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Republicans party has become the “Almond Joy Party”. Sometime they act like a nut and sometime they don’t.

Steven Crowder

Comedian

Stop Lying and Let Racism Die

Posted: 02/13/2012 2:03 pm

You can be a namby-pamby leftie, a gun-toting neo-con or a soft, indecisive moderate. I really don't care. Just don't lie to me.

That's what happened this week when both Gawker and Wonkette lied about the following song, claiming that the "n-word" had been used at CPAC:

As you can see, no "n-word" was used... but a "K" word in the form of "knickers." As a matter of fact, during the verse, we (as performers) went out of our way to point to our knickers as to avoid any confusion. It's then followed by the line:

"Man, you think I'd say that? What's wrong with you? I'm just talking about my short pants that I rock with my shoes." The verse was used to point out the hyper-PC, disingenuous liberals who today seek for a reason to be offended under every rock.

As an aside, I've never once claimed to be "offended." Then again, I'm a grown man.

Some may not like the video, and that's fine. Some may disagree with the political content of the video. That's fine too. Lying about it isn't. It all started with a post here at HuffPost where Amanda Terkel posted an intimate, live performance of the song (to nothing more than friends/peers) at CPAC along with a thinly veiled insinuation of racial offense. Claiming that at the moment the "K" word was used, "a technician -- who happened to be one of the only African-American individuals in the room and was working at the front at the time -- stood up and walked away." Taking advantage of the less-than-stellar video quality and murky sound, auxiliary websites like Gawker used the secondhand video to re-set the narrative to "N-word yelled at CPAC."

 A few things that should be mentioned here;

A) The "n-word" was never, ever used.

B) He wasn't one of the only African-Americans in the room.

C) He didn't walk away in offense. More on this below.

Like all great character assassination attempts, implication is much more effective than accusation.

"Does the Tea Party hate Barack Obama because he's black and only because he's black? You decide!"

"Is Sarah Palin encouraging the violent targeting and shooting of US congressmen? Who knows!"

"Does Keith Olbermann specifically hire younger, female producers for questionable reasons unknown? Don't ask me!"

Let me clarify. Chris (my co-performer) and I were talking with the aforementioned sound technician both before and after the show, laughing and enjoying each other's company. Furthermore, Bradd Young, the co-creator of the song who produced this entire track, also happens to be black, and enjoys the video immensely.

Note: I'm aware that one would generally use the term "African-American" as to avoid the wrath of the privileged, often white, PC progressives looking to mount an "offended" campaign. However, since I've never heard Bradd refer to himself as such, and many black Americans today deem "hyphenated Americanism" offensive, I've avoided using the term out of respect for him. See what I did there?

Listen, I'm not somebody who really cares about polarization, political correctness or even what context can be fit into proper 40-character formatting. People can hold any opinion that they want on any subject that they choose. Just don't proactively lie to people. It's a simple request really, and one that we don't hear nearly enough.

It's for that same reason that I'd rather engage the president over his current policy failures than crazy conspiracy theories. By that same token, I would expect many of the HuffPost readers to hate me for plenty of things that I've actually said in the past as opposed to those made up by weak, lefty, online-commentating wieners.

Go ahead and take your foot off the "civility" gas pedal for all I care. We should all be replacing it with "honesty."

Follow Steven Crowder on Twitter: www.twitter.com/scrowder

White Grandfather Cuffed For Walking With Black Granddaughter

Written by Ruth Manuel-Logan on February 13, 2012 1:25 pm

Scott Henson (pictured), a self-described White Texas redneck, was cuffed last Friday by a swarm of policemen, because he was walking his Black 5-year-old grandchild down the street. The Austin resident spoke to NewsOne about how he was accosted by police for being in the company of his grandchild, Ty(pictured).

SEE ALSO: GLAAD Is Not Anti-Black

Ty’s mother is not Henson and his wife’s biological child; the couple decided to raise her after her own father died.  Still, the woman calls Henson and his wife “Mom” and “Dad,” and naturally, her daughter refers to the couple as her grandparents.

