SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
tea party
The Mind-Boggling Libertarian Legal Game Plan to Repeal Obamacare
Jul 23, 2014
Dave Weigel explains something that I had not fully understood before --- the Obamacare repeal legal game plan:
At least 4 million people, who signed up for Obamacare in states that chose not to set up exchanges (or in the case of Oregon, tried and failed to set up their own), are currently panicking about the threat of erased subsidies and higher payments. Why do I attribute this to libertarians? Like I wrote in 2013, and like Alec MacGillis has been writing, the Halbig case's chief advocate was Michael Cannon, a Cato Institute scholar who had previously campaigned to stop states from setting up their own exchanges.
Cannon's goal, stated bluntly and frequently, was that Obamacare had to be brought down by any means necessary. States that did not set up exchanges were in a better position to sue the government. Fewer people in the exchanges meant higher overall costs. To insurers, the "death spiral" was an apocalypse scenario; to Cannon, it meant freedom.
"A victory for the Halbig plaintiffs would not increase anyone's premiums," he wrote Monday.* "What it would do is prevent the IRS from shifting the burden of those premiums from enrollees to taxpayers. Premiums for federal-Exchange enrollees would not rise, but those enrollees would face the full cost of their 'ObamaCare' plans."
This is the Leninism I'm referring to in my headline. Cannon's no socialist--quite the opposite!--but he saw a solution to the Republican crisis of watching people grow used to new entitlements. Rip the entitlement away, weaken the system, and a painful short term would give Congress no choice but to undo the law. Take away some of the beams, and what do you know? The roof collapses.
An what "undoing" the law means in this context is removing the requirements for pre-existing conditions and the basic package of coverage --- which means that people affected will go uncovered or pay an unaffordable price for an inadequate policy. You know, like it used to be. Which in their minds was a great system apparently.
Remember, this is how they really feel about this:
Teaparty: Just Let Uninsured People Die (CNN GOP debate, Ron Paul)https://24ahead.com/s/tea-parties (Super special note for Ron Paul fans below) Teapartiers shout out "yeah!" when Wolf Blitzer ...
Keep ReadingShow Less
As IRS Scandal Spirals, Progressives Defend Rights 'Even the Tea Party Deserves'
" />
May 14, 2013
"It shouldn't need to be said," announced two of the ACLU's top staff said on Monday in a rebuke of the IRS targeting of rightwing advocacy groups, but they said it anyway: "Even the tea party deserves First Amendment protection."
Despite the grave concern many progressives have about the rise of secretive, "dark-money" independent groups that grew up in the aftermath of the Citizens UnitedSupreme Court decision, none are defending what increasingly looks like inappropriate behavior by officials at the independent agency in charge of administrating the nation's tax system.
In their op-ed quoted from above, Michael Macleod-Ball and Gabe Rottman at the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, say that what appears to be "aggressive enforcement" and "unconstitutional practices" by the IRS should be troubling to all Americans regardless of ideology or party affiliation.
The episode, they said, exhibits why everyone--"from the most liberal to the most conservative"--should vigilantly "guard their First Amendment rights" and gives just one more example of "why giving the government too much power to limit political speech will inevitably result in selective enforcement against unpopular groups."
Meanwhile, new reporting suggests that much more was known about the nature of the agency's focus on rightwing groups and that it may have extended well beyond the office in Cincinnati, where early statements from IRS spokeswoman Lois G. Lerner on Friday said the controversial activity was contained.
As the Washington Postreports:
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency's Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of "social welfare" groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the "absolutely inappropriate" actions were undertaken by "front-line people" working in Cincinnati to target groups with "tea party," "patriot" or "9/12" in their names.
And the Associated Press reports that higher-ups were informed about the aggressive auditing of specific groups, but failed to disclose the details to Congress despite possible opportunities to do so:
When members of Congress repeatedly raised concerns with the IRS about complaints that tea party groups were being harassed last year, a deputy IRS commissioner took the lead in assuring lawmakers that the additional scrutiny was a legitimate part of the screening process.
That deputy commissioner was [Steven T. Miller], who is now the acting head of the agency.
Camp and other members of the Ways and Means Committee sent at least four inquiries to the IRS, starting in June 2011. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, sent three inquiries. And Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House oversight committee, sent at least one.
None of the responses they received from the IRS acknowledged that conservative groups had ever been targeted, including a response to Hatch dated Sept. 11, 2012 -- four months after Miller had been briefed.
In several letters to members of Congress, Miller went into painstaking detail about how applications for tax-exempt status were screened. But he never mentioned that conservative groups were being targeted, even though people working under him knew as early as June 2011 that tea party groups were being targeted, according to an upcoming report by the agency's inspector general.
The IRS has not made new comments to address these recent reports, but Miller is expected to testify before Congress regarding the scandal later this week.
