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After House Speaker John Boehner's ridiculous statement that he wants to know "who is going to jail" over the recent scandal at the IRS -- and Nancy Pelosi's statement that we need a "clear definition of what a 501(c)(4) is -- MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell did his best to attempt to remind these politicians that there is no need to change existing law to fix this problem.

Ahead of this Friday's hearing, O'Donnell hopes that at least one of the members of Congress attending will ask the IRS why they decided to change the way they enforced the statute.

O’Donnell reminds politicians of the real IRS scandal:

As O’Donnell has been saying since Monday, the so-called IRS scandal is only the consequence of an older and more basic problem with the organization’s reading of the tax code–specifically, with its reading of Section 501(c)(4), which exempts social welfare groups from paying taxes.

The law defines such groups as “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” Since 1959, the IRS has been reading “exclusively” as “primarily.”

“By doing that they made IRS agents judges of political activity, investigators of political activity,” O’Donnell explained in the Rewrite Thursday. “IRS agents were then forced to evaluate just how political a given 501(c)(4) organization might be. And it is very clear that if the words “Tea Party” or the name of any political party at all appears in the title of your 501(c)(4) you absolutely do not qualify for 501(c)(4) status under the law.”

Some politicians, however, still don’t seem to understand the interplay between this law and how it’s enforced.

Continue reading »

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We've already discussed what a piece of work this Robert Murray is, whether it's his terrible safety record, coercing employees on who they're going to donate to and forcing them to appear as props at political events, so it isn't really a big shock he'd pull something as cruel and heartless as this -- Midwest coal firm CEO reads staff a prayer for 'divine intervention' after Obama re-election and then lays off 156 of them:

President Obama's re-election was so unpopular with one Midwest industrialist that he prayed for divine intervention the day after and claimed it forced him to lay off 156 staff.

Robert E. Murray, the chairman of Ohio based Murray Energy said that the Democrat would now wage a 'war on coal' and led a prayer in front of a group of company staff members in which he implored forgiveness for firing his employees.

'Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build,' said Murray in his public prayer.

As head of the largest privately owned coal mining company in the country, Murray issued a denial in August that he forced miners to attend a Romney speech in southeastern Ohio in August and it has been reported that his workers have donated $1.4 million to the Republicans since 2007.

Laying off the staff from his subsidiaries American Coal and Utah American Energy, Murray Energy currently has approximately 3,000 employees and produces around 30 million tons of nituminous coal a year - according its website.

My guess is this guy had every intention of laying off those employees already and decided to use them as political pawns once the election was over. As Ed Schultz noted in the clip above, nothing changed for his company from the day before as compared to the day after the election.

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Bill Maher recapped the 2012 presidential election cycle, from the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision, to the Republican primary race and the GOP clown car that Mitt Romney had to run against, to the pick of Ayn Rand fan-boy Paul Ryan as the vice presidential nominee, to the conventions and Clint Eastwood debating an empty chair and last but not least, the debates and Mitt Romney's late attempt to pivot back to the center.

Maher wrapped up his segment with this:

MAHER: So that's it. That's the election. It is your choice America, because for me it is a win-win. If it’s Obama, America wins, and if it’s Romney, comedy wins.

From Democracy Now, once again Amy Goodman's the only one out there reporting on Rove's stolen elections and the death of Mike Connell when he was about to testify against Rove about what they did on Ohio. Here's another reminder of how disgusting it is that Rove is out there gaining power again instead of sitting in a jail cell: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom: Craig Unger on Stolen Votes, Political Attacks, Billionaire Ties:

In a new book, author Craig Unger examines the return of Karl Rove, the man who masterminded the rise of George W. Bush from governor of Texas to a two-term presidency, who advised Bush during two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who was at the center of two of the biggest scandals of the Bush administration: the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and the U.S. attorneys scandal. While Rove was almost indicted for the Plame affair, he has reinvented himself to become the most powerful political operative in America. Heading up the American Crossroads super PAC and the affiliated nonprofit, Crossroads GPS, Rove has built up a war chest that has given Mitt Romney a significant cash advantage in the fundraising race with President Obama. In "Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power," Unger writes that Rove’s ambitions are not simply about winning elections, but represent "a far more grandiose vision — the forging of a historic re-alignment of America’s political landscape, the transformation of America into effectively a one-party state.