Henson’s grandchild typically spends Friday nights with her grandfather and his wife, so that the little girl’s parents can get a break.  Last Friday, Henson, who is a journalist and creator of two popular blogs GritsforBreakfast and Huevos Rancheros, took his grandchild to a skating rink near his home as a reward for being a high achiever at school.  The kindergartener grew tired of skating, so the pair decided to walk home rather than have his wife pick them up from the rink.

After walking a distance from the rink, Henson felt as if he was being followed.  Suddenly, someone called out to them, and it turned out to be a deputy constable.

“She told me to take my hand out of my pocket and to step away from Ty, declaring that someone had seen a White man chasing a Black girl and reported a possible kidnapping. Then she began asking the 5-year-old about me. The last time this happened, Ty was barely 2, and I wasn’t about to let police question her. This time, though, at least initially, I decided to let her answer. “Do you know this man?” the deputy asked. “Yes, he’s my Grandpa,” Ty said.  “What did you say?” the deputy repeated. “He’s my Grandpa!” Ty yelled, then rushed back over to me and grabbed hold of my leg. “Okay,” the deputy responded.

The constable asked for Henson’s name and address, and he chose not to answer stating that if he was not being held for anything, he would like to take the child home.  The woman complied and allowed Henson to leave.

Just as Henson and Ty were approaching their home, a police cruiser that had passed them by after the constable released them suddenly turned around and threw on his flashing lights.  Four more police cars joined, surrounding Henson and Ty.  Officers jumped out of their vehicles with tasers drawn, demanding that Henson throw up his hands and step away from the child.  The officers grabbed the child and put her in the backseat of a vehicle.  By now there were a total of nine to ten police cars surrounding Henson and his granddaughter.

“ I gave them the phone numbers they needed to confirm who Ty was and that she was supposed to be with me (and not in the back of their police car), but for quite a while nobody seemed too interested in verifying my story. One officer wanted to lecture me endlessly about how they were just doing their job, as if the innocent person handcuffed on the side of the road cares about such excuses. I asked why he hadn’t made any calls yet, and he interrupted his lecture to say, ‘We’ve only been here two minutes, give us time” (It had actually been much longer than that). Maybe so, I replied, sitting on the concrete in handcuffs, but there are nine of y’all milling about doing nothing by my count so you’ve had 18 minutes for somebody to get on the damn phone by now so y’all can figure out you screwed up.”

According to Henson, the same  deputy constable who had questioned him earlier walked in on the scene and briefly looked his way as she spoke to police personnel. Soon after, a supervisor arrived and began questioning the officers.  The woman came over to Henson and began explaining how the police department has to take complaints about possible kidnappings seriously. By this point, though, Henson felt he was guilty in the eyes of law enforcement for the “heinous crime of babysitting while white.”

After Henson was released, there were no apologies issued.  After being interrogated, Ty was given a flashlight as a consolation prize.  According to Henson, the deputy constable who could now barely look him in the eyes, “You knew better. This is on you.”

Meanwhile Ty, who was visibly shaken after witnessing how authorities treated her granddad, is left with a negative perception of law enforcement.  “I hate for a 5-year-old to be subjected to such an experience. I’d like her to view police as people she can trust instead of threats to her and her family, but it’s possible I live in the wrong neighborhood for that.”

Attempts were made by News One to obtain a quote from the Austin police department regarding the Henson case but our calls were not returned.

Bob Burnett

Berkeley writer, retired Silicon Valley executive

Obama vs. Romney: Class Warfare

Posted: 04/13/2012 10:12 am

With the departure of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney is sure to win the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination. His campaign has turned its focus to President Obama. The first week of April, both Obama and Romney spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Their speeches previewed what we're likely to hear from their two candidates over the next seven months: very different perspectives on economic fairness.

Obama's central theme was inequality: "Can we succeed as a country where a shrinking number of people do exceedingly well while a growing number struggle to get by or are we better off when everyone gets a fair shot?" Declaring, "this is a make or break moment for the middle class." The president observed that the Democratic and Republican positions are extraordinarily different. He defends the 99 percent, while Romney favors the 1 percent.

In contrast, Romney's central theme was President Obama. "He did not cause the economic crisis but he made it worse." "President Obama's answer to the our economic crisis was more spending, more debt, and larger government."

