Drain the swamp!

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The idea that Trump is draining the swamp must be the worst political joke of the year..

The Trump administration has been filling judicial vacancies in rapid succession, with the majority of nominees having one thing in common: ties to the Federalist Society. Groups on the left have accused the White House of outsourcing the nomination process to the Washington, D.C.-based group as it seeks to stack the courts with conservative judges. Of the 13 judicial nominees confirmed since President Trump took office, 10 are either current or former Federalist Society members or regular speakers at its events. Eight of the 10 appellate Trump nominees pending before the Senate have ties to the group.

Meet the powerful group behind Trump’s judicial nominations | TheHill

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Drain the swamp! 

Supporters and critics of the Republican tax bills argue over their effect on middle-class Americans, but there is one group that everyone agrees would come out ahead: the millionaires and billionaires who have to reckon with the estate tax. As Steven Mnuchin, President Trump’s Treasury secretary, bluntly declared last month, “Obviously, the estate tax, I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people.”

As it is now, the estate tax affects a small set of wealthy Americans, applying only when someone leaves assets worth more than $5.49 million to heirs. Together, parents can leave $11 million to their children without paying a penny in estate taxes. Last year, for example, more than 2.6 million people died in the United States. Of the estates filed with the Internal Revenue Service, 5,219 — or 0.2 percent of the total — were large enough to qualify for the tax.

The kind of households that could potentially owe money, however, include Mr. Trump’s, Mr. Mnuchin’s, and those of several cabinet members and advisers, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Housing Secretary Ben Carson and Gary Cohn, chief of the National Economic Council...

Who’d Gain From an Estate Tax Rollback: The 0.2 Percenters - The New York Times

And a video:

Trump family could save more than 1 billion under tax plan

Trump family could save more than 1 billion under tax plan | MSNBC

And they send out tweets from the Heritage Foundatio or the Club for Growth or whatever astroturf organization they can come up with to wavering senators that it's benefiting small businesses and farmers...

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Close toss up whether to file this under Conflicts of interest or Drain the swamp..

Wow. "I think there's very little benefit for people of wealth and I'm not going to benefit," that was President Trump talking to reporters in late September claiming he and other wealthy Americans wouldn't benefit from the Republican tax plan. That's just not true. Let's take a look, using the President's 2005 tax return, at least the beginning pages of it, the only information we have on his tax liability because this president has refused to release his tax returns. Well, analysts found that he would save millions and his children stand to save over a billion dollars under this tax plan.

First, there is something called the Alternative Minimum Tax. That's a provision of the tax code that prevents the wealthy from using loopholes to pay substantially lower personal tax rates. With it repealed, as in the House bill, President Trump would have saved back then more than $31 million. Given changes to the tax code, however, his savings would come down to about $22.6 million, because there are changes in something called capital gains. Now, what about his family?

The House bill repeals the estate tax by 2024. Currently, Trump heirs would owe a 40 percent tax on money they inherited over a certain amount. Though most heirs end up paying closer to 17 percent after loopholes and deductions. But based on Bloomberg's billionaire index, the president is worth $2.86 billion. Trump's heirs could potentially save more than a billion dollars if this bill becomes law and Donald Trump were to pass away after 2024. That is a sizable savings and it's worth noting that Trump claims that he's worth significantly more than that $2.8 billion. If he's telling the truth about that, this one item in the bill would be worth billions with an "S" to the Trump family.

One more provision of interest, lowering the rate for pass through companies to 25 percent. That's a category that many of President Trump's businesses fall into. The drop from the current statutory rate of 39.6 percent -- it's a little complicated because when you have one of these entities some of the money flows through to you personally, and you pay it at the highest marginal tax rate. If that were to drop to 25 percent, there would be a savings for Donald Trump but there isn't enough information on that tax form from 2005 that I showed you. You'd have to see more information to see just how much. But you know for a fact that would be a tax saving.

MSNBC hosts outline how GOP tax plan directly benefits Trump and the super rich

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Drain the swamp!

President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made millions of dollars as a top drug industry executive, according to newly filed financial disclosure forms. Alex Azar, who was previously president of the U.S. division of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co., has a net worth of at least $8.7 million, according to documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics and analyzed by The Hill. Azar was paid nearly $2 million in his final year at Eli Lilly, according to the documents, which only date back to the previous 12 months. The company also paid him a $1.6 million severance package. Azar spent nearly a decade at Eli Lilly, and was president during a period when the company dramatically raised the price of insulin.

