Justin's Political Corner

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

WASHINGTON, DC – President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the “misconduct” detailed in a report about the Internal Revenue Service’s handling of requests from conservative groups is “inexcusable.”

“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he said.

In the wake of the uproar, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requested — and has accepted — the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, according to Obama.

The president also said his administration will work to enact “new safeguards to make sure that this kind of behavior cannot happen again.”

(CNN) — The Internal Revenue Service has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for “overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN.

In a meeting on Capitol Hill, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller described the employees as being “off the reservation,” according to the source. It was not clear precisely what the alleged behavior involved.

Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees.

Miller met with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana on Tuesday to discuss an appearance before Congress.

Asked in a Senate hallway about his meeting with Miller, Baucus told CNN, “I did not learn as much from the meeting as I would have liked.”

“I told him that it was in his best interest to be totally cooperative — that it’s often the coverup that causes more problems than the original malfeasance,” the senator said. “And just to be totally straight with me and everybody, and he said he would.”

President Barack Obama was scheduled to deliver a statement Wednesday from the East Room of the White House after a meeting with senior Treasury Department officials. During the meeting, Obama will be “making sure people are held accountable for their conduct, for their activities,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

A Democratic source told CNN’s Dana Bash that Obama will discuss “IRS changes” when he makes his statement.

H/T: Fox2now.com

On Monday, President Obama weighed in on the alleged targeting of conservative nonprofit groups by the Internal Revenue Service, calling for a full investigation into what he said would constitute “outrageous” conduct. That’s one way to put it. Here’s another: depressingly normal. For much of the last century, abuse of the IRS for political ends has been the rule, not the exception. Under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, the IRS has gone after communists, students, black activists, young conservatives, and mainstream political rivals. Here are some prime examples:

Franklin D. Roosevelt: According to libertarian historian Burton W. Folsom’s New Deal or Raw Deal, Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, noted that FDR “may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution”—most notably against former Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long. (The famously corrupt Long, in fairness, was kind of asking for it.) Rep. Hamilton Fish, a New York Republican, alleged that Roosevelt’s IRS had gone after him on trumped-up charges—and when that failed, handed the investigation over to the FBI instead. Roosevelt’s longtime Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., admitted that the administration had deliberately targeted his Republican predecessor, Richard Mellon, on trumped-up charges of tax evasion.

Dwight Eisenhower: The FBI’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, relied heavily on the compliance of the IRS to go after members of the Communist Party. Per a 1976 Senate report, “In its efforts against the Communist Party, the FBI had unlimited access to tax returns; it never told the IRS why it wanted them, and IRS never attempted to find out.”

John F. Kennedy: In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy teamed up with United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther to produce the “Reuther Memorandum,” which proposed curtailing the influence of far-right groups in two ways. The first was the enforcement of the Federal Communication Commision’s “Fairness Doctrine,” to limit their use of the airwaves. The second was the IRS, through an initiative called “The Ideological Organizations Audit Project,” which explored the political activities of conservative nonprofits. The program eventually expanded to the other of the side of political spectrum, but according to the 1976 Senate investigation, that was mostly a facade of nonpartisanship.

Richard Nixon: The godfather of “Nixonian tactics” believed he’d been a political target of the agency in the Truman administration—not that he needed an excuse to use the Internal Revenue Service as a tool with which to dispatch “enemies.” Under Tricky Dick, the IRS created the Special Services Staff (SSS) to investigate thousands of perceived enemy groups and individuals. (Nixon aide Pat Buchanan feared that groups like the Ford Foundation and Brookings Institution were acting essentially as Democratic organs.) White House counsel John Dean testified that the administration pushed the IRS to audit reporters who wrote stories critical of Nixon, such asNewsday’s Robert Greene. Nixon himself wanted the SSS to focus on political adversaries like 1972 presidential challenger George McGovern, student groups, and civil rights organizations like the NAACP. When the IRS audited Billy Graham, a Nixon ally, the president responded with force: “Get the word down to the IRS that I want them to conduct field audits of those who are our opponents, if they’re going to do in our friends.”

Jimmy Carter: Republicans accused the born-again Christian president of an “unconstitutional regulatory vendetta” against religious institutions after his IRS director, Jerome Kurtz, introducednew regulation to end the tax-exempt status of Christian schools. Kurtz ultimately had to retain Secret Service protection after a wave of death threats from supporters of religious education.

Ronald Reagan: This one hit close to home. Mother Jones had been around for six years when, in 1981, Ronald Reagan’s IRS tried to shut it down. The agency concluded that the magazine was not living up to its tax-exempt motives and instead functioned like any other publishing house, with the goal of making as much money as possible. That was weird, given that Mother Jones had to that point never made a profit. The timing was also suspicious—a half-dozen or so other left-of-center publications came in for the same scrutiny by the agency. MoJo eventually won—but not until it had burned hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Bill Clinton: The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which filed a string of lawsuits against the administration centering on public records, alleged that it was in the crosshairs of the Clinton White House—along with a dozen other groups and individuals that had gotten on the president’s bad side. The list of of audited parties in the Clinton era included Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. Documents later released by the IRS during the Bush administration revealed that high-ranking Democrats, including a half-dozen members of Congress, had written to the IRS requesting an investigation into Judicial Watch’s nonprofit status. One IRS official allegedly told the group, “What do you expect when you sue the president?”

George W. Bush: The NAACP experienced an unwelcome case of Nixon Nostaliga in 2004, when it found itself under IRS scrutiny after the group’s chairman, Julian Bond, told attendees of its annual convention to oust Bush. (The president had been invited to the convention but declined.) After a two-year investigation, the IRS backed off.

h/t: Tim Murphy at Mother Jones

By Christie’s deeds and his words, he is clearly committed to the death of the labor movement and every other sort of social progress.

Two years ago, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin introduced his falsely-named “budget repair bill.”  In doing so, he transformed himself from an obscure Midwestern Governor to the personification of a nationally-orchestrated, well-funded right-wing movement that was more – much more - than just an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of public service workers. His plan, concocted in quite public collaboration with the Koch brothers, was to gut public sector collective bargaining rights altogether.

The right had a new champion. Having weakened and nearly destroyed the private sector union movement in America over the last 30 years, it was time to hone in on a new target: public sector unions and, in fact, the very idea that a fair society requires a robust public sphere. (Hint: this is true for the non-wealthy, less so for people who can buy their way into private schools, private beaches, private jets and so on…).

As everyone knows, the people of Wisconsin fought back. Madison became our Tahrir Square. It was thrilling to watch, and the entire labor and progressive movement understood how important a battle it was. Tactics included civil disobedience on a scale rarely seen in the U.S. and an ambitious electoral recall of a handful of Republican State Senators and Walker himself. Several Senators lost their seats in the recall, but Walker won. Unfortunately, too many union members themselves voted for Walker, despite an enormous groundswell of progressive labor mobilization in the recall.  Walker’s re-election campaign in 2014 will be another “all or nothing” moment for labor and progressive forces as we learn whether Walker-Koch conservatism is here to stay.

Before we get to the 2014 re-match, however, there’s another Governor up for re-election in 2013 who is also in the public eye. I’m referring to the East Coast’s own version of Scott Walker. No one would confuse Chris Christie’s brash {pugilistic?} demeanor for that of a polite Midwesterner. But when it comes to strict adherence to right-wing ideology, Christie is every bit the match for Scott Walker — and in some cases, even worse. I’m from New Jersey, and it’s astonishing to me that someone this awful is the Governor of my home state. .

Before the dust had settled in Madison, Christie was pushing a similar package of collective bargaining “reforms” in New Jersey. Christie frequently made the comparison himself. During a series of press events in Wisconsin during the recall campaign, Christie rallied support for Walker by comparing and celebrating what he and Walker had done.The New Jersey Star Ledger reported it this way in May 2012:  

The Republican governor [Christie] drew no distinction between the pension and benefit reforms pushed through New Jersey’s Democrat-controlled Legislature and Walker’s near-elimination of collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions — actions that flooded the Madison statehouse with protesters and could make him Wisconsin’s first governor to be dumped during his term.

