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    Hunter Biden sues IRS for breaching his privacy rights over tax affairs

    Hunter Biden sued the US Internal Revenue Service on Monday, alleging the agency violated his privacy rights as it investigated his tax affairs.The business career of the US president’s son is at the centre of Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden over unsubstantiated allegations of corruption.Hunter Biden faces criminal charges regarding his tax affairs and a purchase of a gun. In his lawsuit against the IRS, filed in US district court in Washington DC, he said “whistleblower” agents disclosed information that should have remained private.“IRS agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters,” the suit said.It also described an “assault on Mr Biden’s rights involv[ing] the public disclosure of his confidential tax information during more than 20 nationally televised and non-congressionally sanctioned interviews and numerous public statements”.The suit added: “No government agency or government agent has free rein to violate his rights simply because of who [Hunter Biden] is.”Biden is seeking $1,000 in damages “for each and every unauthorised disclosure of his tax return information”, as well as costs and attorney fees.In testimony before Congress, an IRS supervisory special agent, Greg Shapley, and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, claimed a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” into Hunter Biden. They alleged the prosecutor overseeing the investigation, the Delaware US attorney, David Weiss, did not have full authority to bring charges in other jurisdictions. Weiss and the US justice department have denied that.On Monday, Shapley’s lawyer called Hunter Biden’s lawsuit a “frivolous smear” that sought to “intimidate any current and future whistleblowers”, adding that Shapley did not release confidential tax information except through legal whistleblower disclosures.“Once Congress released that testimony, like every American citizen, he has a right to discuss that public information,” a statement said.Ziegler’s lawyer said he would “continue to speak out” about what he considers “special treatment” for Hunter Biden.The Republican-controlled House oversight committee called Shapley and Ziegler “good people who did everything right to obtain whistleblower protection with the best interest of our country in mind”.The IRS declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.Last week, Hunter Biden was indicted on charges relating to a gun purchase initially covered, with tax charges, by a plea deal which fell apart earlier this year. Biden is now reportedly set to face new tax charges from Weiss, who is now working as a special counsel, with a high degree of independence from justice department leadership.Also on Monday, in a letter to Jason Smith, the Republican chair of the House ways and means committee, reported by the Washington Post, the Biden lawyer Abbe Lowell said accountants now believed Biden was in fact owed a refund, for “overpayments of tax”.The Republican impeachment effort is doomed to fail, given Democratic control of the Senate – and given the paucity of evidence unearthed. Nonetheless, the White House is fiercely pushing back.On Monday, the White House impeachment war room pointed reporters to a Washington Post column by Ken Buck of Colorado, a conservative impeachment skeptic; a “comical Freudian slip” by Mike McCaul of Texas, the House foreign affairs chair who told Fox News “we don’t have the evidence now but we may find it later”; a New York Times report that said Republicans’ own witnesses “have undercut or pushed back against some of their major claims”; and a link between James Comer of Kentucky, the House oversight chair, and a promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory.But the Post also pointed to the strength of the Republican drive to link the president with his son in the public eye, when it profiled Garrett Ziegler, a 27-year-old Trump White House staffer turned “scorched-earth activist trying to take down Hunter Biden”.Ziegler, the Post said, “is at the vanguard of a sprawling network of Biden antagonists, from rightwing media organisations to congressional leaders to [pro-Trump, Make America Great Again] activists, that is focused intensely on the president’s son.“They see Hunter Biden’s activities as his father’s biggest political vulnerability, a conclusion reflected in the House GOP’s recent decision to launch an impeachment inquiry.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    $80bn for the IRS? Fund the US taxman, but not like this | Gene Marks

