Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Former Guy™ is making good on his threat to destroy Liz Cheney's political career by supporting Harriet Hageman's primary challenge to Cheney's Wyoming at-large House seat.

 

Donald Trump is set to back Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman as she prepares a primary challenge against GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, according to three people with knowledge of his plans, marking the most important political endorsement yet in Trump’s post-presidency.

Trump’s looming involvement in the primary will test his political power in the GOP like never before, as he seeks to punish the most high-profile House Republican to vote for his impeachment in January. His allies and team not only encouraged Hageman to run against Cheney — they now are under pressure to clear the crowded primary field of other candidates who could split anti-Cheney sentiment, which would give the incumbent the chance to win her primary with only a plurality.

Cheney became Trump’s top Republican target after she spoke out against his role inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. House Republicans soon stripped her of her leadership post, and one of Trump’s sons and a top Trump ally have already campaigned against her in Wyoming.

At the same time, Trump threw himself into the process of vetting and interviewing multiple candidates running or exploring campaigns against Cheney with the goal of anointing a single challenger. Ultimately, he chose Hageman because she impressed him the most, according to the people with knowledge of his plans.

In a final step before officially announcing her campaign later this week, Hageman resigned Tuesday as one of Wyoming’s members of the Republican National Committee.

“By censuring Rep. Liz Cheney we sent the strong message that we expect our elected officials to respect the views and values of the people who elected them. Accountability is key and I am proud of our party for demanding it,” Hageman wrote in her resignation letter.

Hageman isn’t just banking on Trump’s endorsement in the coming primary against Cheney: Top Trump staffers and allies are in her corner, including some who are in talks to occupy key roles on her campaign or with a super PAC prepared to back her. Some former Trump campaign hands and advisers met with Hageman in March at the urging of local conservatives.

Trump’s endorsement announcement could come any day, but he has already told Hageman that she has his support, sources said.

“He interviewed a lot of people, and when it was done, it was clear she’s in a class of her own,” said one Republican familiar with Trump’s selection process who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about his decision.

Aside from her Trump connection, Hageman’s campaign credentials include her status as a fourth-generation Wyomingite who grew up on a ranch, later becoming a conservative activist and top land-use attorney in a state where land is a political issue. In 2018, her tough-talking campaign for governor made her a conservative favorite, though she finished in third place in a crowded primary. Still, that campaign made Hageman one of Cheney’s only likely challengers who had previously run statewide in Wyoming.

It's pretty obvious that the entire GOP now works for Donald Trump, and Trump's slate of 2022 revenge endorsements against those he feels weren't loyal enough to him, replacing them for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan clones is really the only thing that might save the House for the Democrats as his hand-picked, double-dipped lunatics lose general election after general election.

We'll see what happens, but Liz Cheney's political career is close to being permanently over, I think. She'll get a nice corporate lawyer job and then a think tank sinecure in a few years, but like most Dubya-era Republicans, she'll be excluded from any real decisions in the party.

Not that she doesn't deserve the ignominy, but the country may actually pay a worse price for getting rid of her.

That Tax Shelter Is The Great Hall Of Thrain

Why yes, the nation's richest Americans are also the nation's biggest tax scofflaws, like Smaug sitting on his hoard, and if they actually paid what the law says they owe, we'd more than be able to afford the Biden infrastructure package twice over.

 

The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are the nation’s most egregious tax evaders, failing to pay as much as $163 billion in owed taxes per year, according to a new Treasury Department report released on Wednesday.

The analysis comes as the Biden administration is pushing lawmakers to embrace its ambitious proposal to invest in beefing up the Internal Revenue Service to narrow the “tax gap,” which it estimates amounts to $7 trillion in unpaid taxes over a decade. The White House has proposed investing $80 billion in the tax collection agency over the next 10 years to hire more enforcement staff, overhaul its technology and usher in new information-reporting requirements that would give the government greater insight into tax evasion schemes.

The proposals have been met with deep skepticism from Republicans and business lobbyists who argue that the I.R.S. cannot be trusted with more power and that the proposals are an invasion of privacy. Democrats are counting on raising money by collecting more unpaid taxes to help pay for the $3.5 trillion spending package they are in the process of drafting. The Treasury Department estimates that its tax gap proposals could raise $700 billion over a decade.

The Treasury Department report, which was written by Natasha Sarin, deputy assistant secretary for microeconomics, makes the case that narrowing the tax gap is part of the Biden administration’s ambition to create a more equitable economy, as audits and enforcement actions will be aimed at the rich.

“For the I.R.S. to appropriately enforce the tax laws against high earners and large corporations, it needs funding to hire and train revenue agents who can decipher their thousands of pages of sophisticated tax filings,” Ms. Sarin wrote. “It also needs access to information about opaque income streams — like proprietorship and partnership income — that accrue disproportionately to high-earners.”

 

Let's not forget that the GOP did everything it could to cut taxes on the top 1% when Trump took office and then they turned around and raised taxes on the rest of us so that taxes on the 1% could be lowered even more.

 

The GOP knows who their constituency is, and it's the wealthiest Americans and the corporations they own to profit and give money to the GOP in turn.

Biden's trying to fix that. Remember that too.

Extra-Solar Activity

The Biden Administration wants to set a major new solar power plan for the US, increasing the amount of power the country gets from the sun from 5% to a whopping 45% by 2050.

The Biden administration on Wednesday released a plan to produce almost half of the nation’s electricity from the sun by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change.

Solar energy provided less than 4 percent of the country’s electricity last year, and the administration’s target of 45 percent would represent a huge leap and will most likely take a fundamental reshaping of the energy industry. In a new report, the Energy Department said the country needed to double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years compared with last year. And then it will need to double annual installations again by 2030.

Adding that many solar panels, on rooftops and on open ground, will not be easy. In February, a division of the Energy Department projected that the share of electricity produced by all renewable sources, including solar, wind and hydroelectric dams, would reach 42 percent by 2050 based on current trends and policies.

The new department blueprint is in line with what most climate scientists say is needed. Those experts say that reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2050 is essential to limiting the worst effects of global warming — and much greater use of renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines will be needed to achieve that goal.

But administration officials have provided only a broad outline for how they hope to get there. Many of the details will ultimately be decided by lawmakers in Congress, which is working on a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a much larger Democratic measure that could authorize $3.5 trillion in federal spending.

One thing going for the administration is that the cost of solar panels has fallen substantially over the last decade, making them the cheapest source of energy in many parts of the country. The use of solar and wind energy has also grown much faster in recent years than most government and independent analysts had predicted.

“One of the things we’re hoping that people see and take from this report is that it is affordable to decarbonize the grid,” said Becca Jones-Albertus, director of the Solar Energy Technology Office in the Energy Department. “The grid will remain reliable. We just need to build.”

The administration is making the case that the United States needs to act quickly because not doing anything to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels also has significant costs, particularly from extreme weather linked to climate change. In a Tuesday visit to inspect damage from the intense rainfall caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in New Jersey and New York, President Biden said, “The nation and the world are in peril.”

Some recent natural disasters have been compounded by weaknesses in the energy system. Ida, for example, dealt a huge blow to the electric grid in Louisiana, where hundreds of thousands of people have been without power for days. Last winter, a storm left much of Texas without electricity for days, too. And in California, utility equipment has ignited several large wildfires, killing scores and destroying thousands of homes and businesses.

Even so, many analysts and even some in the solar industry are skeptical that the administration can achieve its green targets. In addition to the 45 percent solar target, Mr. Biden has said he wants to bring net planet-warming emissions from the power sector to zero by 2035. He also wants to add hundreds of offshore wind turbines to the seven currently in the waters off the nation’s coasts and have as many as half of all new cars sold be electric by 2030.

While renewable energy has grown fast, it contributes about 20 percent of the country’s electricity. Natural gas and coal contribute about 60 percent.

“That kind of quick acceleration of deployment is only going to happen through smart policy decisions,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “That’s the part where having a goal is important, but having clear steps on how to get there is the issue.”

 

What I don't see mentioned in the article is the largest single blockade to any green energy plan right now: West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who is working to kill all climate measures in the Good Package bill because of his state's coal and gas interests. Manchin failing to stop a green bill would mean the end of his career overnight, as he's going to be replaced by Republican Gov. Jim Justice at some point.

Of course, Republicans will just eliminate funding for any of this when they get Congress and the White House back later this decade, so it's all 100% meaningless anyway.

Right?

 

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Southern Mexico late Tuesday near Acapulco, officials say damage is light in Mexico City, but could be extensive near the Pacific coast.
• West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin say he will cut President Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion infrastructure budget reconciliation bill by more than half, slashing "at least" $2 trillion.
• Secretary of State Tony Blinken will face hostile lawmakers from both parties next week demanding answers to questions surrounding the Biden administration's pullout from Afghanistan.
• Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is announcing USDA farm worker and meatpacker benefit money with a $600 COVID package relief payment coming later this month.
• Idaho is appealing to the Biden administration for federal help as an overload of COVID ICU cases have now forced the state's hospitals to ration care and triage patients.