How you gonna cry victim now?

I wrote about this a while back. The IRS received applications from 298 groups for tax exempt status and a quick look at the approved groups sure looked like the majority were conservative. Now Kevin Drum found an intrepid soul who did the real work.

However, the IRS does publish the names of groups that have received special scrutiny and been approved for tax-exempt status. They recently released a list of 176 organizations that have been approved since 2010, so Martin Sullivan checked each one to figure out if it was liberal or conservative. Here's what he found:

122 conservative
48 liberal/nonconservative
6 unknown

Sure makes their whining about being suppressed ridiculous. Not that it will stop them from crying about it. [graphic via]

Tea Party launches lawsuit against IRS

This is too precious. The biggest grifter born of the original Tea Party uprising is suing the IRS for making them wait too long and work too hard to get their for tax-exempt status.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, the NorCal Tea Party Patriots accused the IRS of violating its constitutional rights due to the "intensive and intrusive scrutiny" it received while seeking tax-exempt status. [...]

The lawsuit has the backing of a group calling itself Citizens for Self-Governance, a group launched by the co-founder the Tea Party Patriots, Mark Meckler.

"We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those known and unknown who have been abused by a federal government run amok," Meckler said in a statement.

Well maybe not everyone. Meckler is seeking "class action status on behalf of all conservative and libertarian groups" who were asked to prove they deserved the exemption. Apparently the liberal groups who were actually denied the status, need not apply. And nothing says small government conservative like running to the federal courts for relief.

You may recall Meckler was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots back in the days of the "proud angry mobs." He parlayed that slot into a big grift culminating in the publication of a book. He polished his bonafides with the rubes by railing against the GOP operatives who he accused of co-opting other Tea Party organizations. Of course he didn't mention his own failed attempt to get cozy with the GOP himself.

That aside, I say please proceed Tea Party. Can't wait to see this issue adjudicated. Fact is, these Tea Party groups are primarily political. Meckler's Patriots gave a cool million to political candidates, sponsored a political debate and actively campaigned to kill state legislation. Claiming "social welfare" status devoted to public education is the biggest fraud going. If there's any justice every one of the damn Tea Party groups will lose the tax exempt status they were wrongfully awarded in the last year or two.

Grasping at strawmen - Updated

There's no doubt the IRS was ham-handed in its handling of the tax-exempt applications after Citizen United. I've yet to see that they did anything against the law. Which is a problem to be sure. It suggests maybe we should be agitating to change the damn laws. Not that that's going to happen. Instead we have everyone looking to grind their own axe against the sharp edge of this pseudoscandal. That of course includes the "Obama has failed me" crowd of the left. Garance jumps in with this damning bit of evidence. On noes, there was no surge in applications in 2010. Quick fire more people. Heads must roll.

That's fine with me. Fire the whole lot. I seem to be the only one who remembers how George W Bush loaded the bureaucracy with GOP loyalists during his reign. Incompetent loyalists at that. Small wonder they screwed it all up. I've yet to see a high level official here who was hired under Obama.

Furthermore, as Steve M. points out, if the goal here was to suppress Tea Party influence on the election, they did a damn poor job of it. The chart showing the monthly approvals speaks for itself.



Oh and that bureaucrat who was in the tax exempt branch and is now in charge of IRS Obamacare enforcement? Hired under Reagan and promoted by none other than President George W. Bush, who also awarded her a hefty bonus in 2004 for distinguished service.

Our government agencies are riddled with GOP loyalists. Don't recall Obama doing any big purges like President Codpiece did. And let's not forget, the IRS admitted they outed themselves. I don't see any political advantage to Obama in engineering something so blatantly obvious. But looks like a helluva good way to invent a pseudo-scandal to help the GOP.

Update: Here's a list of all applications in that category which were approved in 2012. Just going by the obvious ones, looks like more conservative orgs were approved than liberal ones.

Off with their heads

Yet another ritualistic resignation at the IRS, as required by the optics under what passes for civil society these days.

An internal IRS memo says Joseph Grant, commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, will retire June 3. Grant joins Steven Miller, who was forced to resign as acting IRS commissioner on Wednesday.

Grant joined the IRS in 2005.

But Booman is right. In a sane society, this is what should have happened to Tea Party group tax exemptions.

