Saturday, April 27, 2019

Mueller Report Evidence Favors Impeachment


It’s been a week since the release of the redacted version of the long awaited Mueller report. As the policy of the Department of Justice is that a sitting president cannot be indicted no matter the crime, Special Counsel Robert Mueller ended his report with the following statement: "Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President 's conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

That’s quite different from what Attorney General William Barr claimed when he first summarized the 448 page document. Barr tried to use Obi Wan Kenobi’s “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” Jedi mind trick. Fortunately the American public aren’t all weak minded Imperial Stormtroopers and we aren’t buying it.

The section identified as Trump Campaign and the Dissemination of Hacked Materials has a high concentration of material redacted and labelled as “Harmful to ongoing matters”, meaning releasing that information might jeopardize ongoing investigations and possible prosecutions. According to the report there are thirteen such ongoing investigations, other sources indicate that half of those are being conducted by the US Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, at least one in New Jersey and one in California.

The un-redacted majority of the report makes clear that senior members of the Trump campaign went so far as to setup a meeting with a group of Russians with the intent to conspire with them and likely would have if only the Russians had real dirt on Hillary. My understanding of the law is that such behavior qualifies as conspiracy with a foreign power against the United States and that’s a crime even if it was ultimately unsuccessful. That being said there is no clear evidence that Donald Trump, Senior was a party to that conspiracy.

On the other hand the case for obstruction of justice by Trump is most compelling. Trump committed clearly criminal acts repeatedly, speaking both publicly and privately to subordinates suborning perjury and tampering with witnesses by suggesting pardons and issuing threats of retribution. Trump’s efforts to get Don McGahn to change the record of his conversations with Trump so there would be no evidence that he demanded FBI Director James Comey be fired is just the most egregious of several such criminal acts.

We should all remember that impeachment is not the same as a criminal trial and the same standards of evidence don’t apply nor at the penalties the same. Unlike a criminal trial the standard isn’t guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s more can Congress and the American people trust this individual to act in the best interest of the nation. As to penalties there is no provision in the constitution for fines or imprisonment simply removal from office.

One of my major complaints about the Obama administration is that he failed to hold George W. Bush and his staff accountable lying to start the Iraq war and the torture and other war crimes committed. I hope Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t make the same mistake.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 26, 2019

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Wealthiest Do Most Tax Evasion


As Tax Day approaches it’s appropriate to think about how the wealthiest among us escape paying their fair share. We can argue over whether there ought to be brackets with higher rates than the current 37% on earnings over $600,000. What I doubt anyone will argue with is need to close the loopholes and tax dodges that high earners use to avoid paying even the current rates.

Propublica, the nonprofit newsroom based in New York, published an article recently discussing this very issue. They found that it is virtually impossible to enforce the tax code against millionaires due to the ability to create complex transactions and the army of attorneys and accountants they can muster to defend and obfuscate those transactions.

In 2016 the Internal Revenue Service determined a wealthy individual named Georg Schaeffler had engaged in abusive tax maneuvers. He stood accused of masking about $5 billion in income. The IRS wanted over $1.2 billion in back taxes and penalties. Schaeffler, is the billionaire heir of a family-owned German manufacturer.

A crack team of specialists formed in 2009 was assigned to the case and embarked on a contentious audit of Schaeffler in 2012. But after seven years of grinding bureaucratic combat in which they were outnumbered by Schaeffler's attorneys and accountants, the IRS abandoned its campaign. The agency informed Schaeffler’s lawyers it was willing to accept just tens of millions, according to a person familiar with the audit.

Shortly after the IRS formed its special team to go after tax cheats like Schaeffler Republicans in Congress began slashing the agency’s budget. The team didn’t receive the resources it was promised and needed in order to do battle with teams like those Schaeffler hired. Since then thousands of IRS employees have left the agency, especially those with expertise in complex audits, the kinds of specialists necessary to staff such an elite unit. The agency had planned to assign 242 examiners to the group by 2012, according to a report by the IRS’ inspector general. But by 2014, it had only 96 auditors. By last year, the number had fallen to 58.

