House Obstruction Over? Not Quite

The initial concessions that Kevin McCarthy made to quell the Freedom Caucus uprising:

(1) to bring down the threshold for calling a vote of no confidence against the speaker to one member,
(2) more enforcement to allow more time (72 hours) to read bills,
(3) a greater role for the House Freedom Caucus in Republican leadership, and
(4) an end to U.S. aid to Ukraine.

A number of reports indicate Kevin McCarthy conceded far more.

“Forget morality tales and all the fury and mire of human complexity, and follow the money. It will lead you through urban legends about sex and revenge and jealousy and the acquisition of power over others, but ultimately, it will lead you to the issue from which all the other motivations derive - money, piles of it, green and lovely and cascading like leaves out of a beneficent sky, money and money and money, the one item that human beings will go to any lengths to acquire.” ~ Author James Lee Burke

Al Capone was imprisoned for tax fraud, not the murders and gambling and other crimes he committed. Why? It’s easier to prove. Ultra wealthy people and corporations have spent oodles and boodles of money over decades on campaign contributions and lobbyists to create complicated tax laws loaded with legal ways to avoid them via exemptions, write-offs and shelters. Legal tax evasion. Ethical? How so?

Every time campaign finance reform is applied by well-meaning and bipartisan legisators, the famished all-ribs moneybags in their penury are forced to come begging with their alms bowls to ward off the loss of their fifth yachts which would devastate them.

In 2002, Senator Russ Feingold paired with Senator John McCain to pass the biggest campaign finance reform bill since Watergate reforms in 1974. Eight years later, the Citizens United decision effectively created a way to keep the campaign money flowing to officeholders via Super PACs. A year after that decision, Feingold was defeated for re-election and was defeated again in 2016 in his effort to regain his Senate seat. He’s since remained active in efforts to reform campaign finance via the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One and in 2020 he became the president of the American Constitution Society, a group similar to the conservative Federalist Society that has been busily stacking our court system with judges opposed to abortion, social spending … and campaign finance reform.

The ACS was founded after the Bush v. Gore decision that saw the conservative Supreme Court steal the 2000 election for George W. Bush. Its mission statement says the goal is to "promote the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses: individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law."

Wikipedia: ”On November 14, 2018, the American Constitution Society released a letter signed by over 1,600 attorneys nationwide calling for lawmakers and Justice Department officials to protect the special counsel's Russia probe in light of Matthew Whitaker's appointment as acting attorney general.[18][19] The signatories call for Whitaker to recuse himself or "otherwise be removed from overseeing the Mueller investigation as a result of his profound ethical conflicts."

After the strange ex-president forced the resignation of AG Jeff Sessions, he appointed a toady, Whitaker, to undercut the Mueller investigation that sought to determine whether Putin’s effort to get Trump elected coordinated that support with Trump or Trump’s henchmen. Notably, Whitaker had repeatedly criticized the Mueller probe, which is why Trump initially appointed him to the DOJ in 2017 as AG Sessions’ Chief of Staff and elevated him to Acting AG less than 14 months later.

Prior to his appointment, Whitaker was the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) for three years. While claiming to be non-partisan, FACT pushed the Hilary Clinton email nothingburger heavily and pushed investigations into more than 40 Democratic politicians, officials and orgs. An unnamed GOP operative called it a "chop shop of fake ethics complaints."

So follow the money. FACT was heavily funded by a money pass-through org called Donors Trust which can legally conceal its list of donors. Journalists determined that by 2013, 193 indiduals and orgs had contributed to it. Among its biggest funders are the Koch Brothers, the DeVos family, and foundations begun by ultra wealthy businessmen like John Olin (chemicals & munitions), Adolph Coors (pop beer), Daniel Searle (pharma) and Lynde Bradley (factory automation equipment). All touting the gospel of free market libertarianism as the most important patriotic American family value which means, of course, no business regulations and no taxes so they can afford their 6th through 10th yachts.

Again, all perfectly legal. A host of organizations like this exist, a web of networks designed to make it much harder for anyone to follow the money.

The Citizens United ruling was a major victory for the legal tax evaders, hiding the donors who buy elected officials via campaign donations. And these patriotic obsessive hoarders really get upset when guys like Feingold and McCain interfere with their purchases of politicians. Feingold is out of politics and McCain died on August 25, 2018, of a brain glioblastoma, exactly 9 years to the day that Ted Kennedy died of the same thing. (As the cause of these rare cancers is not determined, I mention this as a coincidence, not as an indicator that political foes are using plutonium poisoning on influential opponents like Putin has. Besides, I’ve found no evidence that Melania Trump or the Koch Brothers slept with either of them.)