Full transcript available at the link above.

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Jon Stewart took a pretty frightening look at what the Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court has brought us and the obscene amount of fundraising that went on over just the last weekend for Mitt Romney. There was their event out in Utah that Karoli mentioned here, and a San Diego fundraiser with the Koch brothers.

Stewart joked about one of the Obama campaign's efforts to combat this, which is asking donors to make donations instead of wedding gifts. Sadly I've got to agree with his sentiment that something else needs to be done about this money pouring in, or we're f**ked. Sadly, jokes aside, the Obama campaign is not going to be able to rely on wedding money to combat what Romney is going to raise.

I'm not all that worried about the ads or robo-calls or direct mailings that a lot of this money is going to pay for when it comes to the presidential race, because frankly I think they've got diminishing returns when it comes to a race everyone is paying attention to. All they do is irritate me and cause me to hit the fast forward or mute button on my remote and the mailers are just more trash for the recycle bin. And with caller ID, if I don't recognize the number or name of who is calling me, the voice mail can pick up the call.

What worries me more is small markets and Congressional races where the money they're going to spend can make a difference. That and the voter suppression and not trusting these electronic voting machines.

If the Democrats actually cared about preventing elections from being stolen from them they'd push to make voting mandatory, make sure all felons or ex-felons can vote, force every state to give voters at least two weeks to get to the polls to vote, pass a national voting rights act with severe criminal mandatory sentences for violating it, and get rid of every electronic voting machine in this country that does not have a paper trail and that is not properly audited to make sure the vote count is not rigged in any polling place in the United States.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Friday accused President Barack Obama's administration of using "thuggish" tactics to promote campaign finance reform.

During a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, McConnell said that liberals were using "bullying" and "intimidation" to thwart the free speech rights of conservatives.

"The administration's most prominent effort to limit speech is the so-called DISCLOSE Act, a bill the grew out of the president's very public and unseemly rebuke of the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2010," the Kentucky Republican explained. "An attempt to get around the court's decision in Citizens United, this proposed law would compel grassroots groups to disclose the names of their supporters."

"This administration claims that the goal of this bill is transparency, but the enthusiasm with which it has embraced the thuggish tactics of the left suggests that its true goal is to silence critics," he added. "A growing number of people on the political left and now within the government itself have appeared to have concluded that they can't win on the merits. So, they've resorted to bullying and intimidation instead."

"When you've got an administration that's willing to throw core constitutional protections out the window for the sake of an election -- whether its religious freedom or the freedom to speak without fear of intimidation -- we're in very dangerous territory."

The Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act or DISCLOSE Act was first introduced by Democrats in 2010 after the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC ruling that allowed unlimited contributions and corporate funds to flow into political campaigns.

The legislation aims to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 by prohibiting government contractors from making expenditures in elections, banning foreign influence in U.S. elections and forcing corporations to disclose campaign expenditures.

Democrats in the House passed the measure in 2010, but it was blocked by Republicans in the Senate. Democratic senators introduced an updated version of the bill in March of this year.

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Naturally after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker managed to survive his recall election this Tuesday evening, Fox just had to bring in former half-term governor and failed vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to weigh in for her perspective.

Palin told Fox's Greta Van Susteren that Walkers' win showed that "responsible austerity measures" and and reigning in the size of government, have proven effective. I'm not sure what's so "effective" about firing teachers and making classroom sizes larger and busting unions as an excuse to give your corporate buddies tax breaks, but that's their talking points and they're sticking to them. Palin also called the union leadership in Wisconsin "thugs" and said maybe they're the ones who need to be "recalled and replaced." I guess Palin believes they were acting without the support of their membership, because otherwise I'm not sure just who she thinks is going to be doing that "recalling and replacing."

Palin also went after President Obama for failing to campaign in the state and used the win by the Republicans as proof that "his goose is cooked" for the general election, ignoring the fact that the exit polling there showed the state would still support President Obama's reelection in the state by a margin of 52-43 percent over former Gov. Mitt Romney.

We're going to have a lot of hand wringing over whether President Obama showing up there would have made any difference in this recall election. I don't think it would have made a bit of difference unless we had some parity with the amount of money poured into the state. Sadly what this recall proves is that when you've got millionaires and billionaires willing to pour what's pocket change for some of them into buying an election and there's nothing to counter it on the other side, along with voter disenfranchisement, and dirty tricks, that all of us have a huge uphill battle facing us in the age of post Citizens United.