I am infuriated by these stories about Tea Party groups who are complaining that seeking tax-exempt status was like having a proctology exam. While I acknowledge that the IRS made unreasonable requests and caused unreasonable delays, I am even more outraged that they did not deny tax-exempt status to even one Tea Party group. Not one.

There isn't a single Tea Party group in the country that isn't primarily concerned with political matters. None of them should have qualified for tax-exempt status. None.

If this had been liberal groups organizing during the Bush administrations, not only would their tax exemptions have been denied, the leaders of the groups most probably would have been arrested. Hell, in those days they were arresting people for wearing tshirts and carrying signs even mildly critical of the government.

Tea Party not a victim of IRS vendetta after all

Here's the first non-hysterical piece I've seen on the IRS mess. Tea Party groups were not the only ones singled out by the IRS. Some "471 groups received additional scrutiny, a total that indicates a crackdown on politically active nonprofit groups that extends beyond the Tea Party outfits." Liberal groups were targeted for additional scrutiny too and at least one had their status denied. So far no Tea Party group has claimed their applications wasn't approved. No doubt more of them were targeted but only because they filed many more applications than anyone else. And this is still true:

“The real problem is that phony 501(c)(4) groups are exploiting the tax laws to protect donors who don’t want to be held accountable for vicious, deceitful political ads,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The good news about this pseudo-scandal is it spurred some action on Capitol Hill to address the larger issues.

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which is conducting its own IRS investigation, has introduced legislation with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski to require all groups spending money on politics to disclose their donors.

“These problems will continue as long as there is an absence of clear and enforceable rules,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “In the absence of clear and enforceable rules the bureaucracy pretty much makes it up as they go along.”

This would help. The deep pocket funders of the dark money groups don't care so much about the tax break as they do about keeping their donors secret. Force them to disclose their donors and they may lose interest in forming these groups at all. At worst, they couldn't hide behind fake grassroots front groups anymore. That would help some.

Nobody loves the IRS

Personally I prefer to call it a ginned up psuedo-scandal, but Josh is right about the politics of the IRS mess. GOP will be dining out on this one through 2014 and probably longer. This is Grade A prime rib for the angry base. No investigation, no irrefutable hard evidence will ever convince them they haven't been persecuted by the evel soshulist fascist liberal Dimmocrats to steal their First Amendment rights.

God save us if somehow this gets tied directly to the White House for real. Everybody loves a scandal and hates the IRS. The mass outrage will drown out everything else for months. Maybe years.

Blame Congress for the IRS mess - Updated

Once you cut through the self-serving noise over the IRS psuedo-scandal, a few things become clear. Tea Party groups weren't really being targeted for their political beliefs. They were being asked to prove why they deserved a big tax exemption. And let's be real, if the name of your group stands for Taxed Enough Already, you're begging to be tied up in paperwork.

As I said before, I think most of the smaller groups were run by grifters who saw a prime opportunity to profit personally from the fear and anger of misinformed conservatives. More than one of them has been exposed as a fraud since the Kochs laid down that astroturf.

Also, I've seen no evidence President Obama had anything to do with it. He's not checking in with the IRS daily to give them a list of targets. He has no knowledge of their day to day operations. Anybody really think the CEO of a major corporation knows the intimate details of every manager's work day? It defies logic.

IRS was doing its job under the rules that Congress gave them, which were not at all clear. This is the smartest thing I've read about this so far. The real IRS scandal is in who was allowed to operate without challenge:

If that definition sounds murky—that is, if it’s unclear what 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to do—that’s because it is murky. Particularly leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work. For example, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the Koch Brothers, was an instrumental force in helping the Republicans hold the House of Representatives. In every meaningful sense, groups like Americans for Prosperity were operating as units of the Republican Party. Democrats organized similar operations, but on a much smaller scale. (They undoubtedly would have done more, but they lacked the Republican base for funding such efforts.)

So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way. As Fred Wertheimer, the President of Democracy 21, a government-ethics watchdog group, put it, “it is clear that a number of groups have improperly claimed tax-exempt status as section 501(c)(4) ‘social welfare’ organizations in order to hide the donors who financed their campaign activities in the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.”

The real problem is the IRS was wasting time chasing the small fry while the big fish were allowed to freely cheat the system. President Obama can't fix that. Only Congress can, by making the rules clearer.

Update: Charlie Pierce has more on why the blame for this IRS mess is on Congress.

