Tax avoider to lead taxpayer caucus
| By Cody O - May 7th, 2009 at 11:36 am EDT |
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Categories: Corporate Accountability , Economic Fairness, Ethical Government, Tax Fairness, One Wisconsin Now - The "tOWN Hall"
Categories: Corporate Accountability , Economic Fairness, Ethical Government, Tax Fairness, One Wisconsin Now - The "tOWN Hall"
This is good.
So Grover Norquist—who’s regularly full of bad ideas (see: Reagan Day)—had a brain fart a few years back from which came the Taxpayer Protection Caucus. But here’s the real kicker: heading up the Wisconsin caucus this year is the one and only Randy Hopper, who once and only once paid state income taxes over the course of ten years.
Hopper, as you may recall from a Fond du Lac Reporter story, was able to get off paying state income taxes just once in a ten-year period and avoided paying taxes altogether on two of his businesses in the same amount of time. And now Norquist has selected him to co-chair the taxpayer protection caucus because he has “proved [himself] to be the leading advocate for Wisconsin taxpayers.”
Whaaa?
That’s like saying PETA is an advocate for the pork industry.
But of course Norquist’s judgment has always been somewhat of a concern.
The Norquist-led group behind the caucus, Americans for Tax Reform, was among the parties implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal. According to the Washington Post: “[it] served as a ‘conduit’ for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. As the money passed through, Norquist's organization kept a small cut.
If these two would just play fair, we might be able to take them seriously.
So Grover Norquist—who’s regularly full of bad ideas (see: Reagan Day)—had a brain fart a few years back from which came the Taxpayer Protection Caucus. But here’s the real kicker: heading up the Wisconsin caucus this year is the one and only Randy Hopper, who once and only once paid state income taxes over the course of ten years.
Hopper, as you may recall from a Fond du Lac Reporter story, was able to get off paying state income taxes just once in a ten-year period and avoided paying taxes altogether on two of his businesses in the same amount of time. And now Norquist has selected him to co-chair the taxpayer protection caucus because he has “proved [himself] to be the leading advocate for Wisconsin taxpayers.”
Whaaa?
That’s like saying PETA is an advocate for the pork industry.
But of course Norquist’s judgment has always been somewhat of a concern.
The Norquist-led group behind the caucus, Americans for Tax Reform, was among the parties implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal. According to the Washington Post: “[it] served as a ‘conduit’ for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. As the money passed through, Norquist's organization kept a small cut.
If these two would just play fair, we might be able to take them seriously.
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