyway, as other modern presidents from both parties had done.

But we now know that the underlying assumption was also wrong: The automatic, mandatory audit didn’t happen.

This is important for a variety of reasons. For one thing, Trump lied. For another, there was an apparent breakdown in the system that warrants additional scrutiny: If the IRS was required to audit the then-president as a matter of course, there should be some kind of explanation as to why this didn’t happen.

But let’s also not miss the forest for the trees: The whole point of the congressional exercise, the foundational basis for Neal’s initial outreach to the Treasury Department nearly four years ago, was a Ways and Means Committee investigation into the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program.

The former president, his lawyers, and his GOP allies insisted that there was no “legislative purpose” to the inquiry, and the committee’s work on the issue was little more than a political fishing expedition.

Those complaints have now collapsed. The committee set out to scrutinize the IRS’s presidential audit program and it found a problem with the IRS’s presidential audit program...

The political conversation about Trump’s secrecy has been going on for years. The policy conversation about the IRS and presidential tax returns is just getting started.

It seems unlikely that with the Republicans less than a month away from controlling the House will follow through on any reforms to fix the IRS on this matter. To Republicans, their only idea to reform the IRS is to abolish it before it holds the rich accountable for what they haven't paid in back taxes. You would think that with a Democrat currently in office - hi, Joe! - the Republicans would be eager to make it hurt by forcing Biden to humble himself before the Taxman. But the GOP knows full well that Biden - who has released his tax returns, just like Obama and Dubya and Clinton and so on - won't be bothered or embarrassed by that. Only trump - who wants to hide the reality of his business failings - would be hurt by such reforms.

It's doubtful any reforms are forthcoming, not until there's sensible (Democratic) leadership in both houses again.

What is forthcoming is the likely exposure of trump's "creative accounting" showing up in his federal tax returns. As the recent criminal trial revealed, trump's own company has been caught "cooking the books" as it were at the state level. And trump is facing a New York state civil trial that's revealing even more questionable tax behavior regarding his property values and sources of income.

It's now a question if trump tried pulling the same stunts with the IRS. Given his arrogance, the odds favor trump being that reckless.

Dude. Even the Joker didn't try to fuck with the IRS.

This is how they got Al Capone.

trump is toast.

Florida Ballot Amendments 2022: Short But Not Simple

It's September in an election midterms cycle, so you know what THAT means!!!

PIZZAAAAAAA!!!!

...wait, I'm on a diet now. Back up, let's rethink this. Oh, now I remember.

STATE BALLOT REFERENDUMS!!!

I'm gonna do what I often do - link to Ballotpedia's page on 2022 Florida Referenda - and then provide a little commentary on why certain amendments deserve your vote and certain other amendments don't.

An interesting note about this year's referenda: There were no voter-petitioned (Initiated) amendments put on the ballot this cycle. Either the requirements for those type of amendments got stricter, or nobody had an issue that reached high enough voter interest to get enough signatures to make it. There is a possibility the pandemic made it harder during 2021-22 to get volunteers and registration tables set up to get those signatures. Still, I do wonder. If anybody in the know can tell me, please leave a comment.

Now, to the issues.

Amendment One: Disregard Flood Resistance Improvements in Property Value Assessments

The title is wordy and a bit confusing. The synopsis tells us a Yes vote means "authorizing the state legislature to pass laws prohibiting flood resistance improvements to a home from being taken into consideration when determining a property's assessed value for property tax purposes." Voting No obviously means it won't let the state do this.

What this involves is giving homeowners options to make flood resistance improvements without such expensive items impact the property value assessments that tax appraisers would use to increase the tax value of that house. Meaning a form of tax deduction on what people will owe on those properties.

On the one hand, it falls under the Far Right obsession with lowering tax revenues that the state could collect on, which IMHO hurts our state's ability to build up funds to pay for shit like schools, roads, clean water, social safety nets, etc. On the other hand, it provides a tax credit of sorts for those who DO redevelop their property to better withstand flooding issues.

It should be a huge warning sign that even state Republicans admit that climate change is getting severe enough that flooding is a bigger problem than ever. It'd be nice if they passed more laws to combat the root cause to ensure flooding recedes as a problem (aheh).

This would be a reasonable YES vote for most voters. I just wish we had better amendments that didn't focus on cutting taxes our counties would need.

Amendment Two: Abolishes the Florida Constitution Revision Commission

You might recall four years ago (2018) we had a slew of amendments on the state ballot that exceeded the number we'd see for normal referendum cycles. What happened was a constitution-required Revision Commission was at work that year. Every 20 years, that Commission shows up - filled with Governor-nominated political hacks - to put any number of amendments that the legislature may have wanted done but couldn't get past their 60 percent supermajority... and maybe any popular voter initiatives that couldn't get enough signatures.

Problem in 2018 was - and if you link back to what I posted about that cycle - the Commission crammed together a series of multi-issue referenda: Each Commission amendment had two or three disparate issues under consideration, meaning people who were voting Yes for one thing were forced to vote Yes for other things they would otherwise had voted No.

As I noted on one of the amendments that had non-related matters to vote on:

They're trying to get people to vote for the one thing that matters - the victims' rights - to one thing that the legislature ought to do itself - raise retirement age - and then to one thing that would make our legal system worse - denying courts from getting administrative input.

It angered a lot of people, even some of the Republicans, and it led to the Legislature agreeing to the idea of abolishing the 20-year Commission outright.

Here's the problem: The Commission itself is not a bad idea.

The reason for that Commission is obvious: Political logjams in the Legislature prevents certain popular issues from getting resolved; also the strict requirements for public initiatives are needed to prevent our ballots from getting swamped by extremists pushing bad agendas. The Commission is a third option, one that if applied properly could allow voters to pass needed reforms that our state government might not make.