This was a big loss for labor unions in America since this recall election will be looked at as a model to further bust unions and push for more right to work for less laws and Palin won't be the only one out there ready to rub salt in that wound. It's shameful that she can talk like this and at the same time talk about her and her husband's former union membership as though she has an ounce of respect for the labor movement. Anyone who plays the divide and conquer game with unions and their elected leaders doesn't understand that the members are the unions and when you go after the people they elected to represent them, you're going after the members as well. Neither exists in a vacuum.

h/t Media Matters

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From Current TV this Tuesday -- Bernie Sanders suggests ways to boost the US economy and reform campaign finance:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer consider what the U.S. can learn from the rejection of austerity measures in the recent European elections. Sanders proposes investments to bolster the economy, calling for “fundamental changes” in U.S. trade policy: “Unfettered free trade has not worked for the United States of America and for our workers. We have to demand that corporate America start investing in this country, not China.”

Sanders also expresses concern about U.S. campaign finance in the wake of Citizens United: “We are moving into a system — and we see it now every single day — where these guys who are billionaires are literally buying politicians and trying to buy elections.”

And as Sen. Sanders noted on his web site, he supports austerity measures... for millionaires and billionaires: An Austerity Backlash:

France handed the presidency on Sunday to François Hollande, who declared that "austerity can no longer be inevitable." In Greece, Germany and Italy, parliamentary and local elections Sunday were seen as setbacks for austerity measures. Sen. Bernie Sanders saw a lesson for the United States in the European elections. "In the United States and around the world, the middle class is in steep decline while the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well. The message sent by voters in France and other European countries, which I believe will be echoed here in the United States, is that the wealthy and large corporations are going to have to experience some austerity also and that that burden cannot solely fall on working families. In the United States, where corporate profits are soaring and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we must end corporate tax loopholes and start making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. At the same time, we must protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Austerity, yes, but for millionaires and billionaires, not the working families of this country."

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I'm not sure how much "prestige" George Will thinks the Supreme Court has when there are recent polls showing more than half the country believes "the justices are swayed by their own political beliefs" and less than a third believe they they “make impartial decisions based on their reading of the Constitution.”

Given the conflicts of interests with Scalia and Thomas, I would say the only reason the public does not have a lower opinion of the court lands squarely on the laps of people like George Will and the rest of our corporate media for not doing a better job of covering and bringing attention to the problems with those two justices.

And I find it laughable that anyone would believe that the Supreme Court injecting itself into a presidential campaign did not do damage to the "prestige" of that institution, but that's the line Will was pushing during his appearance on This Week, where we're unfortunate enough to have him as an almost permanent fixture in their panel segments.

WILL: It cannot be a good thing going into the fall campaign for the most prestigious federal institution, the Supreme Court, to announce not only that the president's plan was unconstitutional but that it struck at the very fundamentals of the Madisonian architecture of limited government. That can't be a plus to a candidate.

This will be, I think either way, a 5-4 decision. Unlike, say, Brown v. Board of Education--

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you don't buy the argument that Roberts might try to go in the majority?

WILL: I think he'll be in the majority and write the opinion. I assume that will be the case.

But this isn't -- it was terribly important in Brown versus Board of Education having a unanimous court, because you were overturning the mores of a region and changing the thinking of society. This would overturn an unpopular law.

MORAN: But at 5-4, it will be all Republicans against all Democrats if the law goes down, just like it was in Citizens United, just like it was in Bush versus Gore. And the risk for the court is that it begins to be seen by a lot of people as just another political hacks up there who vote their partisan interests. And that hurts the long-term interest of the court.

WILL: There is no measurable evidence that Bush v. Gore, much more consequential decision had an effect on the prestige of the court.

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From this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes -- Story of the Week: Democracy for Billionaires:

Chris's Story of the Week asks who is Sheldon Adelson and what does it mean for democracy when a billionaire investor and casino owner like him can give a Newt Gingrich-associated super PAC $10 million?

Chris highlighted The New Yorker's profile of Adelson, "The Brass Ring" which you can read in its entirety here -- The World of Business, The Brass Ring.

You can watch the rest of the show from this Saturday here and here.