HHS nominee Azar made millions working for drugmaker Lilly | TheHill

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Some of President Trump’s donors have recently lobbied him to change the Republican tax reform bill making its way through Congress, arguing it would hurt them financially, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday. The Post reported that at a fundraiser Trump attended last weekend, he was approached by longtime friend and donor, real estate magnate Richard LeFrak, and another donor. Both asked about changes to make the tax bill benefit wealthier New Yorkers.

Trump allies pushing him to change tax bill for their benefit: report | TheHill

Drain the Swamp!

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Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on government helicopter rides, Politico reported. During one trip, the report says, Zinke ordered a helicopter to get back to Washington in time to ride horses with Vice President Mike Pence. Zinke was already under investigation by the Department of the Interior's inspector general over other taxpayer-funded travel.

Report: Zinke spent $6,250 on a helicopter to ride horses with Pence - Business Insider

Drain the swamp!

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Drain the Swamp!

A uranium company lobbied the Trump administration to shrink the size of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah months before President Trump announced that he would be reducing the monument by more than 1 million acres, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. The campaign — along with the administration’s eventual decision to drastically shrink the borders of Bears Ears National Monument — adds to a pattern of deference to industry at the expense of public lands and the environment.

Uranium firm lobbied Trump administration to scale back Bears Ears National Monument – ThinkProgress

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Drain the swamp!

But the final tax legislation contains a brand-new provision that wasn’t included in the House or Senate bills. It benefits real estate developers like President Donald Trump and his family. The provision was first highlighted by the International Business Times. The Republican tax legislation always provided a tax break for “pass-through” corporations, which is a type of corporation where the income is passed to the owners who pay personal income taxes on the money. The rationale for providing tax benefits to this kind of corporation, Republicans say, is that this is how many small businesses are set up.

In addition to lowering the tax rate for “pass-through” corporations, both the House and the Senate allowed corporations to deduct about 20 percent of this kind of income from all taxation. But how do you prevent everyone from declaring themselves a corporation to avail themselves of these new benefits? The House and Senate capped the availability of the deduction as a percentage of wages paid. In other words, you had to at least demonstrate that you were a real business employing people to receive this benefit. The final legislation, however, includes a new way to qualify for this valuable deduction. You can qualify by paying wages or through owning property. This would benefit people who own businesses with large real estate holdings but few actual employees — a category that includes many businesses still owned by President Trump.

Buried in 503-page tax bill, a new provision that personally benefits Trump – ThinkProgress

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Drain the swamp. Why was this blundering Trump candidate so incompetent? Well, his career was actually in blocking enforcement of campaign financing laws (the few that still matter at least a bit):

The reason that Petersen lacked this basic knowledge of the law is that instead of working in a position that would prepare him for a lifetime bench appointment, he has perused another career before this point — fighting against campaign finance law enforcement. 

For several years, he worked as a chief counsel to the Republicans on the Committee on House Administration and Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the committees that oversee campaign finance law and election administration.  Since the summer of 2008, he has been one of three Republican commissioners on the six-member Federal Election Commission.

Over that time, the three member Republican bloc regularly forced deadlocks to block enforcement of campaign finance laws, creating a historic level of gridlock at the agency. As a result, much of the campaign law became virtually unenforced and moneyed interests — including foreign powers — are now able to influence federal elections unimpeded. The trio was so obstinate that the commission actually even deadlocked on whether to serve bagels or donuts at their 40th anniversary celebration.

This Trump judicial nominee’s glaring lack of legal knowledge is just the tip of the iceberg – ThinkProgress

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How about this for a self-dealing swamp..

Hmm, that pass-through tax reform, who might it favor, and how exactly got it sneaked into the final compromise version?

Inquiring minds like to know!

Under the new tax plan, Americans who make most of their money from wages and salaries could see their after-tax income rise by 1.5% on average. Pass-through business owners, however, could get a boost about three-times as large. Highly paid professionals might want to turn themselves into LLCs to take advantage of special tax cuts for business owners.

You may want to turn yourself into an LLC under Republican tax plan - Business Insider

Senator Bob Corker wrote to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch asking for an “explanation” of how a provision on pass-through businesses that would benefit real estate investors came to be included in the final version of the Republican tax bill. 

The change would give real estate businesses a hefty tax break, and could potentially benefit people like Corker, who has commercial property holdings in his home state of Tennessee, as well as President Donald Trump and his family. The provision wasn’t present in the Senate version of the tax plan, but appeared in the bill assembled last week by a conference of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress, and released late on Dec. 15. Corker said he received a call Saturday from a reporter asking about the provision. “The suggestion was that it was airdropped into the conference without prior consideration by either the House or Senate,” Corker said in the letter.

Corker Pushes for Details on Pass-Through Provision in Tax Bill - Bloomberg