What really went wrong in 2018 was that the Commission had no set guidelines on how to proceed - it sets its own rules rather than by court or legislative mandates - and so abused their power to cram - also called "bundling" as many unpopular and partisan ballot referendums alongside popular ones in an attempt to screw over the voters. Instead of abolishing the Commission, our state needs to reform it by setting rules and requirements to ensure it works properly.

We need to make it so that the Commission CANNOT cram multiple ballot issues onto one "bundled" amendment. Each issue should stand alone. That would be a major improvement right there. Then, there needs to be a set limit of Commission-based amendments - say, a top ten of amendments that passed their committee votes - so that way the ballot doesn't get overwhelmed, and then any left over by the Commission can be converted into public initiatives for signatures and hopefully make it onto the next election cycle's ballot. I would also argue that the membership of the Commission should not be by governor appointment (which allowed then-Governor Scott to fill it with hacks) but by popular vote: Have voters choose an open ballot of candidates in the previous election cycle, make it so each major party nominates UP TO 25 candidates (the candidates should have requirements to run to ensure no extremists get on ballot), and the top 37 vote getters go in meaning it will be an automatic mix of both parties.

Just those three fixes alone would work. Straight-out abolition of a reform method would hurt the state in the long run.

I would argue NO against this amendment. There are better ways to fix the Commission, not kill it.

Amendment Three: Yet Another Homestead Exemption for Certain Public Service Workers

If there's anything predictable about the Republicans in our legislature, it's that they want to create more and more exemptions to the Homestead Exemption on property taxes. Just keep on making it harder for counties to pay for themselves, Tallahassee! /headdesk

At some point I swear Florida Republicans will eliminate property taxes altogether, at which point everything will be paid through sales taxes that hurt the poor the most... /more headdesk

This time around, the exemption idea is for "Additional homestead property tax exemption on $50,000 of assessed value on property owned by certain public service workers including teachers, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel, active duty members of the military and Florida National Guard, and child welfare service employees." I thought they've already passed a ton of exemptions for law enforcement and military residents already, but hey let's give them $50,000 more of a tax cut shall we?

At least this time around they're providing tax cuts for the more "liberal" leaning professions like teachers and social workers, so this is not as bad an exemption push as the earlier ones. Any benefit to our beleaguered teachers and family welfare workers is a nice thing to consider

The only problem with this exemption? It doesn't seem to cover OTHER public service employees like county and city officials. LIKE LIBRARIANS!!!!!!! YES, I AM ANGRY I'M GETTING OVERLOOKED. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE HYPOCRISY, I CARE ABOUT GETTING MY CONDO'S TAXES DOWN!!! AAAAUUUuuugggg.... cough cough... um, sorry about that, got a little self-serving there for a moment.

Look, previous experience has taught me that these Homestead exemption amendments are popular and tend to get passed in spite of my pro-tax (in moderation, in short "tax the rich 'cause they're the only ones who can afford to anymore") world-view. It's likely a lot of teachers and their families will vote for this, which is a broad voting base on its own. This ballot affects enough people in what they'll view as a positive that they'll likely support it.

I'll just sit over here grumbling to myself about the slight to librarians and tell you I'm personally a No on this.

--

This is, as mentioned earlier, a relatively quiet amendment cycle for Florida. It should be relatively easy for everyone to remember. If anything, the amendment that means the most this term - Amendment Two abolishing the Revision Commission - is the one I really want voters to say NO to. That's what matters here.

Also, I want a huge Democratic / Blue Wave turnout this midterms to vote that asshole DeSantis and every other Republican out of office, but you should have learned that by now.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, FLORIDA DEMOCRATS!

The Two Certain Things In Life: Trump Being a Con Artist and Taxes.

So the New York Times received an envelope mailed from Barad-dur Trump Tower itself, and they apparently took the time to get the papers inside that envelope vetted, and last night they released what their Sunday paper was going with on the front page:

Trump Tax Records Obtained by The Times Reveal He Could Have Avoided Paying Taxes for Nearly Two Decades

Remember the constant drum beats from Democrats, critics, certain media pundits, and pretty much most Americans that Trump should publicly release his tax records the way most candidates have done since 1968?

Remember how Trump kept throwing up excuse after excuse after lie?

"Oh, I'm being audited, rules say I can't release while I'm audited." IRS says nuh-uh, nothing stopped him from that obligation.

"It's meaningless, I'm rich, believe me." Reagan taught us to Trust But Verify, Ferret-hair.

"Oh, you won't like what you see so I just won't release them." ...Well, that turned out to be right.

Just the brief taste of revelation we're getting here - a set of state-level returns documenting the fallout of Trump's disasters in the early 1990s - is enough to raise more red flags than a mailbox vendor convention:

The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period...

I don't who this is worse for: Trump, or the state and federal governments whose tax laws allow a massive black hole like $916 MILLION IN LOSSES turn into a decades-long benefit for uber-rich people. I doubt that kind of loss for a middle-income small-business owner would turn into 18 years of write-offs.

Just remember: The NYTimes reportedly has more tax returns in their possession. They just needed to release this one first because all the following tax papers require this context.

Aside from the schadenfreude of guessing just who within Trump Tower itself has betrayed their master,* this brings up a set of troubling facts:

1) This revelation demonstrates once again that the current tax code benefits the wealthy over the rest of us. The tax breaks Trump is qualifying for - even with his massive financial disasters - are simply unavailable to lesser incomes,

2) This one tax return is showing massive losses close to A BILLION DOLLARS. Given Trump's obvious habits of bankruptcies, failures, sinkholes, money pits, shell games, and additional screw-ups, how bad are the other years' returns?