According to a recent Pew Research Poll 61 percent of American's believe the U.S. economic system "unfairly favors the wealthy." Romney won't acknowledge this. When questioned on the Today Show about growing concern regarding economic inequality, Romney responded: "I think [this concern is] about envy. I think it's about class warfare." In his ASNE speech, the closest Romney came to responding to Obama's comments about inequality was to accuse the president of "setting up straw men to distract from his record."

Obama observed:

"What drags down our entire economy is when there's an ever-widening chasm between the ultra rich and everybody else. In this country broad-based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few. It has always come from the success of a strong and growing middle class."

Romney sees it differently:

"We're struggling because our government is too big. As President... I will cut marginal tax rates across the board for individuals and corporations, and limit deductions and exclusions. I will repeal burdensome regulations, and prevent the bureaucracy from writing new ones... Instead of growing the federal government, I will shrink it."

Romney's solution to America's economic malaise is a reprise of the discredited maxims of Reaganomics: government is the problem; helping the rich get richer will inevitably help everyone else; and markets are inherently self-correcting and therefore there's no need for government regulation -- whether the problem is bank fraud or polluted water.

Obama anticipated Romney's perspective:

"For much of the last century, we have been having the same argument with folks who keep peddling some version of trickle-down economics. They keep telling us that if we convert more of our investments in education and research and health care into tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, our economy will grow stronger. They keep telling us that if we just strip away more regulations, and let businesses pollute more and treat workers and consumers with impunity, that somehow we'd all be better off. We're told that when the wealthy become even wealthier and corporations are allowed to maximize their profits by whatever means necessary, it's good for America and that their success will automatically translate into more jobs and prosperity for everybody else. That's the theory... the problem for advocates of this theory is that we've tried their approach. The income of the top 1 percent has grown by more than 275 percent over the last few decades to an average of $1.3 million a year. But prosperity sure didn't trickle down. Instead, during the last decade, we had the slowest job growth in half a century. And the typical American family actually saw their incomes fall by about 6 percent, even as the economy was growing."

The 2012 Presidential election will center on economic fairness. Obama is a Democrat defending the rights of the 99 percent. Romney is a plutocrat defending the rights of the 1 percent. Obama wants to use government as an instrument to ensure a fairer economy, to revitalize American democracy. Romney wants to eviscerate government. He wants a reprise of Reaganomics, a return to the economic philosophy that produced 2008's economic meltdown and the current recession.

Understanding Romney's perspective helps crack his campaign code. When Romney says Obama made the economic crisis worse, he means Obama did not follow Republican advice and do nothing; Obama did not stand by and let the economy crater. When Romney says Obama has no economic plan, he means Obama does not have a plan that Republicans agree with, a plan that relies upon the magic of Reaganomics.

In his ASNE speech, President Obama said, "I can't remember a time when the choice between competing visions of our future has been so unambiguously clear." That's correct. Obama's challenge is to make sure that American voters understand this. In the 2012 presidential election the central issue must be economic fairness.

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By JIM ABRAMS   10/27/11 04:57 PM ET   

House Democrats Want House Republicans To Work More Days

WASHINGTON -- The House will be in session less than one out of every three days next year, a slight decline from past years. House Republicans say they are running the place more efficiently and lawmakers need the time to be with constituents in an election year. Democrats say that's too few days on the job during an economic crisis.

The announcement of the 2012 schedule even led to a Twitter battle between the press offices of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and the No. 2 Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, over how Congress is being run. "As with this year, the goal of next year's calendar is to create certainty and productivity in the legislative process, protect committee time and afford members the opportunity to gain valuable input from their constituents at home," Cantor said in a letter to colleagues as he released the calendar scheduling 109 legislative days in 2012.

Under the tentative calendar, the House would have only six voting days in January. There would be three working days in August, when Congress usually takes off, and the House would be off from Oct. 5 until a week after Election Day on Nov. 6. The last scheduled session of the year would be on Dec. 14.

In 2008, the last presidential election year when Democrats controlled the House, the House met for 119 days.

"The American people deserve better," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said at a news conference, referring to congressional inaction on creating jobs and the House's six-day schedule in January. "We have work to do." Hoyer said the House has had only 111 days of legislative business this year and the floor schedule "has prevented the House from getting anything done to create jobs." Republicans responded at a news conference where they highlighted what they called the "forgotten 15," bills that the House has passed and Republicans say will lead to job growth but which the Democratic-controlled Senate has ignored.