As the lawyers from the ACLU acknowledge, the fact that some of the IRS behavior can be attributed to the "growth in applications and the pressure to uncover "sham" 501(c)(4) groups" spawned by Citizens United, there is still no excuse of the appearance that the audits were politically motivated. They write:
Although the IRS claims this was an honest mistake, these revelations are troubling on many levels. For instance, there are several proposals circulating in Washington right now that would make it much easier for the IRS and other regulators to force political groups to disclose their donors. These disclosure requirements would apply even when the group is advocating purely on an issue of public interest, from clean air to abortion, and would apply to groups of all political persuasions and not just to groups supporting or opposing candidates for office.
The ACLU has expressed concern with these disclosure requirements precisely because they open the door to selective enforcement. Such concerns are often dismissed as speculative and overly pessimistic, but the IRS apology shows that concerns over selective enforcement are prescient. Those in power will always be tempted to use political speech restrictions against opposing candidates or causes.
New reality in post-Citizens United world
MSNBC's Chris Hayes dug deeper on Monday, showing that as 'scandal-fever' strikes the Obama administration this week, there are layers to the IRS story--including a "scandal you're not hearing about"--that should not be ignored.
And the Huffington Post also explored the significant increase of political actions groups in recent years:
This increase came after two major Supreme Court decisions -- Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life in 2007 and Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 -- opened the door for 501(c)(4) groups to engage in increasing amounts of political activity.
"There's a pretty direct link between the Citizens United line of cases and why the IRS is put in this position," said Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California-Irvine, "although it does nothing to explain how the IRS decided to deal with this problem."
The Supreme Court rulings undid a string of campaign finance regulations and opened up loopholes for groups to avoid disclosure. The tax-exempt 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which can accept unlimited contributions from any source and whose donors can be kept secret, became the primary vehicle for operatives looking to engage in politics with "dark" money. The number of applications for 501(c)(4) status spiked, thrusting the IRS into a precarious position of overseeing partisan politics in a way that it had never done before.
"It's just another example of just the inability of the IRS to really enforce what are really political election campaign regulations," said Ofer Lion, a lawyer who works with tax-exempt organizations at Hunton & Williams. "These are career civil servants down in the IRS basement somewhere without adult supervision trying to deal with problems they don't know how to deal with."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Our Message is Simple: Only Main Street Can Save America
Oct 08, 2011
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota -- As I sit awake this Thursday night, preparing to protest on the steps of the Hennepin County Government Center, I ponder what this protest truly stands for.
Throughout the mainstream media there have been some dubious assertions as to what the message of this protest truly is. This night, before the protest in downtown Minneapolis begins, I wish to shed some light on the subject.
In the past several years, it has become painfully clear that the interests of the American people are not held in high esteem in either lower Manhattan or Washington, D.C.
We've seen several bank bailouts since the early 1980s, only to find ourselves at the doorstep of financial ruin once again. Those of differing persuasions think we should "get a job" or "stop whining."
But jobs are scarce, and a true protest is beyond a simple matter of whining.
The politicians have failed us. Wall Street has failed us. Now, only Main Street America can save us. That is our message.
Though it seems as though this movement has no singular message, the real truth is about fairness and equality. Our economy is not one of equal opportunity, as protesters will shout about racial inequality or ever-increasing poverty rates.
These issues are one and the same, because unemployed college grads and stigmatized blacks and Latinos share this ailment.
Those fighting for gay marriage and environmental reform are a part of the same equation; protection of our public places and universal rights fall under the same umbrella that we call equality.
All Americans deserve the same opportunity and the same right to enjoy our public spaces.
As the working single mother and those protesting war will tell you, ours is a movement of peace and protection. These principles can only exist together. Indeed, we should all be treated fairly and equally under the law, but this principle has been lost.
We find it fascinating that some on the ideological right wish to limit our personal freedoms but balk at the idea of regulating business.
This protest is not a denial of the merits of capitalism, but a rebuke to those who would use greed and deception to undercut the honest working American. We recognize that our banking and corporate systems do not honor merit, only the bottom line and short-term gains.
Their thinking is foolish. Our future and the future of our children is being threatened by those not held accountable. We see bankers and corporate masters walking away from financial disaster with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars while working Americans struggle to keep their homes.
The common notion of capitalism is that merit and hard work bring rewards to those with the fortitude and determination to succeed. What we see in America today is quite the opposite.
In response to Tea Party activists we ask: "Why don't you join us?" The bankers and corporations that we decry are no friends of yours.
These organizations have no patriotism, no loyalty to the United States, and they are no friends of small business.
They have no fealty to you or me, for their course is to simply drive up the bottom line no matter the cost and no matter the method.
In the end our true goal is to save capitalism through accountability and honesty.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular