Tuesday, October 31, 2023

News bits: The pro-corruption radical right; The Christian war on truth; The Christian war on unapproved sex

The WaPo writes about how the corrupt radical authoritarian Republicans that control the House are going to gut law enforcement against corruption. This should come as no surprise. Radical right billionaires (brass knuckles capitalists) hate paying any taxes, which they consider to be theft:
House Republicans on Monday unveiled a proposal to pay for emergency aid for Israel’s war against Hamas by cutting IRS funds aimed at cracking down on rich tax cheats and improving taxpayer service.

The legislation, released by the House Rules Committee, calls for approving roughly $14 billion primarily in military aid to Israel and cutting about the same amount from the IRS budget. President Biden has proposed giving Israel roughly the same amount in aid but did not call for offsetting cuts to other parts of the budget.  
The legislation reflects the GOP’s ongoing determination to undo the IRS expansion that Biden secured in 2022 in the Inflation Reduction Act, which boosted the agency’s funding by $80 billion to improve taxpayer services and pay for more enforcement actions against wealthy tax cheats. Biden and House Republicans agreed to repeal roughly $20 billion of that $80 billion as part of a deal in May to suspend the U.S. debt ceiling. Now, Republicans are pushing for more reductions.  
The GOP bill would pare back funds for most parts of the IRS expansion, including increased enforcement and a new online portal to allow taxpayers to file their taxes for free directly with the government.
The radical right GOP is not on the side of taxpayers. Period.

As far as corruption goes, it helps to recall that the tax gap, the amount of taxes that are owed but not paid is running at about $700/billion year according to a recent IRS estimate. A 2021 IRS estimate put the tax gap at about $1 trillion/year. My current estimate based on historical analyses is that it's running at about $1.2 trillion/year. In response to that massive annual festival of tax cheating, the authoritarian radical right Republican Party wants to cut funding for tax law enforcement. Apparently, corrupt Republicans want to make the annual tax cheat festival even bigger.

America is in a lose-lose situation as long as the authoritarian radical right Republican Party has power. 
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The Hill reports an example of a family that has been torn apart by the authoritarian radical right's successful war on inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning:
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he was disowned by his family after he left Congress and “lost the trust” of Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“So, I had family that sent a certified letter disowning me,” Kinzinger said in a CNN interview Monday. “They said I’ve lost the trust of great men like Sean Hannity, which is funny, but they believe that. They said I was a member of the devil’s army.”
Those disowning family members sincerely believe that a radical right chronic liar like Hannity is a great man. There are millions more like them in America. PolitiFact comments


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The HuffPo writes about that website that Mike Johnson's Christian wife took down to try to hide after the Christian Mike got to be House speaker:
Mike Johnson’s Wife Takes Down Website That 
Compared Being Gay To Bestiality, Incest

HuffPost first reported on Kelly Johnson's counseling service that likens LGBTQ+ people to people who have sex with animals and family members

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s wife took down the website for her company, Onward Christian Counseling Services, a day after HuffPost pointed to documents on the site that compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest.

HuffPost reported Friday that Kelly Johnson, the wife of the Louisiana Republican and newly elected speaker, is owner and CEO of Onward Christian Counseling Services, which promotes Bible-based pastoral counseling. Her website featured a link to its 2017 operating agreement, which lays out the company’s corporate bylaws ― and states that the business is grounded in the belief that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other.
Those Christians are mighty feisty about how other people engage in improper sex. And they are cowards about their real beliefs and intentions. If God says that that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other, then why not proclaim it, instead of trying to hide it and lying about it by not being honest? Christian nationalism, morally rotted, morally coward, corrupt, anti-democracy, pro-Christian Sharia and pro-Christian, wealthy, White bigoted male Taliban. 

Johnson is a Trump-loving, election-denying, abortion ban-supporting, gay rights-opposing, climate change-rejecting, and conspiracy-believing conservative. If House Democrats are smart, they will turn Mike Johnson into a household name — though not in a good way.  
But in selecting Johnson, Republicans made one small error — they failed to vet him.

If they had, they’d have discovered that he was Democrats’ dream speaker candidate. On practically every issue on which House Republicans will be vulnerable in 2024, Johnson takes an extreme, maximalist position. For any GOP candidates in a close race, and especially the 18 House Republicans running in congressional districts President Biden won in 2020, he will be a political albatross.
We'll see about how Christian Mike plays out. Maybe he will hurt radical authoritarian Republicans in the 2024 elections. Maybe he won't. Maybe Democrats’ dream speaker will turn out to be their horror speaker.
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The New Republic writes about moral coward MAGA Mike's view of democracy:
MAGA Mike Johnson Once Warned About Dangers 
of Living Under Democracy

Republicans’ new House speaker tried to warn people about why democracy isn’t actually good

House Speaker Mike Johnson turned heads on Monday when a website hosting his podcast and church sermons suddenly vanished. Still, Johnson hasn’t been able to completely scrub his prior social media presence, with some evidence of his lectures still floating around online, including a three-hour sermon organized by his wife’s ministry that blasts the newly elected’s Christian fundamentalism.

The contents of his evangelical musings—which he apparently wants to hide—offer revealing details about the little-known congressman, including that he doesn’t really believe in democracy.

“By the way, the United States is not a democracy. Do you know what a democracy is? Two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. You don’t want to be in a democracy. Majority rule: not always a good thing,” Johnson said at the First Baptist Church of Haughton, Louisiana, in 2019.

Johnson has also attacked the idea of social services, claiming that the only entity entitled to provide care is the church, not the government.
Johnson is right to say that majority rule is not always a good thing. By keeping silent about it, he lies about the facts that (i) minority rule also is not always a good thing, and (ii) his vision of minority rule is cruel, bigoted, corrupt, authoritarian and radical Christian theocratic-plutocratic.

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