Rubio plays the fool - Updated

Well, I suppose Rubio's ridiculous demand will play well with the rubes:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Monday called on the IRS commisioner to resign in the wake of the agency's admission that staffers in the Cincinatti branch targeted conservative non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in the run-up to the 2012 elections.

You see, the well deluded base probably won't hear this on Fox News.

Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President Bush in 2008 and held by President Obama, left the agency in Nov. 9, 2012. Any pre-election misconduct would have had to occur on his watch. The current acting commissioner is Steven T. Miller -- a permanent replacement has not been nominated.

When quizzed on this small fact, Rubio's office responded that of course Shulman couldn't be responsible, he was just the actual commissioner. Clearly, Miller is still responsible because he was the deputy the whole time.

Pretty sure Rubio won't be blaming this highly placed bureaucrat either. [Via Steve M]

Lois G. Lerner has been selected as the director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service.

Chosen in December of 2005. Another Bush era appointee, so not guilty. I've also been wondering how many applications this division has to review in a year. Still not sure, but probably more than the 75 that were reviewed during the two years in question.

In this position, she will be responsible for administering and enforcing the tax laws that apply to more than 1.8 million organizations recognized by the IRS as exempt from tax.

Of course, not all of those are political front groups, but it does give us another clue about why the worker drones in that division may have been tempted to take shortcuts.

Update: Ed Kilgore has a good overview of psuedo-scandal fever and reminds BigMedia what their job is supposed to be.

So it would be nice if we could have a serious discussion of the abuse of tax exemptions to make it easier to pour obscene amounts of anonymous money into vicious and stupid campaign ads aimed at boosting the profits of the anonymous sources paying for them.

Of course, that will never happen because the same guys that should be investigated pour millions into their advertising revenue.

The taxman cometh

No longer having any trust in the first 12-24 hours of Twitter/Facebook/Media coverage of any breaking story, I'm reserving my outrage until I figure out what's going on with this IRS mini-scandal. I'm not at all comfortable with IRS scrutiny based on political beliefs but I'm not entirely sure that is what's happening here. I'm sure this is true.

She said that between 2010 and 2012, about 75 of these groups were selected for extra screening as part of a broader review of political advocacy organizations that were seeking tax-exempt status. Front-line IRS employees working in the tax-exempt unit in Cincinnati selected groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, she said, as a shorthand because of the proliferation of these groups in recent years.

I'm also remembering the IRS has been hit by austerity fever same as every other federally funded agency. Also, the applications for this particular status by politically motivated individuals has exploded in that time frame. So you have fewer workers reviewing umpteenth more applications and they took a shortcut to meet their quotas.

Have to agree with Think Progress here. The real problem is they used the wrong keywords. While it's true a lot of these Tea Party groups are fleecing the gullible rubes, they're just the grifters. It's the deep pocket front groups who are cheating on the codes.

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, for example, told the IRS that any political ads run by the group would be “limited in amount” and “would not constitute the group’s primary purpose.” Campaign finance reform advocates have argued that, in light of more than $70 million in “independent expenditure” ad spending, the group’s primary purpose is clearly campaign activity. But rather than register with the Federal Election Commission as a political committee, Crossroads GPS continues to claim that it is not such a group and need not publicly identify its funders.

Far as I know he's still getting away with it. The overworked IRS guys would have been better off plugging in the names of the big money NGOs and seeing how many media buys pop up.

The price of corporate welfare

More proof that the Republican conservative whine about over-taxed corporations is a lie:

It hasn’t drawn much attention, but Facebook’s first annual earnings report contains an accounting gem: a multibillion-dollar tax deduction for the cost of executive stock options and share awards.

Even though Facebook (FB) reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes—and even receive a federal tax refund of about $429 million—according to a Feb. 14 statement from Citizens for Tax Justice.

It doesn't matter what the official tax rate is, the biggest, most profitable mega-corporations don't pay that rate. In fact, most mega-corps pay no taxes at all.

How do they do it? Hire an army of accountants to game the tax code. Immoral sure, yet all very legal. But we can't possibly close those loopholes because, job creators! Thus we must starve granny because keeping the government's promise to the olds and taking care of the poors is bad. Give those deadbeats a crust of bread and next thing you know they expect free cheese too. They're eating up the profits. Can't have that. [photo via Mother Jones]

Stupid spending priorities

I was surprised to learn we could eliminate homelessness for less than the cost of what we spend on Christmas decorations. Which is not suggest people shouldn't decorate for Christmas. I assume much of that money goes to small U.S. businesses like tree growers and florists.