    Ask any accountant and we’ll tell you that the Internal Revenue Service is woefully underfunded. Our clients complain about the long delays for refunds, the interminable waits for getting answers and the frustrations waiting for guidance on issues that affect their businesses.But it’s not just accountants that are clamoring for more IRS funding. Most taxpayers I know will admit that the IRS needs a serious upgrade. So why the big brouhaha over the $80bn approved last year to hire more auditors and upgrade the agency’s pathetically outdated systems? The answer lies not in why it’s so badly needed. It’s in how badly it was sold to the American public.We all pay for things we don’t like. We need to have insurance but we don’t like the premiums. We don’t really want to give a wedding gift to that fifth cousin or tip the waiter even though the service wasn’t that great. And of course, we pay taxes – and no one likes that either.The same goes for the IRS. We know that everyone should be paying their fair share and we get that there has to be a government agency to oversee this. Making sure the IRS has adequate funding is a no-brainer. And yet here we are arguing over its need. For this, I blame President Biden and the Democrats.The bipartisan Tax Foundation found that the costs to collect $100 (in 2021 dollars) has decreased 41% since 1991 and that during this same period, the amount collected per taxpayer has increased 45% and that the agency did this despite its much lower staff. These are impressive accomplishments when you consider that most of the agency’s systems are decades old.Even so, Republicans and the media pounced on the $80bn allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act to be used for hiring more auditors and technology upgrades which could potentially save more than $1tn per year. And during recent talks to raise the US borrowing limit, Republicans somehow managed to claw a quarter of that amount back with plans to pursue more.Most people in both parties understand the necessity to fund an agency whose sole objective is to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of taxes. But you can’t really blame Republicans for crying foul. This is what politicians do when there’s a slam-dunk issue like this. Big government: bad. Small guy taxpayer: good.But there was a better way for the Democrats to achieve this funding, which, according to the Cato Institute, will increase the IRS’s budget from $5.2bn to $19.5bn by 2033 – about $1.4bn per year, which is just one-half of one percentage point of our country’s overall spending.Why not bury some of this amount in the overall treasury department’s annual budget of $3.24tn? Over a 10-year period that funding could have been absorbed by the numerous subdivisions of the agency and then re-allocated back to the IRS in that bureaucratic way that bureaucrats do where no one really knows where or how the money was spent.Or how about trying what any business owner would do when appropriating money to a project: assign quantifiable metrics and holds its recipients accountable? Make it such that the spending could be paused or even pulled unless these numerical goals are achieved each year. That way the Republicans could insist they’re holding their opponents’ feet to the fire, while the Democrats still get to spend the money.Or you could take a pure tech angle and take people out of the equation. Remove and prohibit the “hiring” of new auditors and instead mandate that the funds only be used for technology. Better yet, AI technology because that’s what’s hot! Emphasize that the IRS is going to be the federal government’s leader in tech, reducing its headcount and increasing its output and responsiveness by leveraging the latest AI tools as it upgrades its systems. Of course, some may be scared by the prospect of out-of-control robots but it’s obvious to most of us who regularly deal with the IRS that – probably more than any other agency – most of what it does can be automated.But no. Instead, Biden and the Democrats allowed an inordinate amount of attention to be drawn directly to the $80bn for the evil IRS, which in turn invited a tidal wave of backlash. This didn’t have to happen. With a little bit of thought, some maneuvering, finessing and manipulation, that money – which is sorely needed – could have been spent under the radar and much of this controversy could have been avoided. More

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    It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the book

    ReviewIt’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the bookThe Vermont senator and former presidential candidate offers a clarion call against the American oligarchsThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has a predictably unsparing view of the effects of “unfettered capitalism”: it “destroys anything that gets in its way in the pursuit of profits. It destroys the environment. It destroys our democracy. It discards human beings without a second thought. It will never provide workers with the fulfillment that Americans have a right to expect from their careers. [And it is] propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency.”Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?Read moreThe two-time presidential candidate makes his case with the usual horrifying numbers about the acceleration of inequality in America: 90% of our wealth is owned by one-tenth of 1% of the population; the wealth of 725 US billionaires increased 70% during the pandemic to more than $5tn; BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street now control assets of $20tn and are major shareholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies.Sanders recites these statistics with religious fervor, and poses fundamental questions for our time: “Do we believe in the Golden Rule? [or] do we accept … that gold rules – and that lying, cheating, and stealing are OK if you’re powerful enough to get away with it?”Bernie believes (and I strongly agree) that it’s long past the time when we should be paying at least as much attention to American oligarchs as we do to those surrounding Vladimir Putin. Our homegrown plutocrats “own” our democracy.“They spend tens of billions … on campaign contributions … to buy politicians who will do their bidding. They spend billions more on lobbying firms to influence governmental decisions” at every level. And “to a significant degree”, the oligarchs “own” the media. That is why our prominent pundits “rarely raise issues that will undermine the privileged positions of their employers” and “there is little public discussion about the power of corporate America and how oligarchs wield that power to benefit their interests at the expense of working families”.We were reminded this week of how this system works. Joe Biden released a budget with perfectly modest proposals for tax increases, like a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest Americans and a seven-percentage-point raise in the corporate tax rate to 28%, which would still leave it seven points lower than it was before Donald Trump gutted it with his gigantic tax giveaways.Instantly, experts owned and operated by the billionaires started spewing their familiar bilge, like these moving words from the Cato Institute: “Higher tax rates on the wages of a narrow segment of the United States’ most productive executives and business leaders will have strong disincentives against their continued work and other negative behavioral effects that translate into a less dynamic, slower growing economy.“Higher taxes on investment income target the financial rewards to successful entrepreneurs who undertake risks and persevere through failure to build high return businesses that provide welfare enhancing goods and services to people around the world.”Sanders quotes one of the most prescient Americans of the mid-20th century, from 1944: “As our industrial economy expanded [our] political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”The name of that dangerous revolutionary: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Several decades before that, Theodore Roosevelt similarly bemoaned the “absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting” which “has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power”.There is something extremely refreshing about an author who assumes it should be obvious that billionaires should not be allowed to exist – and has perfectly reasonable proposals about how they should be eliminated. At the height of the pandemic, Sanders proposed the Make Billionaires Pay Act, which would have imposed a 60% tax on all the wealth gained by 467 billionaires between 18 March 2020 and January 2021.“But why stop at one year?” he now asks. After all, the 1950s were economic boom times in America – and under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, “the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was around 92%. America thrived. Unions were strong. Working-class Americans could afford to support themselves and buy homes on a single income.” And the richest 20% controlled a measly (by current standards) 42.8% of the wealth.Bernie Sanders: ‘Oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? They run the US as well’Read moreSanders’ 99.5 Percent Act would only touch the top 0.5% of Americans. “But the families of billionaires in America, who have a combined net worth of over $5tn, would owe up to $3tn in estate taxes.” He would accomplish this with a 45% tax rate on estates worth $3.5m and a 65% rate on those worth more than $1bn.There is much more here, including a convincing case for Medicare for All and an excoriation of a for-profit healthcare system which spends twice as much per citizen as France or Germany and still manages to leaves tens of millions of Americans un- or underinsured, all while nourishing an obscene pharmaceuticals business in which profits jumped by 90% in 2021.I first toured the castles of the Loire Valley as a teenager in the company of the family of my uncle, Jerry Kaiser, a 60s radical and a very early opponent of the war in Vietnam. As we absorbed the opulence of one chateau after another, Jerry had only one question: “What took them so long to have a revolution?”The noble purpose of Bernie Sander’s powerful new book is to get millions of Americans to ask that question of themselves – right now.
    It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism is published in the US by Crown
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    Biden unveils ‘blue-collar’ budget plan with tax hikes for America’s wealthiest

    Biden unveils ‘blue-collar’ budget plan with tax hikes for America’s wealthiestBlueprint – unlikely to pass given Republicans’ control of House of Representatives – frames president’s aspirations for re-electionJoe Biden on Thursday unveiled his budget, a sprawling plan that the White House says reflects the president’s commitment to creating a fairer economy while challenging Republicans who are demanding steep cuts to federal spending programs.The $6.8tn budget request, the third such request of Biden’s presidency and the first to a divided Congress, is effectively dead on arrival with Republicans in control of the House, and sets the stage for a high-stakes showdown over the nation’s finances. Even so, it frames the president’s policy aspirations ahead of his expected campaign for re-election in 2024.Biden’s budget blueprint would cut the federal deficit by nearly $3tn over the next decade, largely by raising taxes on corporations and high earners. It also includes proposals aimed at lowering the cost of healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare, housing and education while making new investments in domestic manufacturing, cancer research and a paid family leave program.It calls for restoring the child tax credit that helped reduce child poverty by half when Congress temporarily expanded the benefit during the pandemic. Under Biden’s plan, families could claim as much as $3,600 a child, compared with the current level of $2,000.Amid Republican claims that the Democrats are weak on crime and border security, Biden’s plan includes funding for more police officers and border patrol agents. Additional funding would support new technology at points of entry along the border and for cracking down on fentanyl trafficking, according to a factsheet provided by the White House.As tensions rise with Russia and China, Biden proposed a more than 3% increase to defense spending, an $886bn request that includes support for Ukraine and increased funding to allies in the Indo-Pacific region.Biden will formally introduce his spending plan, which he has described as a “blue-collar blueprint”, on Thursday afternoon in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that helped lift him to the White House in 2020. It is an unusually high-profile rollout for a budget proposal that is often greeted with a resounding thud on Capitol Hill.But Biden and the White House believe the suite of popular tax-and-spend proposals will be difficult for Republicans to attack. ​Emphasizing the point, White House officials released polling alongside the budget plan that they say shows overwhelming public support for their policies.“When you look at this president’s view of the world and what this budget puts forward, it shows you what he values,” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Thursday. “And that’s what this is going to be about that. And we’re happy to have that debate with anybody: who are you for?”Republicans swiftly dismissed the plan as inadequate to address the nation’s debt, which the government projects will rise by $19tn over the next decade.In a joint statement, top House Republicans accused Biden of “shrugging and ignoring” the national debt, which they called one of the “greatest threats to America”.”President Joe Biden’s budget is a reckless proposal doubling down on the same far left spending policies that have led to record inflation and our current debt crisis,” the statement said.Underwriting his plans, the president calls for new tax hikes on the wealthy, including a repeal of the tax cuts that Donald Trump signed into law in 2017 – cuts that disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans. Biden also proposes quadrupling a tax on stock buybacks and raising the corporate income tax rate to 28%.At the heart of his budget is a plan that the White House says would help avert a Medicare funding crisis and extend the program’s solvency for at least 25 years. The plan would raise Medicare taxes from 3.8% to 5% for those who earn more than $400,000 per year to protect the government health insurance program for adults over 65, which is at the heart of a brewing policy debate poised to play a central role in the 2024 presidential election.Republicans have so far refused to put forward a counter-proposal, despite promises to put the US on a path to a balanced budget. Yet by rejecting tax increases and denying charges that they would cut social security or Medicare programs, it is unclear how Republicans would achieve that goal.“Republicans keep saying they want to reduce the deficit, but they haven’t put out a comprehensive plan showing what they’ll cut,” Young said. “We’re looking forward to seeing their budget so the American people can compare it to what we’re putting out today, this president’s vision.”TopicsJoe BidenUS taxationUS politicsUS domestic policyRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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    People vs Donald Trump review: Mark Pomerantz pummels Manhattan DA

    ReviewPeople vs Donald Trump review: Mark Pomerantz pummels Manhattan DAProsecutor who helped convict John Gotti thinks Alvin Bragg let Trump slip from the hook. His memoir proves controversial Mark Pomerantz is a well-credentialed former federal prosecutor. As a younger man he clerked for a supreme court justice and helped send the mob boss John Gotti to prison. He did stints in corporate law. In 2021, he left retirement to join the investigation of Donald Trump by the Manhattan district attorney. Pomerantz’s time with the DA was substantive but controversial.Trump porn star payment a ‘zombie case’ that wouldn’t die, ex-prosecutor says in bookRead moreIn summer 2021, he helped deliver an indictment for tax fraud against the Trump Organization and Alan Weisselberg, its chief financial officer. At the time, Cy Vance Jr, the son of Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, was Manhattan DA. Pomerantz also interviewed Michael Cohen, Trump fanboy turned convicted nemesis, pored over documents and clamored for the indictment of the former president on racketeering charges.For Pomerantz, nailing Trump for his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who claims an affair Trump denies, didn’t pass muster. But that avenue of prosecution was a “zombie case” that wouldn’t die. It still hasn’t: a Manhattan grand jury again hears evidence.Pomerantz saw Trump as a criminal mastermind aided by flunkies and enforcers. He believed charges ought to align with the gravity of the crimes. But as Pomerantz now repeatedly writes in his memoir, Alvin Bragg, elected district attorney in November 2021, did not want to move against Trump. In early 2022, Bragg balked. In March, Pomerantz quit – and leaked his resignation letter.“I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the penal law,” Pomerantz fumed. “I fear that your decision means that Mr Trump will not be held fully accountable for his crimes.”Now comes the memoir, People vs Donald Trump: An Inside Account. It is a 300-page exercise in score-settling and scorn. Pomerantz loathes Trump and holds Bragg in less than high regard. He equates the former president with Gotti and all but dismisses the DA as a progressive politician, not an actual crime-fighter.In a city forever plagued by crime and political fights about it, Bragg’s time as DA has proved controversial: over guns, trespassing, turnstile jumping, marijuana and, yes, the squeegee men.Bragg is African American. This week, a group of high-ranking Black officials protested against Pomerantz’s attacks. In response, Pomerantz called Bragg “respected, courageous, ethical and thoughtful” but said: “I disagreed with him about the decision he made in the Trump case.”In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote: “I have worked too hard as a lawyer, and for too long, now to become a passive participant in what I believe to be a grave failure of justice.”Trump, he now writes, “seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law”. That may conjure up images of Road Runner and Wile E Coyote but Pomerantz is serious. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organised crime family.”The Goodfellas vibe is integral to Trumpworld. In The Devil’s Bargain, way back in 2017, Joshua Green narrated how Trump tore into Paul Manafort, his then campaign manager, shouting: “You treat me like a baby! Am I like a baby to you … Am I a fucking baby, Paul?” It was if Trump was channeling Joe Pesci.With the benefit of hindsight, Pomerantz concludes that the US justice department is better suited to handle a wholesale financial investigation of Trump than the Manhattan DA. Then again, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has a lot on his plate. An insurrection is plenty.Pomerantz’s book has evoked strong reactions. Trump is enraged, of course. On Truth Social, he wrote: “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s lawyer [Pomerantz says he has never met her], radically deranged Mark Pomerantz, led the fake investigation into me and my business at the Manhattan DA’s Office and quit because DA Bragg, rightfully, wanted to drop the ‘weak’ and ‘fatally flawed’ case. This is disgraceful conduct by Pomerantz, especially since, as always, I’ve done nothing wrong!”Really?In December, a Manhattan jury convicted the Trump Organization on 17 counts of tax fraud and the judge imposed a $1.6m fine. Alan Weisselberg pleaded guilty and testified against his employer. Trump and three of his children – Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric – are defendants in a $250m civil lawsuit brought by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, on fraud-related charges. That case comes to trial in October 2023, months before the presidential primary. Sooner than that will be the E Jean Carroll trial, over alleged defamation and a rape claim Trump denies.Significantly, state prosecutors say Pomerantz may have crossed an ethical line.“By writing and releasing a book in the midst of an ongoing case, the author is upending the norms and ethics of prosecutorial conduct and is potentially in violation of New York criminal law,” J Anthony Jordan, president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, announced.Never Give an Inch review: Mike Pompeo as ‘heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass’Read moreBragg accused Pomerantz of violating a confidentiality agreement. Pomerantz is unbowed. “I am comfortable that this book will not prejudice any investigation or prosecution of Donald Trump,” he states on the page. No formal ethics complaint has appeared.Pomerantz also offers a window on personalities that crossed his path. Cohen receives ample attention. Pomerantz lauds Trump’s former fixer for his cooperation but reiterates that Cohen pleaded guilty to perjury.His conduct left Pomerantz shaking his head. Cohen’s liking for publicity could be unsettling. So was his Oval Office tête-a-tête with Trump over the payment to Daniels. Pomerantz was disgusted. Trump and Cohen, he writes, defiled America’s Holy of Holies, its “sanctum sanctorum”.No harm, no foul. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, announced: “Mr Cohen will continue to cooperate with DA Bragg and his team, speaking truth to power – as he has always done.” On Wednesday, Cohen met the Manhattan DA for the 15th time. Pomerantz is gone. The show goes on.
    People vs Donald Trump: An Inside Account is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
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    Biden has revived democratic capitalism – and changed the economic paradigm