The 15 bills focus on promoting development of domestic energy and reducing or eliminating regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies. Top of Form

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Differences over the schedule and who's to blame for lack of productivity played out on Twitter. Cantor's office derided the "fake outrage" of Hoyer and Pelosi and claimed that the House will be in session more days than it was under Democratic control. Hoyer's office shot back, "You mean days like today when last votes started before 11 a.m. and we jetted out of town for the week?"

House Republicans, when they gained the majority in January, put into effect several changes to make the chamber operate more smoothly. They reduced the number of votes on minor legislation such as naming post offices, cut back on morning votes so committee hearings would not be interrupted, and reduced late-night sessions. Cantor said the House has taken 800 roll call votes through Oct. 14 this year, compared to 565 last year.

The Library of Congress says the House has met 139 times through Wednesday. That includes several dozen "pro forma" sessions that last a few minutes and where no business is conducted. This year such sessions have been convened to prevent President Barack Obama from making federal appointments when Congress is away.

The number hasn't varied much in recent years, with legislative sessions generally going down in election years. According to the Library of Congress, the House met 127 times in 2010, 159 times in 2009, 119 times in 2008 and 164 times in 2007.

The Senate has met 136 times so far this year and convened 157 times last year, including pro forma sessions.

A Guide to the Class Warfare of Presidential Politics

By Michael Kinsley Apr 12, 2012 7:00 PM ET

Everyone says there’s a class war going on in the U.S. If so, it is, at least so far, a war of words.

It’s also a war in which a principal tactic is to accuse the other side of fighting a class war, while denying that you’re fighting one yourself. Meanwhile, everybody claims to be on the same side: the side of the people, against the aristocratic elitist snobs who … where did I park my tumbrel? In this war of words, certain words take on a special weight or meaning. Here are a few:

About Michael Kinsley

Michael Kinsley is an editor and columnist at Bloomberg View. His column appears on Fridays. For many years he was the editor of the New Republic and a columnist for the Washington Post. He was the founding Editor of Slate.

-- Elitist. The verbal class war is like a game of pin-the- tail-on-the-donkey (or elephant, as the case may be). The goal is to pin the other side with the label of “elitist.” In my opinion -- purloined from writers such as Thomas Frank and Thomas Byrne Edsall -- conservatives continually gin up an essentially phony cultural class war over social issues, to distract people from the economic class war that the wealthy are winning.

-- Buffett Rule. President Barack Obama is making this a centerpiece of his campaign. Originally proposed by Buffett himself, this rule holds that Warren Buffett should pay a higher tax rate than his secretary. And, more to the point, Mitt Romney should pay more than the 13.9 percent he did pay on his 2010 income of $21.6 million. Specifically, Obama proposes a minimum tax of 30 percent on all incomes over $1 million.

Lucky, Not Evil

Thirty percent is a perfectly reasonable tax rate on incomes over a million -- even if the recipients are sainted small business folk. Whether 30 percent constitutes class warfare depends on the rhetoric that goes with it. People who make more than a million a year are not evil. They’re just lucky. Obama’s rhetoric has largely avoided cheap shots that imply otherwise.

But there’s a second problem with the Buffett Rule, as practiced by Obama: It lets too many people off the hook. As the right-wing media love to point out, it would only bring in about $4 billion a year, or about one day’s worth of the federal deficit.

Effective class warfare requires drawing a line and choosing a side. All this talk about millionaires effectively moves the line from $250,000 income a year (the level below which Obama has promised not to raise taxes) to $1 million (the level below which you don’t have to worry about the Buffett Rule). Politically, the more people on your side, the better. But economically, it makes the war nearly pointless.

-- Soft Side. This is not a reference to luggage (though it may involve some baggage). A soft side is something that presidential candidates -- especially a rich candidate -- need to have, and that Romney is widely felt to lack. A soft side is evidence of personal vulnerability. Poor guy, everything has always gone well for him. He’s had no opportunity to suffer. Or, much worse, he may have suffered but won’t talk about it. This is downright un-American.

A refusal to reveal his soft side may have been the only evidence we have that there is something Romney won’t do or say to become president. Romney says frankly that if suffering is what you need, he’s not your guy.

C’mon, Mitt -- this is no time for stoicism. His wife, Ann, has multiple sclerosis and they seem to have handled it as well as possible as individuals, as a couple and as a family. They’ve been playing it down, but that’s got to stop. And we need more anecdotes like the ones in the Washington Post this week about how Romney and his sons once rescued some people and their dog from a capsized boat, and about his work counseling neighbors as a lay pastor of his church. Rescuing the dog may counteract the only personal thing people do know about Romney, which is that story about strapping his caged dog to the top of the car.

Just Marvelous

-- Marvelous. Obama actually started this one, mocking Romney for describing the Republican budget proposal as “marvelous.” Obama said it’s a word you don’t often hear describing a government budget proposal, or indeed at all.

Marvelous is not really such a rare word. But it does have a certain trivial, epicene quality that one associates with rich people and was not what Romney was trying to convey. (Remember the Billy Crystal character on “Saturday Night Live,” Fernando, with his tag line, “You look mah-velous”?) Romney should have said the Republican budget was “awesome.”

-- Harvard. Romney said last week that Obama “spent too much time at Harvard.” This Harvard, in contrast to the real Harvard (well, as partly or somewhat in contrast to the real Harvard) is a place where people get indoctrinated with a lot of fancy left-wing theories and purged of any common sense or empathy with ordinary people that they might once have had. The laughably obvious trouble with this remark is that Romney himself spent four years at Harvard -- one year longer than Obama -- and got two Harvard degrees (law and business) as opposed to Obama’s one (law).

How could Romney say such an idiotic thing about Obama, given his own scandalous record of time spent at Harvard? Did no little voice in his head tell him, “Don’t go there”? Perhaps he observed how, in 1988, George Bush the Elder successfully used Harvard as a bludgeon against Michael Dukakis, even though Bush himself had gone to Yale. Nevertheless, the fact that Romney thought he could play the Harvard card again suggests that he really will say anything to get elected. Or that it’s Romney, not Obama (as some Republicans have said), who gets in trouble when he departs from the teleprompter. Or possibly that he has bottomless contempt for the voters.

In the end, the voters don’t actually seem to share the thuggish anti-intellectualism implied by attacks on a rival presidential candidate for the sin of having attended one of the world’s great universities (and one of America’s great ornaments). Among the past four presidents, there are five Yale or Harvard degrees. To be sure, this is no guarantee of intelligence or wisdom. George W. Bush has one of each.

(Michael Kinsley is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

Today’s highlights: The View editors on capital flight in the euro zone and some final words on gender inequality at the Masters; Jonathan Alter on why Paul Ryan’s budget proposal would irk the founders of the Republican Party; Jonathan Weil on JPMorgan derivatives trader Bruno Iksil’s nicknames; Stephen Carter on Mitt Romney and his father’s portrayal on the program “Mad Men”; Gary Shilling on misplaced optimism in the stock market; and Rohit Aggarwala on why user fees are preferable to an infrastructure bank.

To contact the writer of this article: Michael Kinsley at mkinsley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Michael Newman atmnewman43@bloomberg.net

Albert Stanley, Former Halliburton Exec, Sentenced In Bribery Scheme

Posted: 02/24/12 03:52 PM ET  |  Updated: 02/24/12 05:52 PM ET

A former top Halliburton executive will serve 2 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty in Houston federal court to orchestrating a $180 million bribery scheme to secure $6 billion in natural gas deals in Nigeria, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Albert "Jack" Stanley is the former CEO of KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary at the time of the bribes; he was tapped to run the company in 1998 by future Vice President Dick Cheney, who ran Halliburton between 1996 and 2000. Cheney was not charged in the case.

KBR, spun off by Halliburton in the wake of the scandal, called the scheme an "unfortunate chapter" in its "rich and storied history" after pleading guilty to corporate criminal charges in 2009.

The investigation of the bribes crossed four continents over 10 years and involved five companies in Europe, the U.S., Japan and Nigeria. Criminal and civil penalties in the case have yielded more than $1.7 billion in fines, forfeitures and other sanctions.