3) We've had Trump running around this Presidential campaign cycle claiming he's worth $10 Billion. Yet this one tax return suggests he's lost hundreds of millions before with little evidence he's been able to reclaim any of that back (the reports of him living entirely off credit and Other's People Money become more obvious by the minute). Either he's really not worth billions of dollars - in which case he's clearly lying to EVERYBODY from the Beltway pundits to the American voters - or he's falsely reporting lost earnings to the tax collection agencies in order to scam them on the benefits of reporting these "losses". Either way, he's committing FRAUD.

This is Trump, aiming for the hat trick of stupidity, scamming, and self-aggrandizement.

Never one to apologize or admit a mistake of this scale, Trump's response to this has been to accuse the leak of being illegal and then argue via Tweet that "I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them."

Of course he knows those complex tax laws, he's been playing them like the con artist he is turning billion-dollar losses into fool's gold. But there's no way this con artist is going to fix a rigged game that benefits himself. His own tax cut proposals - killing the estate tax entirely, dropping the upper income rates to their lowest at 33 percent, and reducing corporation tax rates to an insane 15 percent - are proof of that.

I wouldn't trust Trump on taxes simply because he doesn't value them at all. He's clearly gaming the system to avoid paying as much of it as possible, and when confronted on his avoidance he smugly claims "that makes me smart."

No, Donald, that makes you a tax-dodging tiny-fingered Cheeto-faced ferret-wearing shitgibbon. And Americans DO NOT TAKE KINDLY TO TAX DODGERS.

* Personally, I got money on an elite team of high-tech accountants who performed the Heist of the Century (well, until the Wu Tang Clan and Bill Murray team up to steal their album back from PharmaBro).

Just Needs To Be Said: Almost Every American Pay Their Taxes And They DON'T Complain About Paying

With all the Republican/Libertarian anti-tax rhetoric in the media, it might surprise most Americans to realize that most Americans (hi, everybody) don't mind paying taxes in the first place:

That Americans hate taxes has become a truism, but it’s not true. Although they disagree sharply about how tax money should be spent, most Americans actually take pride in paying their taxes. Taxpayers in the United States are unusually honest and reliable compared to those in other countries. And, increasingly, Americans are voting for tax hikes.

I can speak with anecdotal evidence here.  Libraries are one of the last places that carry printed tax forms for the public to use (Post Offices used to, but for some reason stopped).  Every year I've gone through the hassle alongside other librarians to get the basic 1040s and the specialty Schedules out on racks and tables for people.  Except this year: due to budget cuts and Congressional delays, the IRS only sent out just the basic forms, AND no instruction booklets.  Everything had to be done online.  The only complaints I got this year were that we didn't have the instruction booklets, or that people uncomfortable with computers had to go online to do their taxes this time.

I have rarely, if ever, gotten complaints about filing taxes, period.  Everyone coming in over the years griped about the complexity of the calculations, or the number of papers they had to file, or the lack of time they had if needed forms were late.  I can't recall the last time I had someone rant about the unfairness of the taxing itself.  Maybe those people weren't coming in looking for forms to begin with.

My anecdotal evidence fits well with the real evidence that Vanessa Williamson brings up in her Atlantic article:

...In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a responsibility to “the Founding Fathers.” A former Marine said taxpaying is “the cost of being an American,” while a man from California said tax avoidance is the equivalent of “shorting the country.”

The feeling is bipartisan. Surveys show that Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to agree that taxpaying is a moral responsibility. One woman in Kansas called taxpaying “a responsibility that we have to our country as citizens” because “the country has to be taken care of.” She is a Christian conservative active in her local Tea Party group. While Tea Party activists and other staunch conservatives object to paying for “the Obama agenda,” as she described it, they regularly use the status of “taxpayer” as shorthand for being an upstanding, contributing citizen.

You might wonder if these attitudes are nothing more than a nice sentiment, but Americans put their money where their mouths are, so to speak. Compared to 14 European countries, Americans report the highest willingness to pay taxes, and the United States has one of the highest rates of tax compliance in the developed world. One might credit this to fear of the IRS, but economists have concluded that high-compliance rates in the U.S. cannot be explained solely by the level of enforcement...

As another point about the IRS, they really don't enforce that much to begin with.  Audit rates are hilariously low.  I'd like to think most Americans know that the odds of getting into trouble with the taxman is rare compared to getting into trouble with the boss if you skip work to go fishing (note to boss: I don't fish, I swear).  The only ones who do get into trouble are the few who try to game the tax system in the first place.

If there's any complaints about our taxes, it comes mostly from the ones who pine for a flat tax or a sales tax over the income tax system we have.  And they're idiots.  The rest of the complainers are the ones who want to shrink / kill government in the first place, so going after our government's means of raising revenues is their agenda.  And they're con artists/frauds.

Real American pay real taxes, because guess what?  We're citizens.  We view the paying of our taxes as our commitment to the nation, to our communities, to our own well-being.  We are - each of us - aware that our taxes go towards such things as roads, clean air and water, regulated utilities, schools, libraries, small loan programs for business start-ups and large loan programs for higher education.  Most of us don't sign up as volunteers to serve in the military: paying for that military with our taxes is our commitment to our soldiers, to their service and direct sacrifice.

Real Americans only complain about how the tax revenues are being wasted, which is a reflection on the lousy approval numbers for a dysfunctional Congress, or they complain about how the tax burden should involve the rich.

