by Linda Beale The Supreme Court’s corporate monsters–if money buys them “free speech” rights, can it help them avoid giving others human rights? The Supreme Court decided in Citizens United that corporations could intevene to influence elections–giving money and aide to their selected candidates. This was an inordinate broadening of corporate “personhood”, claimed to be […]

by Linda Beale Rick Santorum’s tax policies and more–imposing his moralizing choices on all Rick Santorum is a man who seems to hold sincerely held religious beliefs. The problem is that he thinks everybody that matters holds (or should hold) the same beliefs that he does, or at least should be forced to live in […]

by Linda Beale American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks on budgets and taxes Arthur Brooks of the American Heritage Institute had an op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, “Obama’s Budget Flunks the Marshmallow Test” (Feb. 24, 2012), at A13, in which he claimed that “unfunded entitlements to the middle class, runaway deficits to be repaid in […]

by Linda Beale Obama proposes to exempt some IRS spending on enforcement from budget cap The 2011 debt ceiling compromise, known as the Budget Control Act, establishes automatic cuts in spending for various categories if no further deal is reached to overturn them. In many ways, it might be ideal to allow the Budget Control […]

by Linda Beale GOP candidates’ policies would raise federal debt by whopping trillions The GOP likes to pretend to take the high road, proclaiming itself to be against increasing the federal debt, running big deficits, or otherwise not running our government like a person runs their household. Pundits on the right tend to look at […]

By Linda Beale Romney’s association with corporate tax shelter schemes Bloomberg’s Jesse Drucker has been doing some research into presidential candidate Mitt Romney and come up with some interesting information–at least for those of us who find corporate involvement in aggressive tax shelter phantom loss generating schemes a worrisome problem. See Drucker, Romney as Audit […]

by Linda Beale Politicians’ wealth and the tax policies they support A story in the Boston Globe by Britt Peterson on Feb. 19, 2012 explored “Why it matters that our politicians are rich” (available here on Boston.com). A key point–the four remaining GOP presidential candidates all are millionaires, with most making more than a million […]

by Linda Beale Links worth noting Lynn Parrymore (Alternet, Naked Capitalism) on the difficulties in putting a stop to congressional insider trading: Can Rep. Bacchus and his money-crazed congressional colleagues be stopped from insider trading? OMB Watch BudgetBlog, Small Biz Owners: Big Businesses, Millionaires Not Paying Fair Share (showing that small businesses are more aware […]

by Linda Beale The relation between high college tuition and low state funding of higher ed: the right’s austerity agenda  As certainly everyone should be aware by now (after almost 20 Republican candidate debates and months of negative campaign ads), the GOP candidates all think that we need to prescribe an austerity budget for state […]

by Linda BealeSantorum’s Tax Returns Out News Sources report Santorum has released tax returns. I’m on my way to San Diego for the ABA Tax Section meeting, so haven’t had a chance to peruse. But a tax rate of around 25-27% for 2007-2010 on income ranging from $659,000 in 2007 to more than a million […]