But I'm posting this infographic because it shows where our government's spending priorities are focused. If the deficit alarmists were serious they would be looking at big money corporate welfare instead of nickel and diming social programs for working class Americans.

The corporate write offs for meals and entertainment looks ripe for elimination. Why shouldn't they be absorbing that themselves as the price of doing business. Particularly at time when corporate profits have risen to obscence levels while the working man's wages have lost ground. And, of course, there's no sensible reason to continue to subsidize the oil industry. Those should have been eliminated years ago.

GOP in panic over fiscal bluff

This is just not working out as the GOP expected. Their clever plan to bluff their way into getting everything they want for free -- again-- is falling apart now that mean ole President Obama called their bet. And they don't have the political capital to cover their markers. So, instead of showing their hand, Republicans are threatening to deploy the Doomsday Plan!

Under one variation of this Doomsday Plan, House Republicans would allow a vote on extending only the middle class tax cuts and Republicans, to express disapproval at the failure to extend all tax cuts, would vote “present” on the bill, allowing it to pass entirely on Democratic votes.

Which is kind of hilarious considering how much their angry base loved to trash Obama for his present votes in the past. Don't think they've forgotten that. Pretty sure they won't be happy to lose that meme.

On the bright side, the White House is still holding firm. Obama is all, screw you guys. Drive off the freaking cliff. I'll watch.

Meanwhile, somewhere in D.C., John Boehner's bitter tears are falling into his bourbon and branch.

The fiscal fight in one graphic

At this point, a deluge of rhetoric about the fiscal dip, (yes, it's a little dip in the road, not a fking cliff), has flooded the public discourse. All that verbiage can be distilled to this:

On the bright side, it's encouraging to see the White House is holding the line on tax rates for the super-rich. Also, too, Social Security is not on the table. So there's that...

McConnell runs cover for Boehner in fiscal fight

Apparently John Boehner is so terrified of his caucus that Mitch McConnell made the opening offer on their fiscal bluff "negotiations."

In an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Mr. McConnell said if the White House agrees to changes such as higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and a slowing of cost-of-living increases for programs like Social Security, Republicans would agree to include more tax revenue in the deal, though not from higher tax rates. [...]

Mr. McConnell offered his ideas as examples of the structural changes Republicans are looking for. "The nexus for us is: revenue equals genuine entitlement eligibility changes," Mr. McConnell said.

In other words, Democrats should concede every demand the GOP has made in the last ten years and in return they'll accept the Romney/Ryan tax plan. And note that as far as I know, they still haven't offered a single specific or measurable metric on where this mystery revenue will be magically found. Perhaps from the newly discovered unicorn lair in North Korea?

However there are some clues as to how the GOP math might work. Since the legacy media won't do the calculations, it's left to the hippies. Billmon runs the numbers and finds the GOP's hidden tax plan. Shorter version is give even bigger breaks to the billionaires of the top .01% and balance the books on the backs of the top 20% which reaches all the way down to those with only 100K annual income. Which doesn't even make sense on the basis of "enlightened" self-interest.

Of course nothing is etched in stone in D.C. They could change the tax codes a million times, so one can only conclude the real agenda here is to destroy Medicare and Social Security now, (their lifelong dream), and figure out how to siphon off the extra money later.

President Obama calls the GOP's fiscal bluff

Judging by my progressive friends, I guess I'm supposed to be all cynical about the fiscal dip soap opera but call me Pollyanna, I find President Obama's latest move encouraging. He laid down very clear, substantial demands on what he wants out of the deal. That includes raising the top 2% tax rates, extending UI benefits, the payroll holiday and about $50bn in direct stimulus spending. Even better, he's insisting the debt ceiling be dealt with now instead of being held in abeyance to be used for future GOP hostage taking.

This left the Republicans sputtering in outraged disbelief. They want the old somewhat timid, mild mannered, consensus seeking President back. But I don't think they're going to see that guy again. The conventional wisdom suggests second term presidents aren't ambitious and are little more than placeholders seeking to protect whatever gains they made in the first four years. But these aren't conventional times, nor is Obama an ordinary president.

Being the first black president comes with its own set of challenges. The normal rules and precedents don't apply. And sure he made some miscalculations in the first term but he's learned from them.

