CdesignProponentsist wrote:I'm beginning to think Michael Cohen was right about there never going to be a peaceful transfer of power.

For their part, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, responding to the latest reporting on Mueller’s frustration, said through a spokesperson last night, “Recent media reports give us more reason than ever to have confidence in the attorney general by providing insight into how the attorney general and the special counsel successfully collaborated to navigate a very difficult and historically momentous situation.”

There was no indication that they were kidding.

Exclusive - Blackwater founder’s latest sales pitch: mercenaries for Venezuela

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Erik Prince - the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater and a prominent supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump - has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Over the last several months, the sources said, Prince has sought investment and political support for such an operation from influential Trump supporters and wealthy Venezuelan exiles. In private meetings in the United States and Europe, Prince sketched out a plan to field up to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, according to two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-erikprince-exclusi-idUSKCN1S608F

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Thursday that he agrees with President Trump’s assessment that he was the subject of an attempted “coup” during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Appearing at a Washington Post Live event, McCarthy pointed to text messages between two senior FBI officials involved in the probe of possible connections between Trump associates and Russia that showed an intense dislike of Trump and fear that he might win.

“Their actions are a coup,” McCarthy told post reporter Robert Costa, who pressed the top Republican in the House on whether he believed the word “coup” was appropriate.

Alan C wrote:Is the sane principled Republican an endangered species or are they functionally extinct?

Seabass wrote:

Alan C wrote:Is the sane principled Republican an endangered species or are they functionally extinct?

They're all gone. The moderates have all bailed and only the crazies remain. What was once the party of Lincoln is now equal parts hate group, religious cult, and crime syndicate. There is no low to which these people will not sink. The party has officially fully broken bad. The transformation from Walter White to Heisenberg is complete. There is nothing left worth salvaging. All the Republicans have left to offer is hate, fear, and superstition. Our only hope now is to outnumber them at the polls, because there is no compromising with a political organization that is this dangerous, destructive, and stupid.

Alan C wrote:

Seabass wrote:

Alan C wrote:Is the sane principled Republican an endangered species or are they functionally extinct?

They're all gone. The moderates have all bailed and only the crazies remain. What was once the party of Lincoln is now equal parts hate group, religious cult, and crime syndicate. There is no low to which these people will not sink. The party has officially fully broken bad. The transformation from Walter White to Heisenberg is complete. There is nothing left worth salvaging. All the Republicans have left to offer is hate, fear, and superstition. Our only hope now is to outnumber them at the polls, because there is no compromising with a political organization that is this dangerous, destructive, and stupid.

As I understand it in some cases they are outnumbered but they hold their deathgrip through gerrymandering.

You Can’t Tax the Rich Without the IRS
Until the budget-starved agency is restored, corporations and the wealthy will easily fend off attempts to increase the rates they pay.
https://www.propublica.org/article/you-cant-tax-the-rich-without-the-irs-internal-revenue-service

The hot policy in Democratic circles these days is raising taxes on the rich. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a plan to tax “ultramillionaires,” as she calls them. Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to expand the estate tax. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has floated raising the top income tax rate to 70% for those making over $10 million a year.

But before this country raises taxes, it should grapple with something much more prosaic but equally important for tackling inequality: saving the Internal Revenue Service.

Already, wealthy people and corporations easily get around today’s rules. However tough any new laws might seem, they’d soon be undercut.

Slowly and quietly over the past eight years, the IRS has been eviscerated. It’s lost tens of thousands of employees. It has fewer auditors now than at any time since 1953. In real dollars, the agency’s budget has dropped by almost $3 billion since 2010.

Businesses and the wealthy benefit the most from this state of affairs. The largest corporations in America used to be audited every year. That started to change when the cuts began, and today, the audit rate has fallen by half. It’s a similar story for individuals making $10 million or more a year: With twice the chance of escaping IRS scrutiny, the ultrarich are much less likely to lose at the game of audit roulette.

Fixing the problem will require more than increasing the IRS’ budget (though that would certainly help). It’s about having the right personnel with the right skills. Today, the wealthy and corporations have the IRS outgunned. The ultra-affluent — with the help of legions of tax professionals — make domestic income disappear overseas or hide it in a pyramid of partnerships. It’s like trying to take on a modern army while armed with spears and clubs.

The IRS has difficulty tracing the income of the superwealthy or countering their sophisticated arguments about why what appears to be one type of income is actually something else. The agency has also trouble valuing their assets (a problem that, as The New York Times revealed, dates back at least to when Fred Trump was misleading the IRS about how much his buildings were worth). By the public admission of numerous IRS officials, it has long done a poor job of scrutinizing complicated partnerships to understand who owns what portion of what stock.

The top 0.5% of highest-earning Americans account for about a fifth of the income that’s hidden from the IRS, according to one University of Michigan study, or more than $50 billion a year in today’s dollars.

It’s much easier to enforce the tax laws for the bottom 90% of earners. Wages are reported straight to the IRS, and computers can easily check that tax returns accurately report that income. This means that inadequate enforcement of the tax laws necessarily has a regressive effect, liberating those at the top from scrutiny while the masses continue to be tracked by machines.

With its budget slashed, the IRS has pulled back across the board — except for one area where it’s been easier to keep the numbers from falling so much: audits of the poor. More than one-third of all audit targets are recipients of the earned income tax credit, one of the nation’s largest anti-poverty programs. By the hundreds of thousands, IRS computers spit out letters that require low-income taxpayers to prove their eligibility. The counties with the highest audit rates aren’t found in the hedge fund precincts of Connecticut or the lobbyist enclaves of Northern Virginia. No, they’re rural, mostly African American counties in the Deep South.

continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/you-cant-tax-the-rich-without-the-irs-internal-revenue-service

proudfootz wrote:
Remember what happened when Clinton was impeached? His popularity went up!

Alan C wrote:He is an utter fucking cunt, I can't stand hearing him speak any more than I can bear Trump.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Alan C wrote:He is an utter fucking cunt, I can't stand hearing him speak any more than I can bear Trump.

I am sometimes mesmerised by his chin bulge.

Seabass wrote: