Here are six snapshots from this week in America:
1. On Sunday, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson concludes the
weekend summit at the Venetian in Las Vegas
where four Republican presidential prospects for 2016 came to make
their implicit pitch for financial support from the man who spent
nearly $150 million during the 2012 campaign.
2. On Monday, a Senate subcommittee releases a report on the
tax avoidance used by Caterpillar,
the giant Peoria, Ill.-based heavy equipment manufacturer, which cut
its tax bill by $2.4 billion over the past 13 years by allotting $8
billion in revenues from its parts division to a subsidiary in
Switzerland, where only 65 of the division’s 8,500 employees work. In an
email exchange about whether this was appropriate, a managing director
at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was paid $55 million to concoct this
arrangement,
said:
“What the heck, we’ll all be retired when this audit comes up on
audit…Baby boomers have their fun, and leave it to the kids to pay for
it.”
3. On Tuesday, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan releases the
latest version of the famous Ryan budget. To make up for tax reductions
for the wealthy, the budget calls for
very deep cuts
in spending on Medicaid, food stamps and discretionary spending, which
includes research and development, transportation and infrastructure.
Amtrak would lose its $1 billion in already-meager annual subsidies and
have to
rely entirely on fare-box revenue.
4. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court releases a 5-4 ruling in
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission,
eliminating caps on how much total money ultra-rich donors can give to
candidates, parties and PACs in a given election cycle. Where donors had
previously been limited to giving $123,200 to candidates and parties in
a given cycle, they can
now give as much as $3.6 million.
Chief Justice John Roberts writes: “Spending large sums of money in
connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to
control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give
rise to quid pro quo corruption.” Celebrating the ruling, House Speaker
John Boehner
says, “I’m all for freedom, congratulations.”
5. On Thursday morning, the
Wall Street Journal runs an op-ed by one of the best-known mega-donors, Charles Koch, who with his brother backs Americans for Prosperity, which
spent $122 million leading up to the 2012 campaign and has already spent
more than $30 million in the past six months
attacking Obamacare and Democratic senators up for reelection this
fall. In the op-ed, Koch explains his heavy spending by warning of the
“collectivists” threatening to take over the country. “The fundamental
concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal
freedom are under attack by the nation’s own government,” he writes.
6. Later on Thursday morning, between 9 and 10 a.m., part of the overhead electric line that powers the Acela train
comes down onto the tracks
near Bowie, Maryland, between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Virtually
all train traffic between Baltimore and Washington shuts down for hours
as undermanned crews struggle to repair the line, thereby severely
hampering traffic in the Washington to Boston Northeast corridor that
carries
750,000 passengers on 2,000 trains per day and also spelling panic for the Thursday afternoon rail commuters heading north out of Washington.
A
southbound commuter train from Baltimore to Washington on Thursday
morning that was caught just behind the downed lines and a stalled Acela
takes four hours and 20 minutes to make the 40 mile journey, one that
normally takes an hour. German tourists on the train sit bewildered
about what could possibly be happening. Passengers have the consolation
of listening to several proudly Republican lawyer/lobbyists on board
loudly voicing their opinions on the delay. One declares it is the fault
of President Obama, who is “in way over his head.” Another declares
that the lack of credible information from the conductor is “just like
Benghazi.”
One passenger is left thinking that this country could
use some more spending on infrastructure, transportation and the general
commonweal. Yes, that risks being “collectivist” and would be opposed
by a casino magnate with vast holdings in Macau and would leave less for
top-bracket tax cuts in the Ryan budget. But heck, it would also mean
some more business for Caterpillar, which might even be prevailed upon
to keep some of its income stateside, thus helping pay for said
investment in the future of the greatest nation on earth.
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