Perhaps the key lesson the White House took from the last couple of years is this: Don’t negotiate with yourself. If Republicans want to cut Medicare, let them propose the cuts. If they want to raise revenue through tax reform, let them identify the deductions. If they want deeper cuts in discretionary spending, let them settle on a number. And, above all, if they don’t like the White House’s preferred policies, let them propose their own. ...

Also, he's not a rest on his laurels kind of guy. For one thing, that I think many of the white male pundits who dominate our discourse don't really understand, it's different when you're trying to achieve as someone from outside their priviledged demographic. Nothing is handed to you by dint of fortune of birth. You have to work harder to prove your value and find more creative, non-threatening ways to gain acceptance. It takes time to figure it all out.

President Obama has been setting new precedents, while at the same time fulfilling the million mundane rituals of the office and dealing with a ridiculous number of real time crises that require major life or death decisions. I think people often fail to appreciate how overwhelming that work load must be.

I'm as cynical as the next guy about politics and politicans, especially in D.C. Nonetheless, I honestly believe Obama cares more about the future of our country, and our society, than he does about personal glory. I have a feeling history will judge him much more kindly than he has been by his contemporaries.

Fearful Republicans try to wriggle out of their own fiscal trap

Republicans, clearly having taken no lesson from the last election, are stuck on the same stupid tactics. Apparently they think they can bluff and bluster their way into luring Democrats into a trap over the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations. Seeing some amount of panic among the left that the Dems will fall for it again, but so far, I'm not seeing it.

Politico quotes a “top Democratic official” who paints the picture simply: “Rob Nabors [the White House negotiator], has been saying: ‘This is what we want on revenues on the down payment. What’s your guys’ ask on the entitlement side?’ And they keep looking back at us and saying: ‘We want you to come up with that and pitch us.’ That’s not going to happen.”

That’s left Republicans in a peculiar negotiating position: They know they want “Medicare reform” — indeed, they frequently identify Medicare reform as the key to their support for a deal — but aside from premium support, they don’t quite know what they mean by it, and they’re afraid to find out.

In other words, GOPers fell into their own trap and don't know how to break free of it. They're pretending they're holding a winning hand, but in truth, everybody knows the Republicans got nothing but jokers:

This explains the GOP’s reliance on brinksmanship — they hope that the threat of the “fiscal cliff” will scare Obama into bargaining with them, offering political cover for policies the public rejects. But using the fiscal cliff as leverage puts the GOP in the position of defending yet another unpopular policy: raising middle-class taxes. So if we go to January, Republicans are defending the position that taxes on the middle class should rise in order to keep taxes on the rich low in order to cut Medicare. That’s not the way to rehabilitate your party’s image.

The GOP's only hope is to be rescued by the few remaining Blue Dogs.

The good news for the Republicans is that the Democratic policy establishment has plenty of deficit hawks who recall the Clinton era with pride and are generally well-disposed toward some kind of fiscally conservative budget agreement.

I've got news for the deficit hawks. The voters spoke very clearly and 2014 isn't that far away. Dems who fight for the public commons will be rewarded. Dems who cash in with the corporatists will learn the true meaning of "teh angry left." Old guard Dems need to realize in the internet age, institutional amnesia doesn't exist anymore. Every move is digitially recorded and retrievable at the click of a mouse. Voters won't forgive what they can no longer forget.

And by the way, before anyone in Congress tries to cut or "reform" Medicare/SS, they should cut their own lifetime retirement benefits as a show of good faith in "shared" sacrifice.

Boehner back to the same old battle plan

There's no good reason the House couldn't pass the ready to go Senate bill that locks in the Bush era tax rates for income under $250K a year. They could do it in an hour on any day. There's only one reason not to, and it's that Boehner wants to hold lower income Americans hostage in order to protect the top 2% of wealth holders from a slight tax increase even after they sucked up the bulk of the economic gains in the last 12 years.

Some of his high profile Republican brethen apparently got the message of 2012, and are urging him to just pass the Senate bill already, but Boehner is not having it. Oh wait, there is a second reason for Boehner's obstinance. Tea Party Republicans are threatening to primary any GOPer who gives one inch to the dirty liberals and that suspiciously unwhite-skinned Muslim, Kenyan, Marxist, Commie, Socialist usurper who stole their White House again.

Already, Erick son of Erick is prayerfully contemplating a challenge to Saxby Chambliss who dared to revoke his pledge of fealty to Lord Grover of Norquist. A veritable army of Ericks are just waiting for God to tell them to throw down the gauntlets. Considering how their war for the soul of conservatism worked out for us in 2012, I can only wish them all well.