“You see what I’ve been able to do is give Scott and the people of Wisconsin a little preview of what good conservative governance can do for states,” Christie told several hundred people at a landscaping equipment maintenance shop near Milwaukee.

But Christie isn’t just hostile to working-class organizations. He has an all-encompassing right-wing philosophy that seeps into every aspect of his agenda. No matter the issue – minimum wage, marriage equality, climate change, directing public money to private corporations, lowering taxes on the rich – Chris Christie is a hard-right Republican. He may be a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen, but I can guarantee that Springsteen is not a fan of his.

So, as a public service for any progressive or labor-friendly voter who might have been disoriented by Christie’s post-Hurricane Sandy photo opportunities with President Obama, here’s a short dossier on why we should not be confused by this guy. Sadly, some New Jersey-based building trades locals have already endorsed Christie in his 2013 re-election bid. But hopefully everyone else will line up with his Democratic opponent, State Senator Barbara Buono. Christie is clearly the odds on favorite in the race– he’s got a ton of cash, his opponent is relatively unknown, and he taps into a deep well of suburban anger about stagnant wages and soaring property taxes. But he is in fact as bad as Scott Walker.  Period.

He’s firmly on the side of the 1%.

Last year, Governor Christie proposed a $1.2 billion tax cut, with the bulk of the cuts going to the top, even though the state faced enormous budget gaps. He has repeatedly vetoed Democratic legislative efforts to close those gaps by raising taxes on millionaires.  Romney would be proud, and surely, Christie’s wealthiest donors are too.

But here’s where it gets even more unbelievable.  Since taking office, Christie has awarded more than $2 billion in tax breaks to huge corporations like Prudential Insurance, Panasonic, and Goya Foods. They promise new jobs, but in fact just shuffle around existing ones. Prudential got a quarter billion just to move its headquarters a few blocks in Newark. Instead of investing precious tax dollars in actual job creation, New Jersey wastes it on hand-outs to well-connected corporations.

… and not the 99%

Meanwhile, he did raise taxes on one group: the working poor. Christie cut the Earned Income Tax Credit, a program with a long record of bipartisan support that puts more cash in the pockets of struggling families. And just for good measure, Christie also vetoed a modest $1.25/hr increase in the minimum wage.

Need to keep the beer cold?  As Jim Hightower would say, put it next to Chris Christie’s heart.

But isn’t he a social liberal?

People sometimes get the idea that Northeastern Republicans are “fiscal moderates and social liberals.” Not Christie.

On Marriage Equality: Christie is not only against same-sex marriage, he vetoed a bill that would have given equal rights to same sex couples.

On the DREAM Act: He killed it. This was a bill to allow the children of immigrants who graduated high school in New Jersey to attend state colleges at in-state tuition rates.  

On women’s health and abortion rights: He eliminated all funding for women’s health, cutting $7.4 million to Planned Parenthood and other clinics that offer contraception, cancer screenings and other essential services.

That’s not all.

Christie’s blind faith in trickle-down economics has left New Jersey with the seventh highest unemployment rate in the country (9.3%). Yet Christie single-handedly killed the biggest public infrastructure project in the country. The ARC tunnel would have connected New Jersey to New York and created 45,000 permanent jobs, but Christie blocked the project. He’s like one of those moronic Republican Governors who turned down high-speed rail money from the Federal Stimulus Act in Florida or, you guessed it, Wisconsin.

He’s also endangering New Jersey’s reputation as a state that cares about education. In his first year in office he cut $1.2 billion in state aid to public schools. The cuts were so deep that the state Supreme Court found they violated students’ rights. As a candidate, Chris Christie pledged to increase funding for higher education. But then he was elected. And he turned around and cut higher education funding 15%.  All the while, referring to the leaders of the state’s teachers’ union as a “group of political thugs” for opposing these policies.

But what about that great moment after Sandy? Doesn’t that mean anything?

No. Not really. Christie said he didn’t ‘give a damn’ whether global warming contributed to the storm. And while climate scientists agree that climate change will produce worse and worse storms, Christie pulled New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The RGGI is a compact among the northeast states to limit carbon emissions, and is widely seen as a very smart policy. .

