If every December at Fox News Channel is all about the nonexistent War on Christmas, then every April is the nonexistent War on Takers. Specifically, every Tax Day, April 15, Fox News dusts off its perennially screechy cuecards featuring the came old nonsensical attacks against ...read more
It's America's favorite pander. Pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service is only slightly less attractive than promising unlimited, consequence-free sex with the partners of our choice. Nobody likes the IRS, and eliminating it entirely will surely resolve many, many ...read more
You might recall that certain faction of the GOP supports abolishing a menu of government departments and agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service. You might also recall how the GOP in general supports lower taxes and smaller government. And you might recall how Rep. ...read more
It's not 100 percent clear the extent to which Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia meant what it sounded like he meant, but tossing around the word "revolt" in the context of a discussion of the U.S. government is never a smart nor rational idea. And it's especially a bad idea ...read more
There are few people on cable news as loathsome as Greg Gutfeld. The most flattering assessment of his role on Fox News Channel is that he's a professional troll. As the host of the late-night program Red Eye, as well as one of the talking dumbstupids on The Five, Gutfeld is a ...read more
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin But while married same-sex couples can file federal taxes together for the first time this year since DOMA was struck down last summer, some individual states have made sure that it's ...read more
Thanks to a budget proposal released yesterday by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, we're able to see the fist official estimate for how much the state expects to make on taxes from marijuana sales. And it's a lot. Even Gov. Hickenlooper, who opposed marijuana ...read more
Whenever Ted Nugent says he has great idea for something, it's usually a solid bet that it's something horrendous -- like a safari to hunt endangered animals or when he said George Zimmerman was attacked by "an enraged black man-child." This time around, Nugent, writing for the ...read more
Newark Mayor Cory Booker sailed to victory in the Democratic primary last week, which surprised no one though about four people voted and that's always a bit sad so now he is on to the general which will be on October 16, 2013. So who is his GOP opponent? So glad you asked! I ...read more
The House of Representatives voted this morning on Congressman Paul Ryan's budget proposal. It passed by a vote of 221 to 207. The 221 yeahs were all Republican, 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted no. You can read the official vote count here. You can read the official ...read more
By Bob Cesca: We've all known a kid who upon losing a board game would freak out, hurl the game across the room and storm off while shouting something like, "This game sucks anyway!" The modern permutation of this unhinged sour grapes tantrum is to chuck a video game controller ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From ABC News: Raising tax rates is "unacceptable" to House Speaker John Boehner as he prepares to open negotiations on the looming "fiscal cliff" with the president and congressional Democrats, he told "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer today in ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From TPM: President Obama ran on raising taxes and won. House Republicans ran on not raising taxes, and got to keep their majority. So now the GOP is offering a familiar sounding compromise: let’s not raise taxes. More specifically, Obama’s ...read more
By Theodoric Meyer: With the documents Mitt Romney released recently, we know a bit more about his taxes. We know, for instance, that Romney paid a rate of 14.1 percent on $13.7 million in income on his 2011 tax return, which he achieved by purposely overpaying. Though he was ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Yahoo! News: Looking to blunt relentless Democratic attacks, Mitt Romney on Friday released his 2011 tax return, a summary of his effective tax rates for the past two decades and, for good measure, two doctor's notes attesting to the good ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Four years ago yesterday, John McCain and Sarah Palin were 1.9 percentage points behind then-Senator Barack Obama in the RCP poll-of-polls. Today, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are 2.8 percentage points behind President Obama in the RCP poll-of-polls. Romney is ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Throughout the last 24 hours, Republicans and Romney surrogates have been scrambling to twist their walnut brains around their candidate's remarkably wrong/misleading/stupid hidden video remarks. Some of them have desperately pointed at the president's 2008 ...read more
By Cora Currier: Last week, the website Gawker published more than 900 pages of documents from Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mitt Romney founded, and headed from 1984 until 1999. The document dump didn't reveal much about Romney's personal investments, but it added a ...read more
By Robert Parry: The newly minted Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is placing a big – and some might say cynical – bet that the stereotype of the “greedy geezer” is real, that Americans now eligible for Medicare or close to it don’t care that the popular health ...read more
Of course, when you put it that way, it's no wonder conservatives would support it: • The Roadmap would raise taxes on Americans making between $20,000 and $200,000 while slashing taxes in half for the wealthiest Americans. Some three-fourths of Americans would face tax ...read more
Of course, not really. But I'm using the conservative technique of extending one position on an issue to an entire ideology. What is notable is that people do not - repeat - do not, oppose increased taxes on rich people. Most Americans think the United States should raise taxes ...read more
Here's more evidence that the GOP tax message may have run its course. A new Gallup Poll finds 48% of Americans saying the amount of federal income taxes they pay is "about right," with 46% saying "too high" -- one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956. ...read more
This post and picture from the anti-labor folks at the "Center for Union Facts" (a front group for pro-corporation lobbyist Rick Berman) is hyping the fact that the labor contract between the UAW and Ford is big. This is supposed to be a big deal. For conservatives, this is a ...read more
Take how you feel about taxation out of the equation for a second. I don't know about you but I was amazed that President-elect Obama was able to say that he would increase the tax rate of high earners and didn't seem to pay a politicial penalty for it. It isn't something he said ...read more