GOP threatens more gridlock

While the pundits and lesser politicians play point the finger of blame for Tuesday's resounding loss at the polls, didn't take long for our D.C. Republicans to start demanding President Obama compromise with them. And by compromise they mean cave into their every demand.

Speaker Boehner sternly warned his troops, the rules of the game have changed. But he's mainly talking about the optics of obstruction. Raising the tax rate on the top income earners is still very much off his table. Hell, he couldn't deliver that under any circumstances. His own caucus would kick him out in a heartbeat. It's still going to come down to a game of poker's bluff, but this time the GOPers don't have any aces up their sleeve.

Meanwhile, apparently remaining clueless, Mitch McConnell makes the GOP's intent explicit.

"Let me put it very clearly," says the five-term Republican senator from Kentucky. "I am not willing to raise taxes to turn off the sequester. Period."

And by that he means raise taxes by a lousy 4% on the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Which, of course, includes him. He fails to mention the Senate has already passed a bill extending the Bush era tax breaks for the other 98% of Americans. So is he just self-interested or actually this clueless?

But don't Messrs. Obama and Reid think they've just been given a mandate to raise those tax rates? "Yes, well, we Republicans in the House and Senate think we have a voter mandate not to raise taxes."

President Obama campaigned on raising those rates. Republicans and their paid pundits can try to spin it as a narrow victory all they want but Obama won by a wider margin than any candidate in recent history. The mandate is clear. And so is the root of GOP intransgience:

As Mr. McConnell walks me to the door, he adds: "You know, he doesn't own the place."

Neither do you Mr. McConnell. Neither do you. One can only hope that this time, Harry Reid walks his filibuster reform talk and drives that point home.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Lying is good politics

On some bobblehead show this morning, Newt admitted Mitt changed his tune on taxes, completely. He didn't call him a liar this time, but considering Rmoney's real tax plan still includes a huge break for the 1%, it's clearly not true. But as Newt says, it is good politics.

Most of the 60 or 70 millions viewers of that debate haven't been following along. This would have been the first, most specific claim they've heard Rmoney make. The media has been half-heartedly calling him out on it, but those viewers won't see that either. So no incentive to be truthful and we already know Mitt will throw his own sons overboard (calling them habitual liars) to save his sinking ship of fools.

More interesting is the hard core conservative purists swallowed the flip-flop whole, without a peep of complaint. Some of them at least must have noticed the straying from the required orthodoxy, but they don't care. They're too busy crowing about how their guy beat down "Nobama." Which of course accounts for the bump the Mittster saw in the polling in the immediate aftermath.

Going to take the chest pounding cons a while to realize it won't last. In the meantime, let them enjoy their newly "unskewed" polls. Wonder what the Skewing Vetter is going to say when the numbers change again. I saw he was taking credit for scaring the pollsters into accuracy yesterday with his mad vetting skillz.

Mitt Romney: New champion of middle class Americans

I guess this is the latest reboot of the Rmoney campaign. Romney's new ad claims he will protect the poor and Obama is the evil taxer of the middle class. However, there's a small glitch in this strategy:

Mitt Romney’s problem is not simply that the Obama campaign has succeeded in persuading voters that his policies would benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class. It’s that his policies really would benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class, and he doesn’t have any reality-based way of persuading voters otherwise.

You can watch Romney's ad at the link. It's kind of hilarious. All boggity, boggity, Pelosi loving Obama, evil liberals gonna take your money to give lazy poors free health care and only the Mittster can save you. But Team Obama's new ad is going to squash that silly meme like an ugly bug.



And here's the NYT article referenced in Obama's ad:

A review of thousands of pages of financial documents and interviews with tax lawyers found that in some cases, the offshore arrangements enabled his individual retirement account to avoid taxes on its investments and may well have reduced Mr. Romney’s personal income tax bills. But perhaps a more significant impact of Mr. Romney’s offshore investments has been on the profit side of the ledger — in the way Bain’s tax-avoidance strategies have enhanced his income.

Of course it's all perfectly legal. It's a convoluted system bought by the wealthy to benefit the wealthy that only an army of high priced accountants can navigate. Wondering who Team Rmoney thinks is stupid enough to believe Mitt would actually dismantle it after all his deep pocket benefactors who use it themselves financed his campaign.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]