What's sad is that there are ways to increase the uber-wealthy individuals and corporations into paying their honest-to-God fair share of the tax revenues without affecting the economy, but we can't pursue a single method because the modern Republican Party is too beholden to those uber-wealthy individuals and corporations who are un-American in their desire to avoid their responsibilities to the United States.  Per Weissmann's Slate article:

Let’s say your only interest is in maximizing the amount of revenue the Feds collect. Conservative guru Art Laffer became famous for pointing out that, at some point, raising taxes becomes counterproductive, because people either stop working or find ways to hide their income. Thankfully, we’re probably nowhere near that point. In their most recent work on the subject, co-authored with Harvard University’s Stefanie Stantcheva, Piketty and Saez conclude that governments would net the most money from a top marginal rate somewhere between 57 percent and 83 percent (that includes state taxes, too). Why the range? The three researchers acknowledge that, when taxes go up, the rich seem to earn less on the job. If you think that’s entirely because they choose to work less, then 57 percent is your number. However, Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva argue that lower taxes don’t seem to spur executives and other highly paid professionals to work harder so much as they encourage them to bargain harder for extra pay, whether it’s from their board of directors or their partners at a law firm. Negotiating a bigger paycheck for yourself doesn’t actually add anything to the economy. So, if you believe taxes simply discourage that kind of tough bargaining without making star workers much less productive, then 83 percent is your figure.

It's a debate to consider, whether we should impose higher rates.  And it's not like everyone is arguing the top tax rate should go as high as 89 percent or anything, but even talking about bumping the top rate from 39 percent up a full percentage to 40 percent (still way lower than 89 and lower than the 57 percent Weissmann's article hints should be the range) is cause for riots in the halls of Congress for some reason.

In fact, Congress is passing a bill that practically guts the estate tax for the very rich families of our nation.

...Certainly, it’s hard to see how anyone can possibly believe that the Republican Party, which fetishizes low taxes for the rich above all other priorities, truly cares about wealth inequality; but perhaps this is one of those times when the mere pretense of caring signals that they understand how badly their reputation of callous disregard for everyday Americans’ economic security has hurt them.
In any case, this shallow attempt at appearing to give a damn was short-lived. This week the GOP is voting, as they always do, to ensure that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune won’t be faced with the terrible responsibility of having to pay taxes on their inheritances...

To clarify about what's at stake here, via The Hill:

Under current law, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that 5,400 estates will have to deal with the tax over the next several years, out of the well over 2 million deaths that occur annually.

That’s because individuals with estates valued at less than $5.43 million this year, and married couples with estates worth less than $10.86 million, are exempt. The 2013 “fiscal cliff” deal set the current parameters, which also include a 40 percent rate and linking the exemption parameters to inflation.

Notice how many people this spares from taxation?  Roughly 5,400 families.  Depending on the actual number, we're still in the low tens-of-thousands affected.  This is out of roughly 317 MILLION Americans.  We're not even talking 1-Percenters, we're talking a percent of a percent.  And the current cutoff of $5 to $10 million as the exemption?  How many people do YOU know are over that rate to qualify paying for the estate tax?  We're talking about a tax that affects a very minor portion of the population.  And a tax that is littered with enough loopholes - means of hiding the overall value - to avoid paying a full rate.

And THIS is what the Republican Congress is fighting to pass?  Nothing about eliminating taxes for middle-class families in the millions across this nation.  Nothing about the regressive tax burdens that are shifting onto the majority of poorer Americans.  They want to save the kids of the insanely wealthy.  Who will still be millionaires and billionaires even after they pay the estate tax anyway.

So like I said in the blog article title: ALMOST Every American Pay Their Taxes.  And ALMOST Every American Doesn't Complain About It.

Just the insanely wealthy greedheads and their Republican suck-ups refuse to pay their taxes, and then complain about it.

Remind me which side are the Real Americans again?

Blog Entry 300. The Amendments We Need. For Real.

It's taken some time for me to re-post, and a lot of it is due to a few factors - including job hunting - but above all the fact that this is my 300th post on this blog.

And for all the political ranting and raving I do here, I had a purpose for creating this blog in the first place: to promote Constitutional Amendment ideas in the hope that they can be discussed, ragged on, sniped, dismissed, and ultimately ignored by the blogosphere as a whole once the storm died down.

Heh.

So I spent some time thinking over "Well, okay, what are the top Amendment proposals I have that I really want Americans to promote in order to end government gridlock, media stupidity, wingnut madness, and create a Utopian nation that I'd considered hypocritical because I know that Utopias are a collective pipe dream?"

I decided my 300th post should be the Top Ten list of Amendment ideas that I really really REALLY think should get consideration from the Bottom on up to the Top.

I ended up with Twelve.  My bad.

And so, Copied/Pastied from my word processor, here is:

The Ten – Make That Eleven, Hold on Twelve – Amendments We Really Seriously Need To Save This Nation

One.

The President of the United States, and the people who serve at the pleasure of the President, are not above the law.

Members of Congress, and the people who serve Congress, are not above the law.

The Justices of the Supreme Court, and the people who serve in the Judiciary, are not above the law.

The system of checks and balances between the three branches of federal government shall be maintained at all times.

NOTE: This is my "Fuck You" to Richard Nixon and to anyone following his dark path by taking the Unitary Executive theory of allowing the President to do whatever the hell he/she wants.  But as I thought it over, I felt it constrained the President at the expense of the other two branches of government, so I included them as well.

Two.

Lying is not Protected Speech.

Any elected official, or person working for the federal government, found making false statements regarding laws, policies, government research, public polling, or historical facts will be suspended from duty pending investigation. If found that the person made any false statement while aware of the facts, that person will be removed from public service, and barred from all government employment and election.

NOTE: This is my "Fuck You" to every liar I've railed against on this blog.  If you follow the lies tag to this article, you might pull up the other times I've argued how lying in the political forum has poisoned our discourse and is hurting our nation's ability to get the wrong things made right again.  Breitbart Delendus Est.