Christie is up for re-election this November. It will tough to defeat him, even as he richly deserves to go down. The media like him, and some Democrats in the State Legislature have on occasion made it too easy for him to look effective and far-sighted. If we tell the truth to ourselves, the truth is – right now, Christie is popular. The latest polling has him ahead of his likely Democratic opponent by 35 points. And he has a huge financial advantage.

Still more alarmingly, Christie has somehow secured support from some segments of organized labor, notably the laborers and plumbers unions. No doubt the leaders of these unions see themselves faced with a difficult choice. With Christie so far ahead in polls, it’s tempting to play the percentages and bet on the likely winner in the hopes of securing some small advantage for your members. Pragmatism has its place in politics. We get it.

But in this case, it’s deeply troubling.  

Sometimes, even when the odds are bad, you have to fight. The alternative is simply making an enemy stronger.

This isn’t the first time labor has made this mistake. There are many famous examples of letting short-term pragmatism blind you to a longer term reality. The Air Traffic Controllers backed Ronald Reagan for President in 1980, and he turned around and crushed them. Richard Nixon was backed by many construction unions in 1968 and 1972, and he then worked to undermine them. And of course in Wisconsin, the police and firefighters unions endorsed Walker in his first campaign, and have to know what a gigantic mistake that was.

Christie’s record speaks for itself, and his kind words for Scott Walker should erase any doubt: Christie is no moderate. His worldview should be an anathema to progressives everywhere.  He’s also dangerous, because he’s popular and is a strong contender for the Republican nomination in 2016. A landslide victory in 2013 will be a launching pad for his 2016 race—“I won a bi-partisan landslide in a blue northeastern state (one that Barack Obama won by 18 points and Bob Menendez won by 20 points), I tamed the unions, and I can make a conservative message work everywhere from New Jersey to New Mexico.”  Being able to point to labor support will only bolster his case.

h/t: AlterNet

Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom, died on Monday, leaving behind her a legacy of conservative values that American politicians still cite to this day. Upon learning of her death, Republican House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said she was the “greatest peacetime prime minister in British history.”

But while Thatcher stands as a role model for modern conservativism here in the United States, her policies likely wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of a modern-day GOP:

She supported socialized medicine. The modern-day GOP is so obsessed with trying to repeal Obamacare that they’ve held nearly 40 votes to do so. But Obamacare is actually a much more conservative health care policy than the socialized National Health Service, which Thatcher lauded as an accomplishment of the United Kingdom. “I believed that the NHS was a service of which we could genuinely be proud,” she wrote in her book, “It delivered a high quality of care — especially when it came to acute illnesses — and at a reasonably modest unit cost, at least compared with some insurance-based systems.”

She increased taxes. Spending actually rose during Thatcher’s first seven years in office, as the New York Times reports, and taxes took up a larger percentage as share of gross domestic product. Indeed, even by the end of her time in office taxes were still a higher percentage of GDP than they were when she arrived:

Thatcher also increased the Value Added Tax (VAT), which Newt Gingrich described as “European socialism” during the 2012 election cycle.

She believed in climate change. Thatcher was an early adherent to climate science, and once warned, “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”

She recognized that gun laws can limit gun violence. After a deadly shooting rampage in England, Thatcher said, “If [gun laws] need to be tightened up, or if we think that it could prevent anything more like this, then of course that will be considered.” A year later, the government passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which outlawed semi-automatic weapons, changed requirements on registering guns, allowed police to refuse a weapon to anyone they saw unfit, and allowed the Home Secretary to add other guns to the list of banned firearms.

Thatcher was far from a progressive champion. Her policies threw the United Kingdom into recession, decimated British labor unions, and sharply divided the country she reigned over for nearly 12 years.

H/T: Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress

The chairwoman of Georgia’s Republican party voiced her opposition to marriage equality over the weekend by warning that people will use same-sex marriage to commit tax fraud.

Chairwoman Sue Everhart (R) expressed that her foremost criticism of same-sex marriage was that “it is not natural for two women or two men to be married… If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.” But she also told the Marietta Daily Journal that straight people would abuse a law change for “the benefits”:

Everhart said while she respects all people, if same sex marriage is legalized across the country, there will be fraud.