    Biden has revived democratic capitalism – and changed the economic paradigmRobert ReichThe president’s domestic successes offer a rebuke to disciples of Reagan: the ‘free market’ has never existed How can inflation be dropping at the same time job creation is soaring?Schools and universities are ground zero for America’s culture war | Moira DoneganRead moreIt has taken one of the oldest presidents in American history, who has been in politics for over half a century, to return the nation to an economic paradigm that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980, and is far superior to the one that has dominated it since.Call it democratic capitalism.The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Ronald Reagan’s presidency: the so-called “free market” does not exist. Markets are always and inevitably human creations. They reflect decisions by judges, legislators and government agencies as to how the market should be organized and enforced – and for whom.The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of decisions that organized the market for a monied elite, allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, suppressing labor unions, holding down wages, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.Franklin D Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They reorganized the market to serve public purposes – stopping excessive borrowing and Wall Street gambling, encouraging labor unions, establishing social security and creating unemployment insurance, disability insurance and a 40-hour workweek. They used government spending to create more jobs. During the second world war, they controlled prices and put almost every American to work.Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense developed satellite communications, container ships and the Internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA and infectious diseases.Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Even Richard Nixon admitted “we’re all Keynesians”. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized.Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders – not just shareholders but employees, consumers, the communities where they produced goods and services, and the nation as a whole.Then came a giant U-turn. The Opec oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by the Fed chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of inflation by raising interest rates so high the economy fell into deep recession.All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism.From 1981, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that the so-called “free market” functioned well only if the government got out of the way (conveniently forgetting that the market required government). The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from public welfare to economic growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit-reduction – all of which helped the monied interests make more money.What happened next? For 40 years, the economy grew but median wages stagnated. Inequalities of income and wealth ballooned. Wall Street reverted to the betting parlor it had been in the 1920s. Finance once again ruled the economy. Spurred by hostile takeovers, corporations began focusing solely on maximizing shareholder returns – which led them to fight unions, suppress wages, abandon their communities and outsource abroad.Corporations and the super-rich used their increasing wealth to corrupt politics with campaign donations – buying tax cuts, tax loopholes, government subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees, non-bid government contracts and government forbearance from antitrust enforcement, allowing them to monopolize markets.Democratic capitalism, organized to serve public purposes, all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests.Joe Biden is reviving democratic capitalism.From the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession, he learned that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for the giant $1.9tn American Rescue Plan.This was followed by a $550bn initiative to rebuild bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water and energy systems. And in 2022, the biggest investment in clean energy in American history – expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. This was followed by the largest public investment ever in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy.Notably, these initiatives are targeted to companies that employ American workers.Biden has also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as did FDR. Biden has put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the justice department. And he has remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate of labor unions.Unlike his Democratic predecessors, Biden has not sought to reduce trade barriers. In fact, he has retained several from the Trump administration. But unlike Trump, he has not given a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. It’s also worth noting that in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden has not filled his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers – not even his treasury secretary – is from the Street.I don’t want to overstate Biden’s accomplishments. His ambitions for childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave were thwarted by senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. And now he has to contend with a Republican House.Biden’s larger achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that has reigned since Reagan. He is teaching America a lesson we once knew but have forgotten: that the “free market” does not exist. It is designed. It either advances public purposes or it serves the monied interests.Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government”. It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.