Three.

Federal government shall regulate business and finance to ensure the protection of employees from unsafe or unhealthy workplaces, the protection of customers from fraud, and the protection of the nation's communities from large-scale accidents.

NOTE: Regulations exist for a reason: TO PROTECT PEOPLE.  This needs to get spelled out in the Constitution itself.

Four.

The power to wage war or any military action shall be held by the President as Commander-in-Chief. The power to call for war, to fund any war effort, and to oversee any military action shall be held by Congress.

If circumstance requires the President to act immediately on a military action outside of Congressional approval, the President is required to limit such military action to thirty days. The President must appear before a full session of both houses of Congress within three days of initiating the military action to explain to Congress what transpired, why action was needed, and if such action raises to the need for Congress to declare war.

After the required presentation before Congress, the President is required to inform the appropriate Senate committee of the military's assessment for action, and the short-term plans that the military has for carrying out successful operations within another three days. A long-term military plan including any occupation of foreign territory and oversight of any nation-building must be presented to that Senate committee within thirty days only if Congress does vote for war. Any objective that requires occupation and nation-building requires a declaration of war by Congress.

Congress has the right to vote for war which can be deemed ended once established objectives are achieved, or can vote to extend the military action for up to ninety days depending on the military situation. Congress cannot vote for military action extension more than twice: if action must continue Congress should vote for war or not.

The House of Representatives has the right to oversee expenditures committed during the military action or war effort to ensure there is no fraud, embezzlement or theft of funds.

The Senate has the right to oversee military conduct of the military action or war effort, and to receive regular updates from the President on the war's progress and ongoing military assessment.

Congress is require to raise funds through a war tax to pay for the military action or war effort as needed.

NOTE: We have a War Powers Act as law, but people have been noticing the past few wars - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya - that the President hasn't completely asked Congress for full-out War, just military actions.  But this has led to horrendous and mismanaged occupations that include massive loss of funds and massive loss of civilian life.  Not to mention increased burdens on our military and our overall budget.  Obama's failures to fully keep Congress informed or show any sign of accountability over military action in Libya is troubling.  Every part of this amendment idea is to reinforce the checks and balances between the Executive and Legislative, to force Congress to take a more proactive role in the oversight of our war efforts.

Five.

The right of any person held by authorities of federal, state, or local jurisdiction to petition for a writ of habeas corpus will not be suspended under any circumstance, even in time of war.

Any person detained by the military can apply for prisoner of war status and receive legal protections as such, and be released from custody once Congress confirms the war has ended. A person not applicable for prisoner of war status must be tried fairly for any criminal acts that made that person a danger to the safety of our nation's citizenry within a court of law and within reasonable time.

The federal government has the right to retain a person they have basic evidence shows to be a clear danger to the safety of our nation's citizenry, until such time as can be proven in open court that person is no longer a threat or has served out the conditions of a prison sentence issued by the Judiciary.

NOTE: The abuses committed under the PATRIOT Act and committed with regards to prisoners taken during the War On Terror led to this amendment.  The century-old argument over who has the right to suspend habeas - President or Congress - should be answered by this amendment: None do.  This basic legal right is the basis for all legal protection for citizens.  Without habeas, any of us could be held without legal reason.  Abuse of rights would be rampant.  So habeas stays in effect, no matter what.

Six.

If the Senate refuses to advise and consent the President on Executive and Judicial nominations to serve the federal government, the President can fill ALL such vacancies however the President sees fit during that term of office.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to EVERY Senator that has used a Secret Hold to obstruct any nomination before the Senate.  Because of this, half the Judicial system is void of judges, our courts are backlogged, and it's becoming enough of a crisis that even the Chief Justice - normally sitting above the fray - is crying out for it to end.  Not to mention the number of job vacancies at the Executive office that haven't been filled in the last three years!  This is getting out of control.  If a Senator doesn't like a nominee, the Senator can always vote NO.

Seven.

All professions of employment are required at the national level to create and oversee a code of ethics for professional behavior of those who work in said profession, and has the ability to decertify anyone in that profession who fails that code of ethics on a repeating basis.

NOTE: While there will be screams and protests that government shouldn't meddle or regulate, the fact of the matter is our entire business and industry system has issues with a lack of accountability and ethical oversight.  There ARE organizations at the national level for a lot of professions - usually unions or associations - but few of them have any authority to enforce a code of behavior.  Mostly doctors and lawyers and plumbers (I think, I'm not sure about plumbers), but because doctors and lawyers tend to be most vulnerable to liability issues.  But I'm thinking it's time every profession has a system of accountability - teachers, librarians, truck drivers, boat builders, food processors, stock brokers, journalists, jugglers, interior designers, bankers, bakers, dog trainers, people trainers, what have you - to try and clean up a lot of the mess that a decade (or three) of unethical behavior by certain groups - bankers, stock brokers and journalists especially - has led us to.  But if I go after bankers and journalists, might as well include everyone else.  No favors.  Gotta be cruel.

Eight.

The States must uphold equal and fair access to public education as a right to the states' residents and their children.

The States cannot endorse one religious belief over another within the states' public education system. And the states cannot endorse religion where it would interfere with the study of the sciences.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to every Intelligent Design con artist and Creationist bullshitter out there.  Not to mention the Prayer In School crowd who never understood the Founders' intent of Separation of Church And State.  There's a place for God: it's called Church.  The only praying at school should be the week before final exams.  /rimshot
EDIT: This is also a "Fuck You" to every Governor or State lege that's pushing to privatize our school systems.  There's no evidence that privatization improves learning experience for kids and teens, and yet these bozos keep pushing things like vouchers and charter schools as miracle cures.  This also ties into the Prayer In School crowd because vouchers and privatization helps private religious schools more than existing public schools.