Here’s why this is some important and why you and I have a right to be angry. Studies show that the wealthiest are more likely to avoid paying taxes. Those earning in the top 0.5 percent in income, or $500,000 to $19,000,000, account for fully a fifth of all the underreported income, according to a 2010 study by the IRS’ Andrew Johns and the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod. After adjusting for inflation, that’s more than $50 billion in unpaid taxes for 2017 out of a total of $1,587 billion. That’s an average of $62,500 in underreported income per member of the top 0.5 percent. Another way to look at it is they’re underreporting more than the average American worker earns in a year and they’re getting away with it.

While I’d like to say it’s all the Republicans’ fault I have to be honest and admit that there are plenty of Democrats taking campaign donations from those advocating for special tax loopholes that their clients can use to skip out on paying their fair share. We have a bi-partisan problem that is created and exploited by our campaign finance system. When wealthy people do most of the donating then it’s mostly wealthy people our elected officials listen to. Ultimately the only fix for this is public financing of campaigns. In the short term consider donating $5 or $10 to presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who promise not to take money from political action committees.


Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 12, 2019

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Trump Attacks HealthCare He Promised to Protect


During the 2016 election Trump repeatedly claimed he would help people with pre-existing conditions yet his direction to Attorney General Barr to attack the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act says differently. It is the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, that protects people with pre-existing conditions from being charged outrageous and often unaffordable premiums.
Trump also campaigned promising, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” His proposed 2020 budget cuts all three.
This isn’t just about breaking campaign promises it’s about people’s lives, their physical well-being and their financial health. If Trump succeeds in overturning the Affordable Care Act in court and his proposed budget is passed there are a host of the negative consequences to the lives of most Americans.
Without the Affordable Care Act, most young adults 18-26 will lose the option to be covered under their parent’s insurance plan. Many young adults work part time while going to trade schools or college and aren’t eligible for employer sponsored health insurance and individual plans are notoriously expensive so overturning the Affordable Care Act via the courts will cause tens of thousands of young Americans like my daughter to lose their health insurance.
Do you know anyone with cancer or other expensive life threatening conditions? Should the courts overturn the Affordable Care Act insurance companies would once again be able to set annual and lifetime limits on the amount they’ll cover. Between two episodes of blood clots, one of which involved open heart surgery, a staph infection the nearly killed her and various other surgeries my wife would long ago have busted through the caps that many insurers were once allowed. In other words people like my wife would either die from lack of care or their family would go bankrupt or both.
The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to maintain at least an 80% medical loss ratio; that means at least 80% of premiums have to be spent on actual medical care. If an insurance company ends the year with less than that they have to refund you the difference. The first two years after the ACA first went into effect I got substantial refund checks. My insurer finally got the hang of not overcharging. Without the ACA you can bet medical loss ratios will fall and meaning premiums will go up just to so the insurance company can have higher profits.
Trump’s 2020 budget cutting Medicare and Medicaid would also impact many of us either directly or through our loved ones and friends. Medicare is already the most efficient provider of health insurance spending upwards of 95% of premiums on health care as opposed to the 80% allowed to private insurers. Cutting Medicare will mean cutting coverage or cutting physician reimbursement or both. Considering that Medicare already pays most physicians less than other insurers you can see it won’t end well.
Do you know someone in a nursing home? If so, chances are that Medicaid covers some or all of the cost since it covers 2 out of 3 nursing home residents. Trump’s 2020 budget cuts Medicaid, are you ready to care for you parent or grand-parent when they are kicked out of the nursing home?
Trump’s actions are just cruel and heartless. Let’s hope his enablers in the Senate at least see the electoral downside of this and stop him before it’s too late. If they don’t the 2020 election will be a blood bath at the polls.


Published in the Seguin Gazette April 5, 2019