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Everhart said. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

Nine states, along with the District of Columbia, have passed marriage equality. There has been no indication of a fraud epidemic thanks to those laws, just as there is no widespread fraud because of opposite-sex marriages.

h/t: Think Progress LGBT

The Supreme Court will today hear oral arguments in the case against the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that denies equal federal benefits to couples who are legally married under state law and also burdens families and the federal government.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that DOMA increases the deficit by roughly$1 billion a year, and while that amount is small, striking it down would save far more than ending subsidies to NPR or some of the other “deficit reduction” ideas Republicans have pursued in the past.

Those savings would come from numerous sources. Tax revenues would rise by more than $400 million a year, and though costs on programs like Social Security and federal benefits would increase, costs for safety net programs like Medicare, Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, and other programs would go down.

That’s significant, because the largest benefit from recognizing same-sex marriages comes from what it would do for individual couples and families. Same-sex couples aren’t allowed to file joint taxes, which prohibits them from claiming some tax credits and deductions that would benefit their families. They also aren’t eligible for spousal health, Social Security, or federal pension benefits, making it harder for some LGBT families to make ends meet. Older LGBT couples are more likely to live in poverty than married heterosexual seniors, which is why ending DOMA would reduce costs for programs like Medicaid and SSI — access to spousal benefits would lift many LGBT Americans out of poverty and off of the social safety net.

Striking down DOMA is important primarily to provide LGBT Americans equal protection under the law. But it’s also important because it will benefit the American economy by helping businesses, reducing the deficit, and lifting people out of poverty.

h/t: Travis Waldron at Think Progress Economy

Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino boxing champion who regularly pulls in guaranteed purses north of $20 million a fight, is now refusing to hold his next bout in Las Vegas because the United States insists on taxing the income of people who make money inside its borders.

The fight, Pacquiao’s fifth against rival Juan Manuel Márquez, would guarantee him a $25 million purse if it’s fought in Las Vegas. But American taxes would eat a significant chunk of that, while fighting it in either Singapore or Macau wouldn’t tax his earnings, the fight’s promoter said. That’s a major concern for Pacquiao, who needs to hoard as much money as he can before his career ends, his manager told Yahoo.

Pacquiao isn’t the only professional athlete to complain about American taxes recently. Professional golfer Phil Mickelson, who made more than $40 million last year, threatened to move from California and even give up golf because of high tax rates in his home state. Anti-tax groups have trumpeted both Mickelson and Pacquiao as examples of high taxes hurting the U.S., even if the rich are still paying historically low tax rates amid budget cuts to programs that benefit people who don’t have the luxury of making millions of dollars to hit a golf ball or box for a living.

But it’s hard to feel sympathy for Pacquiao, who would still clear $15 million — an amount that would take the average American household 284 years to equal — if the fight were held in the United States.

h/t: Travis Waldron at Think Progress’s Alyssa

Fox News has hired former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as a contributor. The move comes after the network encouraged Cain to run for president, and vigorously defended him against sexual harassment allegations that eventually sunk his candidacy.

Cain’s hiring follows a similar path that Fox News took with Scott Brown and Sarah Palin, both of whom were lauded by Fox News as political figures and then signed to contributor contracts when they entered public life (Palin has since parted ways with Fox).

Prior to running for president, Cain was a frequent guest on Fox News and was touted as a possible presidential contender because of his business background. During his April 14, 2010, Tea Party-themed program, Sean Hannity called Herman Cain a “rock star” job creator. Hannity then asked his audience, “How many of you would like him to run for president?” which drew loud applause.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto frequently hosted Cain and prodded him to announce that he was running for president on his program. Cain has called Cavuto, who is also a vice president for Fox News, “one of my closest friends,” and said in September 2010 that Cavuto “has been trying to drag” a presidential announcement “out of me for months now.” It was no surprise, then, that Cain announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee in an “exclusive first” interview on Cavuto’s Fox News program on January 12, 2011.