"This case shows the importance the department places on putting an end to foreign bribery," Mythili Raman, a prosecutor with the Justice Department's criminal division, said in the Feb. 23 announcement.

Stanley, 69, who also pleaded guilty to mail and wire fraud in a separate kickback scheme, agreed to pay $10.8 million in addition to incarceration. He faced a maximum of seven years in prison, but prosecutors said the lighter sentence was merited by his "substantial cooperation" in the investigation. Stanley had pleaded guilty in September 2008, but his sentencing was delayed 16 times, according to Reuters.

Two co-conspirators in the bribery scheme -- Jeffrey Tesler, 63, a British lawyer, and Wojciech J. Chodan, a salesman for KBR's British subsidiary -- were also sentenced Thursday.

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According to the Justice Department, Tesler served as the principal bagman in the scheme, steering more than $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials between 1994 and 2004 to secure natural gas contracts worth $6 billion. He was ordered to serve 21 months in prison and a pay a $25,000 fine. He had also agreed to forfeit $149 million under the terms of a 2009 plea agreement.

Chodan previously agreed to forfeit $726,000 and was sentenced to one year of probation.

All three men cooperated with authorities in the investigation, the largest multi-company prosecution ever under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a federal anti-bribery statute.

In a statement to U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison, Stanley requested leniency, saying that he had been raised on "traditional American values of hard work, honesty and integrity."

"But somewhere along the way my values were compromised, through ambition, ego or alcoholism," Stanley said, according to Bloomberg.

The U.S. investigation never reached Cheney, despite his leadership role at Halliburton during the time of the scheme. Nigerian officials announced in December 2010 that Cheney would be charged criminally as part of an anti-corruption investigation into the bribes, but those charges were dropped after Halliburton paid a $35 million settlement related to the case.

Under questioning from Judge Ellison, Brad Simon, a lawyer for Tesler, said that bribery remains widespread in Nigeria, one of the world's top oil producers and a key source of imported oil for the U.S.

"It was a fact of life and continues to be a fact of life in Nigeria," Simon said. 

Have the Rich Ever Paid a Fair Share of Taxes? (Part 1)

By John Steele Gordon Apr 13, 2012 12:30 PM ET

The idea that the rich aren't paying their "fair share" of taxes isn't exactly a new beast in the zoo of American politics. It has been around since the Civil War ended 150 years ago.

To fund the war, the federal government taxed as it had never taxed before. The tariff, long the main source of government revenue, was raised sharply. So were excise taxes on commodities such as liquor. The government also instituted the country's first income tax, which imposed a 3 percent levy on incomes above $800. It was soon raised to 3 percent on earnings of more than $600 and 5 percent on those that exceeded $10,000.

In the mid-19th century, anyone would have considered a person with a $10,000 annual income "rich."

With the war's end, government outlays declined sharply. In 1865, they had been almost $1.3 billion, the first time any government anywhere had spent more than $1 billion in a year. By 1870, they had declined to $309 million.

The income tax was allowed to lapse in 1873, and excise taxes were lowered as well. What remained very high was the tariff. But the purpose of a high tariff wasn't solely to fund federal operations; it was so high that the government ran budget surpluses for 28 straight years, from 1866 to 1893.

Rather, the tariff was kept high to protect the booming industrialization of the American economy in the postwar years. That was very popular in the Northeast and Midwest, where the industry was concentrated, but deeply unpopular in the South and West.

The problem was that the tariff is a consumption tax. It is simply built into the price of imported goods and paid by the purchaser. (It also, of course, allows domestic producers to raise prices.) And consumption taxes are inherently regressive. They fall more heavily on people of low income, who must spend most of their earnings to buy necessities. The rich usually bank most of their incomes and thus largely escape consumption taxes.

Not surprisingly, many thought that a federal tax system based mostly on the tariff was unjust: The rich weren't paying their fair share. One way to make them do so was an income tax. In 1894, with the economy in deep depression, Congress, with a Democratic majority, passed a revenue act that slightly lowered tariffs and imposed an income tax to make up the lost revenue. The tax amounted to 2 percent on incomes above $4,000.