    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
    TopicsState of the Union addressOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsUS domestic policyUS economycommentReuse this content More

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    Prosecutors likened Trump to mob boss and had to prove he wasn’t insane – book

    Prosecutors likened Trump to mob boss and had to prove he wasn’t insane – bookMark Pomerantz, who was on New York team investigating tax affairs, reportedly compares ex-president to John Gotti New York prosecutors building a case against Donald Trump for allegedly lying about his wealth for tax purposes had to show the former president was “not legally insane”, one of those prosecutors reportedly writes in an eagerly awaited new book.Why prosecutors might get Trump – and not Biden – for classified documentsRead moreThe lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, also reportedly compares Trump, the only confirmed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, to famous figures in the world of organised crime including John Gotti, the “Teflon Don” who died in prison in 2002.In messages seen by the Guardian on Friday, one former Trump administration official called the comparison “unfair to the late Mr Gotti”.Pomerantz was part of attempts by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to build a case against Trump, but quit in February 2022 as the DA, Alvin Bragg, decided not to indict.Pomerantz is now the author of The People vs Donald Trump: An Inside Account, due to be published in the US on Tuesday. The book has angered Bragg, who is still investigating Trump, and the former president, who has threatened to sue.News outlets obtained the book on Friday. The Daily Beast reported Pomerantz’s words about Trump and insanity.“To rebut the claim that Trump believed his own ‘hype’,” Pomerantz writes, the Beast says, “we would have to show, and stress, that Donald Trump was not legally insane.“Was Donald Trump suffering from some sort of mental condition that made it impossible for him to distinguish between fact and fiction?”According to the Beast, Pomerantz writes that lawyers “discussed whether Trump had been spewing bullshit for so many years about so many things that he could no longer process the difference between bullshit and reality”.The New York Times also obtained the book. It reported that Pomerantz says Trump rose to fame and power “through a pattern of criminal activity”.“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him,” Pomerantz reportedly writes. “He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law. In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organised crime family.”A lawyer for Trump, Joe Tacopina, told the Times: “Injecting the name John Gotti into this seems like just another desperate attempt by Pomerantz to sell books.”Pomerantz reportedly writes that he considered a racketeering case under New York laws used against mobsters, an idea eventually dropped as too ambitious.Bragg has recently revived the investigation of Trump’s role in a 2016 hush money payment to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair with Trump that the ex-president denies.The Manhattan DA is reportedly seeking cooperation from Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization chief financial officer recently given a five-month jail sentence for tax offences.Trump faces legal jeopardy on numerous other fronts, from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election to his retention of classified documents and a rape allegation by the writer E Jean Carroll, a claim Trump denies. The former president also faces an ongoing civil suit over his financial practices brought by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.On Friday, Bragg told the Times: “Our skilled and professional legal team continues to follow the facts of this case wherever they may lead, without fear or favor.“Mr Pomerantz decided to quit a year ago and sign a book deal. I haven’t read the book and won’t comment on any ongoing investigation because of the harm it could cause to the case.”Pomerantz denies prejudicing investigations of Trump. According to the Beast, he writes that when he was on the team, prosecutors “had a case, but it was not without issues, and certainly could not be described as a slam dunk”.He also reportedly describes disagreements within Bragg’s team about how to proceed.