Back to the point, sans sarcasm: the Federalist Society has undermined the faith in the American judicial system to a point not seen since the latter half of the 1800s. Using the theory of originalism, they’ve used it to justify decisions that favor wealthy white guys and screw everyone else because that’s what our government’s founders wanted. Completely neglecting changing conditions in our society and the world in the 235 years since, like a population of 4 million growing 83 times larger (332m), the end of slavery, womens’ suffrage, major scientific/medical/technology advances, 2 world wars, nuclear weapons, automatic weapons, and even bullets designed to fly accurately (which came in the 1830s, more than 40 years after the Second Amendment was passed. Single-shot ammo previously was mostly inaccurate except at very close range).

And when originalism theory won’t cover their actions, Federalist Society judges just wing it, often inserting pro-business or pro-religious views into the mix. The ‘theory’ has holes convenient to their true aims of a class based society with women having fewer rights than men, with legislative measures to remedy past injustices quickly overruled and abandoned.

The American Constitution Society also utilizes Constitutional research with more emphasis on human rights, equality, access to justice and democracy than maintaining an economic and religious theocracy rooted in the worship of the biases and economic interests of a bunch of white guys who’ve been dead for two centuries.

These modern times contain 200 Americans controlling more wealth than 50% of our population (200 > 166,000,000) so it’s easy to find millions of people willing to sell out all their values and principles to them. Including judges. But it does not enhance our capacity to survive as a functional and sometimes fair society, or aid the survival of the human race in general.

Huge money talks. Loud and clear. And the middle class, shrinking for 50 years after a 40 year expansion (1932-72) gets to pay an unfair share of the tax burden because of the wealthy hoarders and their hirelings on K Street, in the media, in Congress and now, the courts.

Here’s how that all relates to the Freedom Caucus (aka the Fraudem Cacas).

First, there’s at least 46 members and because they keep their membership secret (always a red flag in government), possibly more. A minority of that group (20), caused that disruption.

My Sunday review of the individuals involved indicated they all come from extremely Republican districts so none took risks of failing to get re-elected. and the caucus has at least 39 men and 7 women. One of the 20 obstructionists is a Black man. One is a young Latina woman. And one is at least one-fourth Choctaw Indian. 17 of the 20 obstructionists are white men, claiming that the Republican majority of 189 men/33 women are not representing their concerns well enough.

The racial breakdown of the Republican House majority is 2 American Indians, 2 Korean Americans, 14 Hispanic/Latino (7 Mexican American, 5 Cuban Americans, 1 Puerto Rican, 1 Brazilian American), 4 Black Americans and 200 White Americans (of whom 174 are White Men vs 26 White Women).

That 20 member minority was led by Matt Gaetz who had a personal beef with McCarthy as he felt McCarthy wasn’t vocal enough to defend Gaetz when he was under investigation for sex trafficking that sent a close friend of Matt’s to prison.

I also noted that 3 in the group preceded Trump’s term, 11 served after him and 5 are brand new. Gaetz & Biggs began serving at the same time Trump did, while most of the representatives after that pair were endorsed by Trump.

The point here is not Gaetz’s leadership, but the allegiance of 17 of the 20 to Donald Trump. And don’t overlook the fact that McCarthy flew in to Mar-A-Lago before the House Speaker voting to assure Trump of his allegiance too.

What did the 20 Blockers achieve?

1) One Representative can call for a No Confidence vote against McCarthy. Other than delaying business, it’s not likely that 112 GOP Representatives would vote to remove him without some big precipating factor.

2) More time (72 hours) to read big bills is a welcome change.

3) A greater role in GOP leadership for caucus members. Their focus appears to be on the Ways & Means Committee (spending/taxes/debt ceiling), the House Judiciary Committee, and a new committee being formed to investigate Democrats.

4) Defunding military aid to Ukraine.

The first is simply an intimidating tactic against McCarthy to prevent him from being too bipartisan or disloyal to Trump, or backing out of his concessions. The third will take some time to fully assess.

The Judiciary Committee is chaired by OH Rep Jim Jordan and the Freedom Caucus appears to now hold 10 of the18 GOP seats on it. Of its 5 subcommittees, the only one dominated by FC members is the Immigration and Citizenship one. It’s unclear yet what the FC can accomplish beyond yelling and screaming for propaganda purposes because the Senate is unlikely to agree. 16 year veteran Jim Jordan chairs the Committee. Under the subcommittee, they might also try to end birthright citizenship. The Vice Chair position has not been announced yet.

Ways and Means and the Appropriations Committees have yet to announce their new lists of members. Of course there’ll soon be some fireworks as McCarthy will block some Democrats from committees but that’s more circus than substance as the new elephants roll in.