That was a comfortable upper-middle-class income in the 1890s (only about 85,000 households would have been subject to the tax). So this was explicitly a tax on the rich. Naturally, a lawsuit ensued. The plaintiff's argument was that an income tax was a "direct tax" and the Constitution requires that all direct taxes laid by the federal government must be "in proportion to the census." In other words, direct taxes must be apportioned among the states according to population, not income, something obviously impossible with a personal income tax.

The case, Pollack v. Farmers' Loan and Trust, reached the Supreme Court in 1895. Joseph Choate, an eminent Wall Street lawyer, argued for the plaintiff. He had a tough case to make. The court had ruled as early as 1796 that a direct tax was, simply, any tax that could be apportioned among the states according to population. In 1881, it had ruled that the Civil War income tax, which had already expired, was an indirect tax. With precedent against him, Choate demagogued, calling the act socialistic, communistic and populistic. He argued that the income tax endangered "the very keystone of the arch upon which all civilized government rests."

This approach proved good enough to get a tie vote in the court, 4-4. But a tie in a case that had generated such national attention would never do. Justice Howell Jackson of Tennessee had been absent from the argument due to illness. Although he was dying of tuberculosis, he managed to return to the court for a rehearing. As one journalist wrote, "He interested the crowd more than all the rest of the bench; that his life can last but a short time and that it will probably be shortened by the effort which he has made to attend the hearing."

Advocates for the income tax were confident that, with Jackson's known political sympathies, the tax would be upheld 5-4. The vote was indeed 5-4 when the decision came down on April 8, 1895. But it went against the income tax. One of the other justices -- which one isn't known to history -- had switched his vote. Jackson could only write a stinging dissent, calling the decision "the most disastrous blow ever struck at the Constitutional power of Congress." He then returned to his bed, where he died four months later.

The rich would go undertaxed a while longer.

(John Steele Gordon is the author of numerous books, including "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt." The opinions expressed are his own. This is the first in a two-part series.)

To read more from Echoes, Bloomberg View's economic history blog, click here.

To contact the writer of this blog post: John Steele Gordon at jsg@johnsteelegordon.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this blog post: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net.

Undocumented New Mexicans Can Still Get Driver’s Licenses

TUCSON, Arizona – Undocumented immigrants in New Mexico still have the right to get driver’s licenses, after Republican Gov. Susana Martinez failed for a third time to repeal the 2003 law authorizing the issuance of licenses to people without Social Security numbers.

The state legislature ended its session Thursday rejecting a bill to undo the 2003 measure.
The controversial bill was approved by the lower house, but was later defeated by the Democratic-majority Senate, which instead passed alternative legislation imposing harsher penalties on people who commit fraud when applying for a license and reduces the length of time the document is valid.

For now, New Mexico remains one of the three states where undocumented migrants can obtain driver’s licenses. “It’s a great victory for the immigrant community,” Marcela Diaz, director of the organization Somos un Pueblo Unido (We Are a United People), told Efe from Santa Fe, the state capital. For the activist, the message being send is very clear – that New Mexico is a “friendlier” state toward immigrants and it won’t play games with public safety. “This has been a battle like David and Goliath, because the funds we have don’t compare with the funds the governor used to promote this bill,” Diaz said.

Martinez is promoting an anti-immigrant political agenda that is part of a national drive by the Republican Party, according to Diaz, who said that while immigration is a controversial subject that divides communities, up to now the extremists haven’t achieved their goal in New Mexico.

“What the state Senate did was important, because it said that if the point is to prevent fraud and protect public safety, it’s possible to pass reasonable regulations and statutes to combat fraud,” Diaz said.
“What we want to do is protect immigrant families who live here, work here, and whose kids study here,” she said.

Martinez has said she will veto any bill that would continue to grant driver’s licenses to the undocumented. Diaz believes that the governor “took off her mask” when she talked of vetoing any kind of agreement, since what she wants is “all or nothing.” “We see that the governor is not interested in public safety – this is an immigration issue, it is definitely an attack on our families,” Diaz said.

Last July, Martinez announced a program aimed at checking the addresses of 10,000 suspected undocumented immigrants who have obtained driver’s licenses in New Mexico.
The Republican governor says that licenses have turned New Mexico into a “magnet” for the undocumented, who come from other states for the sole purpose of obtaining a driver’s license. EFE

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