“It was frustrating to feel like we were about to march into battle and were strapping on our guns and equipment, but when we looked around at the rest of the platoon we saw a lot of conscientious objectors,” Pomerantz reportedly writes.The Times said: “The book’s description of conversations between Mr Pomerantz and Mr Bragg’s team could arguably complicate the investigation. In particular, Mr Pomerantz detailed Mr Bragg’s opposition to using Michael D Cohen, a longtime fixer for Mr Trump who turned on the former president, as a witness, an awkward disclosure now that Mr Cohen may become one of Mr Bragg’s star witnesses.”Cohen was jailed for offences including the payment to Daniels. He said this week he had once again given his phones to investigators.In his book, the Times said, Pomerantz calls Bragg’s investigation “the legal equivalent of a plane crash”, caused by “pilot error”.On Friday, Bragg told the Times: “Mr Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff.”TopicsBooksDonald TrumpUS politicsUS taxationUS crimeOrganised crimePolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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    Trump tax returns: key takeaways from the records release

    AnalysisTrump tax returns: key takeaways from the records releaseAssociated Press in WashingtonThe former president had a bank account in China, failed to donate in 2020 and claims Democrats ‘weaponized’ his taxes In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.Trump tax returns show China bank account as six years of records releasedRead moreThe thousands of pages of returns were the subject of a prolonged legal battle after Trump broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the White House.Here are some key takeaways from a review of the documents:Trump had a bank account in ChinaDuring a 2020 presidential debate, Trump was asked about having a bank account in China. He said he closed it before he began his campaign for the White House four years earlier.“The bank account was in 2013. It was closed in 2015, I believe,” Trump said. “I was thinking about doing a deal in China. Like millions of other people, I was thinking about it. I decided not to do it.”The tax returns contradict that account. Trump reported a bank account in China in his returns for 2015, 2016 and 2017.The returns show accounts in other foreign countries including the UK, Ireland and St Martin in the Caribbean. By 2018, Trump had apparently closed all his overseas accounts other than the one in the UK, home to one of his flagship golf properties.The returns do not detail the amount of money held in those accounts.No reported charitable giving in 2020In the final year of his presidency, Trump reported making no charitable donations. That was in contrast to the prior two years, when Trump reported about $500,000 (£414,060) worth of donations. It is unclear if any of the figures include his pledge to donate his $400,000 presidential salary back to the US government. He reported donating $1.1m in 2016 and $1.8m in 2017.Money from the arts worldTrump collected a $77,808 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild and a $6,543 pension in 2017 from another film and TV union, and reported acting residuals as high as $14,141 in 2015, according to the tax returns.Trump has made cameo appearances in various movies, notably Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but his biggest on-screen success came with his reality TV shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice.Trump reported paying a little more than $400,000 from 2015 to 2017 in “book writer” fees. In 2015, Trump published the book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, with a ghostwriter. The same year, Trump reporting receiving $750,000 in fees for speaking engagements.Trump vows paybackTrump broke political tradition by not releasing his tax returns as a candidate or as president. Now Republicans warn that Democrats will pay a political price by releasing what is normally confidential information.Trump underscored that in a statement on Friday morning, after his returns were made public.Kayleigh McEnany a ‘liar and opportunist’, says former Trump aide Read more“The great USA divide will now grow far worse,” he said. “The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”Republicans on the House ways and means committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters and released the Trump documents, warned that in the future the committee could release the returns of labor leaders or supreme court justices. Democrats countered with a proposal to require the release of tax returns by any presidential candidate – legislation that is unlikely to pass, given that Republicans take control of the House next week.Republicans cannot disclose Joe Biden’s tax returns – because they are already public. Biden resumed the longstanding bipartisan tradition of releasing his tax records, disclosing 22 years’ worth of filings during his 2020 campaign.TopicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS taxationUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsanalysisReuse this content More