Nine.

All persons petitioning the federal government as representative to a group or corporate entity can only lobby for that group / entity after undergoing a basic background check that can be accessed by the public upon request.

All persons working as a lobbying or petitioning representative must recuse themselves if they have direct personal dealings with any member of the office of government that the group / entity is petitioning.

Any person working for the federal government as elected official, civil servant, employee of elected official, or military service is barred from working as a lobbyist or petitioner equal to the amount of time that person worked for the federal government.

Any person or corporate entity of foreign nationality must petition or lobby the United States government through their nation's embassy. They are barred from any financial contribution to a campaign or attempt to petition government through a third party.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to every politician and high-ranking official who exits the public sector to take a lobbyist job ten minutes later at three times the salary and without the ethical oversight (although Amendment Idea Seven. might help with that).  Lobbying as a whole has become a multi-billion dollar industry all its own, and because of legal loopholes and First Amendment abuse that industry is rife with corruption.  Look, people do have a right to petition government, but not at the expense of pork-barrel waste, lopsided legislation that favors a single issue over all others, or one company or industry at the expense of other companies or industries that just don't have the insider connections to make Congress and President do their dances.  Even more terrifying is how foreign governments and foreign-owned companies hire lobbyists to directly petition our government for them: the threat of foreign influence on our government isn't a threat, it's happening on a daily basis.

Ten.

The right of the nation's citizenry to access government documentation at the federal, state and local level shall be maintained. Classification of documents can only apply to matters of national security such as military and defense, treaty negotiations with foreign governments, active criminal investigations that involve undercover work, and any such materials that a court of law determines to be of sensitive issue.

NOTE: It's called Sunshine Laws here in Florida.  And even with the Sunshine in place, our state government goes out of its way to hide meetings, cover up documentation, and avoid accountability at all costs.  At the federal level, it's worse: anybody with a "Classified" stamp and a black ink marker can hide a document or black out entire pages of information to where even Senators can't read them.  The lack of oversight and accountability is shocking.  The wake-up call for me was when Cheney held meetings with energy corporation CEOs to plot out energy policy, and when asked about it declared it was all "national security".  We still have no idea what was really discussed, except that afterward our nation's energy needs got more expensive...  We need to get rid of the excuse of "national security" for nearly everything our government does: our leaders and policy enforcers need to answer for what they do.

Eleven.

Any legislative bill reaching the floor of either the House or the Senate must be certified within three business days by all elected officials that plan on voting for that legislation.

The certification requires the Representative or Senator to sign an oath confirming they have read the legislation up for vote and are aware of the basic elements of that bill. If the Representative or Senator refuses to certify, that person cannot vote Yes or No on the bill, only Present.

The bill cannot be amended nor receive attachments or riders during the certification period. The legislation can only be amended after the vote if there is a need to clean up the language or fix a clerical error within the print. If the bill requires additional work it must be taken off the floor and sent back to the appropriate committee for review and re-work.

If the bill requires more than three days for review, the certification can be extended up to fifteen business days. Any scheduled vacation or recess will be delayed to allow those fifteen business days for Representatives or Senators to review and certify before taking the vote.

NOTE: This is an idea that's been floated before by others more experienced and better-known.  Given the size and complexity of some of the bills reaching the floors of Congress, there's been revelations that a good number of our elected officials don't even know what are IN those bills to begin with.  Something like this amendment can ensure that our elected officials at least read enough of the bill to know what's in it.  And it should prevent a lot of last-minute rider attachments and poison pills that turn some bills into boondoggles and disasters.

Twelve.

If Congress requires a balanced budget, the balancing of the budget shall involve cutting expenditures AND raising revenues through taxation.

All taxes at the federal level must be progressive by design.

Any state requiring that any tax hike or raising of revenue use a supermajority vote to pass, then that state must also require that any tax cut or reduction of revenue require that same supermajority to pass as well.

NOTE: This is a "Fuck You" to every tax-cut obsessive out there.  TAX CUTS DON'T WORK.  And tax cuts to the rich - which is what the tax-cut crowd REALLY wants - REALLY DON'T WORK.  And government exists for a reason: to create and uphold laws, and provide government services that will ensure the safety and well-being of the citizenry.  This is especially for California that's stuck with that supermajority requirement for raising taxes, while the cutting of taxes can get a simple majority vote.  And whenever there is a path of least resistence, our elected officials will take it, which is why California is as screwed as it is.  Make tax-cutting as hard as tax-raising, and at least things will be fair.

So.  There you have it.  Yes.  It's that crazy.  ;-)

And now, to the future.  The purpose of this blog was originally about proposing amendment ideas, but it quickly fell into the trap of "blogging whatever makes me happy or angry at that moment".  So the thing I'm thinking about is: changing the title and focus of this political blog.  Any suggestions from my seven readers (and to my bro Eric, no snarkery about it.  I get enough of that from Phil...).

When Conservatives Attack: Their Amendment Ideas and How They Can Destroy America

One of the advantages of writing a barely-read blog is I get to go all out and toss some crazy amendment ideas into the global blogging forum: Hey, here' an idea for an Amendment, No More Lying!  Let's pass an amendment stating the President Is NOT Above The Law!  Wheeee, so much fun to be had.

But then the "professional" political hacks decide to get into the Crazy Amendment Idea arena, and it doesn't seem so fun anymore.

The media is all atwitter at the moment about Sarah Palin eye-rolling at a teacher, sorry, the media is all atwitter at the moment about Robert Gibbs dissing tree-hugging hippie leftists, whoops, the media is all atwitter about more of the Republican Party leadership coming out in favor of amending or outright repealing the 14th Amendment of the United States.