The new one that excites the FC is a select subcommittee to investigate the investigators probing Jan. 6 (though I’m not sure of the complete name of the subcommittee as yet). Its mission is clearly designed to obstruct any and all investigations of Donald Trump, his associates and any other Republican. Or to try and divert public attention.

The scenario they’re after is one where they subpoena info from the DOJ and FBI, the AG will have legal reasons to deny that info, then they’ll try to impeach AG Garland or his underlings. No impeachment effort is likely to succeed but the point is to convince the public that the DOJ is breaking the law for purely political reasons.

Other reports indicate that three of the first twelve bills that the House will vote on are designed to tighten abortion restrictions and were scheduled without input from the non-freedom-caucus Republicans. It’s just a gift to Leonard Leo for succesfully converting the Supreme Court and other federal courts into legal theocracies. It really impressed the women and young voters who killed off the Midterm Red Wave, so why not repeat it?

Freezing spending and blocking debt increases are also rumored to be concessions McCarthy made.

And it has to be troubling to NATO allies and other allies around the globe if they try to block aid to Ukraine. It hearkens back to Trump’s effort to extort Zelensky into providing fake evidence of Hunter Biden crimes, which provoked Trump’s first impeachment. But it’s hard to see where such vengeance can gain the Freedom Caucus any new support from American voters. They’ll do what they’ve done to date, insisting that southern border security has to come first and we can’t afford both.

Zelensky’s trip to speak to Congress in December was designed to stave off this aid cutoff effort and I don’t think the majority of the country will be thrilled with efforts to appease Vladimir Putin.

After all the theatrics, it’s especially noteworthy that they decided their first act would be to try and undo the funding to hire 87,000 people in the IRS over the next ten years. A significant number of those hires will be to replace turnovers and retirements and the additional ones will permit them to audit more wealthy people.

Aha! Trump’s pre-2009 taxes didn’t get audited before and an ongoing audit post-2009 has yet to be completed. I doubt they think this will protect Trump from being prosecuted for tax fraud, but it will keep Trump and his voter base convinced that his fluffers are fluffing him well.

And - most importantly - if they can help block audits of the ultra wealthy, they’ll keep seeing those dark money campaign contributions as their next re-election efforts roll around. Those fatcats won’t miss the fact that their desires come first.

Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center wrote this in a Washington Post op-ed Monday:

First, Trump has paid little federal income tax mainly because his businesses have reported large tax losses since 1985, some of the losses real, some manufactured. Second, the IRS utterly failed at auditing Trump, both before and after he became president, largely because it lacks the skills and resources to do so. Third, Trump’s tax dodges are Exhibit A for why the IRS needs the extra $80 billion coming from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, about half of which will go to enforcement.

Or will it? The new Republican-controlled House appears intent on rescinding almost all of the funding.

The Trump tax returns, released after a long court fight, show that he paid trivial amounts of federal income tax in 2015-2020. But he also paid little or no federal income tax across the previous three decades.

The Ways and Means Committee revealed that the IRS is no match for a taxpayer with complicated financial affairs, including Trump, who has said that not paying income tax is “smart” and manufacturing tax losses was “sport.”

As chief and longtime Trump henchmen Jordan and Gaetz groom and tutor all the freshest faces in their caucus, it’s going to be hard for Trump to stave off a successful tax prosecution.

As for the overstated claim that the DOJ, FBI, and who knows what other agencies have ‘weaponized’ against political foes, my look back at the AGs in the past 100 years found several that made mistakes but very few have commited crimes or weaponized against elected opponents. John Mitchell did with Watergate. Meese under Reagan and Ashcroft under GHW Bush did some shady stuff. Alberto Gonzalez was so bad he had to resign under Dubya Bush.

Obama’s DOJ and FBI responded to credible reports of Russian interference in the 2016 election and kept Trump informed that they were investigating the Russians and Michael Flynn. Obama wouldn’t inform like that if Trump were the target.

The worst weaponization since John Mitchell, however, came from Trump. He repeatedly pressured his first AG, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself instead of attacking Mueller. He forced Sessions out and put in Matt Whitaker temporarily and Whitaker verbally attacked Mueller and others repeatedly. Bill Barr replaced him and tried to help Trump cover up his crimes. Then Trump took the advice of a Freedom Caucus member and tried to put in the super toady Jeffrey Clark, only backing off when numerous senior prosecutors threatened to resign.

All the sports and circus events really have Democrats really really really scared to death as Whiteboard Champion Katie Porter displayed during the voting debacle. (See the book title)

It’ll be fun the next week or so but I’m certain there’s better entertainment available.