When allegations of past sexual harassment during Cain’s business career surfaced during the campaign, Fox News rallied to his defense by dismissing the seriousness of the allegations and claiming that Cain was the target of a “smear campaign” because he’s a “black conservative,” and the victim of a “gold digger” and “scam artist.” Here are ten examples of Fox News hosts and contributors defending Cain:

• Then-Fox News contributor Dick Morris said of the allegations: “Well, this is ridiculous. … This woman is in search of money. … This woman has been unemployed for 13 years, and this is apparently payday. … I look forward to her spread in Playboy.“ Morris also called one of the accusers, Sharon Bialek, a “gold digger” and said her accusations were “outlandish.”
• Fox News host Andrea Tantaros attacked Bialek as a “scam artist” with an “illegitimate child.”
• Fox News host Sean Hannity reported on Bialek’s accusations in a segment called, “Anatomy of a Smear Campaign.”
• Sean Hannity interviewed Gloria Allred, the attorney for one of Herman Cain’s alleged sexual harassment victims. Hannity repeatedly questioned why the woman didn’t immediately leave the vehicle after the alleged crime: “Why would one — if that happened, and it was so traumatic, and it was so bad, why would she stay in the car with him?” 
• Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “We’re beginning to understand the ubiquitousness of sexual harassment claims and how because they’re happening so often and they’re everywhere, many of them are inherently meaningless, done to safeguard future reputation-damaging things, and you might not be guilty.”
• Fox host Mike Huckabee dismissed the sexual harassment allegations against Cain by comparing his alleged behavior to someone ordering food at Popeyes.  
• Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume claimed that superiors in the workplace are now “at an equal or greater disadvantage” than their employees.
• Fox News host Eric Bolling claimed that the allegations were part of a “systematic taking apart of the right by the left.” He added that his “hunch is, you know, the left-wing nutjobs at Media Matters and all the other lefty blogs” were behind the Cain allegations.
• Fox News contributor Mike Gallagher dismissed the seriousness of the allegations, explaining: “The left hates blacks who are conservative”
• A Fox Nation post described Sharon Bialek as having “a Chicago smell.”

Fox’s press release about Cain’s hiring states that he “notably proposed the ‘9-9-9’ tax plan to solve the nation’s debt problem.” Fox News personalities, especially the hosts of Fox & Friends, presented Cain’s plan as alegitimate proposal. Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy claimed that Cain’s proposal is “attractive” to voters because it’s “so simple to understand.” Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson, meanwhile, proclaimed that “voters love, love, love” the 9-9-9 plan. In reality, as tax expert Edward Kleinbard and others have noted, Cain’s plan would have led to “a huge tax hike for the working poor.”

h/t: MMFA

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) has joined the growing list of Republican governors pushing income tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens of his state, and like those other governors, his plan would raise taxes on the poor to pay for it.

Kasich’s plan would cut income tax rates by 20 percent and some business tax rates in half, and it would pay for the plan by levying sales taxes on goods and services that were previously exempt. Since sales taxes are inherently regressive, Kasich’s plan would raise taxes on the poorest 60 percent of the state’s residents by as much as $77. The top 1 percent, though, would see an average tax cut of $10,369, according to an analysis by Policy Matters Ohio.

The poor in Ohio already pay more of their income in taxes than do the rich. The bottom fifth of Ohio taxpayers pay 11.6 percent of their income in taxes, while the top 1 percent pays an effective rate of 8.1 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That disparity exists because of sales taxes: the bottom 20 percent pay 6.7 percent of their income in sales taxes compared to just 1 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers.

h/t: Travis Waldron at Think Progress Economy

To avoid closing Niedringhaus Elementary School and other cost-cutting changes, the Granite City School District would have to raise taxes by $1,500 for the owner of a house worth $100,000. That was the assessment of District Superintendent Harry Briggs during a meeting held Wednesday at the Granite City High School Performing Arts Center.

About 250 people listened as Briggs outlined proposals to save about $4.1 million in the 2013-14 school year by closing Niedringhaus, making Grigsby Middle School an intermediate center for fifth and sixth grades and Coolidge Middle School a junior high school for seventh and eighth grades. The district has to make the cuts because of a drop in state aid and a reduction in property assessments.

H/T: STLtoday.com