In particular, the Far Right wing of the GOP wants to get rid of the definition of citizenship.  Their public reason for doing so?  Getting rid of "anchor babies," the children that are born in our borders to pregnant illegal immigrants who then get to stay in order to raise said anchor babies as a means of circumventing the legalization process.  (Even though there is little evidence that "anchor babies" work as a tactic for illegals, and there's little evidence of a health care crisis because of it.) The right wingnuts got to this solution as yet another step in their ongoing war against Illegals in the United States, a complex and anger-fueled debate that has gone a long way toward driving Hispanic voters (the ones most directly affected by the anti-Immigrant outrage) into the arms of the Democratic Party.

There are a ton of problems with the current wingnut thinking on doing away with the Citizenship provisions of the 14th.  First: amending anything in the Constitution is a huge, mind-boggling and near-impossible attempt.  It takes two-thirds votes in both Houses of Congress and then two-thirds of all states (current 38 states) to amend (the other process - using national conventions - is so fraught with peril that it's only been used once to pass the 21st Amendment to repeal Prohibition and overturn the 18th Amendment).  In some respects, it's rather harmless to have the Far Right latch onto the amendment process as a means of winning their argument as it's next to impossible to achieve: what it DOES do, however, is build up the frustration of the Far Right to where they can and will lash out in other ways...

The second problem?  If they actually do make a serious attempt at removing the Citizenship Clause...

See, one of the ongoing issues with the crazed Far Right Wingnut crowd is how... emphatic they are about going after those they oppose.  Anyone who makes the Republican Party looks bad gets personally demolished by the next FOX Not-News cycle.  Anyone questioning the efforts of Republicans to lower taxes for the super-rich and deregulate every industry to the point that nothing will be safe or reliable will get demonized as SOCIALIST ZOMG.  And above all, the best way they can dismiss, ignore or invalidate anyone that wants to debate them?  All they have to do is point a finger and accuse their opponents of being "Un-American."

What could happen then in a world where Citizenship is not an automatic given based on birth but instead vulnerable to the whims and interests of whichever political party is in charge of Congress, the White House, and the Courts?  Nowadays the Republicans can call you "Un-American" and that would be just another insult.  If the 14th Amendment were gone... A Republican With Authority can call you "Un-American" and mean it... which would also mean no rights under the law, no protection from immediate arrest, no Habeus, no home, no life...  This is the true danger of what the Republicans are proposing to do by getting rid of the 14th Amendment.  They claim it'll be to get rid of unwanted Illegals... but also consider that the Republicans have no love of Muslims right now, and not much love for Blacks, and very little love for Liberals... and so on, and more, and also...  Repeal the 14th Amendment and NO ONE would be safe from the charge of being "Un-American."

Like I mentioned earlier, there's actual little threat to what the Republicans are trying to do against the 14th Amendment: the rules are stacked too well against any amending purge.  And even if they do get far enough to make even a half-hearted attempt?  The reaction from EVERY conceivable minority group - Blacks, Hispanics (especially the legals, the ones born here even five or six generations worth of family ties to this country would be threatened by this), Chinese and Japanese and other Asians, Indians and Pakistanis and Afghans and Egyptians and Algerians and Muslims, even Jews and Catholics and Hindus and Buddhists - will rise up to stop it (Native American tribes are protected under other laws, but even they could be affected by this).  And that's not even including the Euro-descended Caucasian Moderates and Liberals who will rise up as they too could get purged from the citizenship rolls just for the way they vote and think.  The only real scary thought is that the Republicans in power now are willing to even consider this...

After nearly a week of the crazy talk over getting rid of the 14th, saner heads are getting their say on the matter, most eloquently done via this Washington Monthly article:

Several former Bush administration officials, who, for all of their faults, weren't necessarily wrong about immigration policy, believe their party is making a big mistake.

[I]n recent days, former aides to both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush, who pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, have condemned the calls by top Republicans to end birthright citizenship.
Cesar Conda, who served as domestic policy adviser to Cheney, has called such proposals "offensive." Mark McKinnon, who served as media adviser in Bush's two presidential campaigns, said Republicans risk losing their "rightful claim" to the 14th Amendment if they continue to "demagogue" the issue.
"The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican party. It is a shame and an embarrassment that the GOP now wants to amend it for starkly political reasons," McKinnon told POLITICO. "Initially Republicans rallied around the amendment to welcome more citizens to this country. Now it is being used to drive people away."

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, Bush's former chief speechwriter, added on ABC over the weekend, "That is the wisdom of the authors of the 14th Amendment: They essentially wanted to take this very difficult issue -- citizenship -- outside of the political realm. They wanted to take an objective standard, birth, instead of a subjective standard, which is the majorities at the time. I think that's a much better way to deal with an issue like this."

And that, sad to say, is coming from former Republicans leaders who have little in the way of directly affecting internal and external party dynamics.  But here lies the real serious problem: The current Republican leadership - made up by the likes of Palin, Gingrich, the House and Senate leaderships, primary challengers across the nation- is crazy.  And their interpretation of what the Constitution should read has been ill-informed, poorly thought out, and doomed with unintended consequences that would make things worse.

The 14th Amendment isn't the only part of the Constitution under attack by the Republicans.  They've been after the 17th Amendment - the direct election of US Senators - as well.  The wingnuts, obsessed with the idea of States' Rights, got it into their collective head that repealing the 17th Amendment will give more power back to the states.  Biggest problem with that?  It completely takes away a right now given to the individual voters themselves, which violates the Far Right's tenet of "giving the people more freedoms".  Which pretty much highlights how little the Far Right truly values an individual's rights.  The next biggest problem is that there's a very good reason the 17th Amendment passed: by the turn of the 20th Century the state legislatures in charge of placing Senators had become so corrupted by the practice that charges of bribery were rife, and some states got bogged down in the selection process to where one or BOTH Senate seats were vacant for years at a time (Delaware had NO sitting Senators between 1903 to 1905).  The Far Right's belief that repealing the 17th Amendment is a good idea merely demonstrates their ignorance of American political history, and their disdain for the rights of voters...  (oh, and one other thing the Far Right Republicans might want to consider: Democrats currently control 28 state legislatures outright compared to 8 Republican-held.  And more states are leaning Democratic day by day.  Letting the Democratically-controlled states to choose their Senators could well give the Democrats a 68-seat majority.  Say good-bye to the filibuster and cloture tricks.  NOW do you think that's a good idea...?)

And that's not all.  After 8 years of ignoring the matter during the Bush Spend-For-All Tenure, the Republican Party is trotting out their old warhorse issue of The Balanced Budget Amendment!  ...which begs the question why didn't they push this Amendment idea more back in oh 2000 or 2003 or 2004 or 2006 when they had the chance, but noooooo guess we can't ask them that.

The problems with supporting a Balanced Budget?  None, if you're serious about it, and the Republicans ARE NOT.  Their Budget Amendment idea would require a two-third super-majority in both House and Senate to raise taxes without a similar requirement for lowering taxes.  Thing is, we've got a perfect example of that in California: and any sane observer of the budgeting mess that state has gone through the last 30 years will tell you that transplanting that to the FEDERAL level is a swell idea!  /sarcasm off

There are more sensible methods of balancing budgets, but they include raising taxes at some point to you know ACTUALLY PAY FOR THINGS.  By knee-capping the ability of Congress to adjust the tax rates (going up as well as going down!) all this Balanced Budget amendment would do is kill whatever is left of FDR's New Deal: the forcible cutting back or eliminating basically every social safety net and government oversight our nation NEEDED TO CREATE to compensate for the damage that GREED and corporate incompetence caused from the 1870s to the Great Depression.

These are the Amendments that the Far Right Wingnuts want to pass:

• Eliminate the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment (and get rid of everybody the wingnuts don't like)
• Eliminate the Voters' right to directly elect their US Senators (and have the state legislatures become even more corrupt than they are now)
• Eliminate the Federal Government's ability to raise taxes when there is no other way to maintain funding for things like oh the military, health care, social services, commerce and transportation, state funding for state-level services like roads, schools and child care (and basically end the United States as we know it)

And people want to vote these Republican psychopaths back into power?

(Slight Edit for grammar)

More moments of Schadenfreude 2009

Schadenfreude: It's one (am I speeling it right, btw?) of my favorite words - esoteric being the other - and while I do cringe at myself for taking such delight in the misfortune of others I try to take comfort from the knowledge that the ones suffering totally f-cking deserve what they're getting (hence the huge glee I had with Blago, which shows no sign of ending any time soon).

To wit:

• Here at home, with the decline and fall of a rising GOP power, now-former State Speaker Ray "Quid Pro" Sansom. Who started off his Speakership with a brand-new part-time job that was never advertised and paid $110k per for a small college that just happened to receive $35 million in state money in the previous budget thanks to Sansom. Who had a private meeting with that school's trustees, only for it later revealed to have violated the state's Sunshine laws requiring such meetings be public, and also revealed that no notes were taken during said meeting with a comical attempt after-the-fact of someone writing up notes for said meeting. Who had a hand in getting a $6 million training air field facility for that school set up in the exact size shape and color that a business buddy of Sansom's wanted for years at that locale. Sansom tried to weasel his way out of the growing scandals by "recusing himself" from Speakership duties, but it was only temporary and it was clearly obvious that he was hoping for the dust to settle before reclaiming the Speakership while no one was noticing. His own party had to force the issue and ousted him from the top spot, although he's still a sitting Representative awaiting the pending criminal investigations. Maybe he and Blagojevich can work the casino town in Missouri as a comedy duo, you know like Abbott and Costello, only dumber.
• Back in DC, where former Senate leader Tom "Taxes? What Taxes" Daschle was forced to drop from his nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary cabinet spot. It had a lot to do with the fact he had, after his fall from the Senate office in 2002, gotten a cushy job with a limo driver from a friend or twelve. The job and driver actually weren't the problem: Daschle's failure to realize he still has to pay taxes on them to teh IRS was, and the $146k bill that hadn't been paid until this January was the kind of thing that p-sses off a lot of the middle and lower class Americans out there. While I don't want to stand with the crowd of Republicans who are crowing over this example of Obama Fail (And It Only Took Two Weeks is the new label on Balloon Juice), I still side with Jon Stewart on this: PAY YOUR F-CKING TAXES!
• And now, with the CEOs of the various banks, investment firms, and other financial institutions who all had driven their corporations into bankruptcy, and had and are still coming to the government with their hands out like street beggars. Obama's made it clear that from now on, CEOs looking to the taxpayers to bail them out of their own stupidity and greed will have to take a massive pay cut and work for $500k a year without additional benefits. And with this, I definitely stand with Obama: "We all need to take responsibility...And this includes executives at major financial firms who turned to the American people, hat in hand, when they were in trouble, even as they paid themselves their customary lavish bonuses. As I said last week, that's the height of irresponsibility. That's shameful. And that's exactly the kind of disregard for the costs and consequences of their actions that brought about this crisis: a culture of narrow self-interest and short-term gain at the expense of everything else." I was never a fan of golden parachutes, even when they came at the expense of companies being driven into the ground by fast-buck con artists posing as genius CEOs.

More schadenfreude acomin, you think? Well, the year is young...