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"So wait... you're laying off my son's teacher because this guy doesn't want to pay his taxes???!!!"

So the Denver Post has done us an extremely useful service today by highlighting just one of many ways that rich people in the United States get away with paying practically zero taxes. I think this could be useful because many of the rich people featured in the story happen to be Hollywood celebrities, who are often the bane of our conservative brethren on a great many issues. Let's take a look:

Actors, captains of industry, an Ivy League astrologer, sports figures, politicians, energy giants, schoolteachers from Pasadena, Calif. All these are also considered farmers or ranchers for tax purposes in Colorado. They have secured low property taxes through agricultural designations on land they own even though they personally have little or nothing to do with producing food — the reason state legislators originally created a low property-tax rate for the agriculture sector.

In some cases, the properties where they have second, third or fourth homes were traditional working ranches before they were sold to the wealthy and became what, in real-estate lingo, are termed "gentleman ranches" or "recreational ranches."

You can see where this is going, can't you? And once you get into the gory details, things get really ugly:

Actor Tom Cruise owns five parcels of land on a scenic mesa northwest of Telluride that has become an enclave of high-end vacation homes. Sheep graze around the mansions for brief periods each year, according to the assessor's office. Cruise pays just more than $400 in taxes for 248 acres for which he paid nearly $18 million between 1994 and 2002. He pays $11,380 in residential property taxes for the land where his $9.7 million home is located.

Yes, this is how poorly our tax systems across the country are designed: Tom Bleeping Cruise can get away with paying $400 a year in taxes for property that's worth around $18 million, all because he occasionally allows sheep to walk through it.

Want another ugly detail? Check out this one:

David Tresemer, an astrologer and Harvard-educated psychologist, owns 191 acres and four structures that are listed as farm buildings or residences in the foothills west of Boulder where he operates the StarHouse. It is advertised as a spiritual and cultural space for celebrations of the seasons, the lunar cycles and rituals from ancient and indigenous cultures.

He pays $11.48 in taxes for 38 of the vacant acres and $3,699 for the remainder of the land with the buildings.

OK, even if Ma and Pa Tea Party are still Tom Cruise fans, there ain't no way they're happy that a Harvard-educated astrologer is paying just over $11 in taxes for 38 vacant acres of land. And remember, these are only two examples that demonstrate how the rich and their accountants have completely gamed the tax code to their advantage. A more thorough audit of other rich people in other states would no doubt unveil countless other horrors.

Hey, have you got time for another one? Sure you do:

Dick Ebersol and Susan Saint James own a 35-acre lot in the upscale West Meadows subdivision near Telluride. They purchased the land for $1.8 million in 1996 and pay $123 in property taxes on it annually because there is hay on it. They also own an $11 million home in the Mountain Village.

And:

Universal Faithists of Kosmon, which believes in a new-age bible purportedly channeled by a clairvoyant dentist in the late 1800s, purchased 40 acres of agricultural ground in Mesa County last summer. The land on the Grand Mesa includes a ranch house, so the tax is $1,503. The Faithists teach that human beings are going to evolve into the Kosmon Era, a time of worldwide peace and joy.

You get the idea. This is all happening as schools throughout Colorado are dramatically cutting spending and laying off teachers, and as one Colorado town dealt with its budget crunch by shutting off one-third of its streetlights.

This sort of stuff is pretty important. While Americans may grumble a lot about "big gubmint," they tend to like things such as street lamps and a functioning public education system. If we can no longer afford these things because the tax code thinks Tom Cruise is a cattle herder, then something is drastically wrong with the way we collect taxes in this country.

recovering liberal
Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan, according to the latest survey from Pew Global Attitudes Project.

In the poll released last Thursday, about half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said that attacks against Americans and their allies are justified.

On a positive note, the poll also showed that confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him. Sadly, this is offset by Jordan and Pakistan, where more than 50% say they that have confidence in him.

Most importantly, in the nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam are tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, which most of those surveyed see as a bad thing.

In conclusion, while most of those polled in the United States and other Western Nations claim to have favorable views of Muslims, those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan, according to the latest survey from Pew Global Attitudes Project.

In the poll released last Thursday, about half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said that attacks against Americans and their allies are justified.

On a positive note, the poll also showed that confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him. Sadly, this is offset by Jordan and Pakistan, where more than 50% say they that have confidence in him.

Most importantly, in the nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam are tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, which most of those surveyed see as a bad thing.

In conclusion, while most of those polled in the United States and other Western Nations claim to have favorable views of Muslims, those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

Digby has this on Roberts: "In case anyone is wondering if Roberts really is a partisan hack or not, Jeffrey Toobin's book "Too Close To Call" sheds some light on that subject:

The president's first two nominations to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia curcuit --- generally regarded as the stepping-stone to the Supreme Court --- went to Miguel Estrada and John G Roberts Jr., who had played important behind-the scenes roles in the Florida litigation."

By the way, it's a great book.

Senate to Atone for Lynching Ban Delays

"The Senate seldom says it's sorry, although it is now ready to officially express its remorse over the failure to outlaw lynching in the United States. A resolution that the chamber was likely to take up Monday voices regret for the Senate's unwillingness for years to pass a law stopping a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968....read on"

I never realized that it was legal in the first place. How sick is that? The fact that it was then allowed to last until 1968 is unimaginable. Read this exchange if you want to have your stomach turned from History Matters In the following testimony to a House subcommittee, four Southern Congressmen discussed their reasons for opposing what they deemed federal interference in state judicial responsibilities and defend segregation and the “peaceful relations now existing between white man and Negro” in the South. Congressman Charles E. Bennett (Florida) also offered his historical explanation for lynching. read the full transcript.

Try to figure out what group of people are being targeted now. Also, some from the right will try to equate these types of filibusters to what is going on in the judiciary. I doubt they can see how contemptable that comparison is.

The Other Bomb Drops

via The Nation via intoxination: More evidence supporting the Downing Street Memo and the bombing of Iraq before the war .

"At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq."

WTF? The Immoral Minority

Adama Bah - Outrage in New York

via All Spin Zone

...It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn, detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion, called would-be suicide bombers who posed “an imminent threat to the security of the United States.”

But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one of the girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family...

My daughter turns 18 on Monday. As a parent, I inherently know how it would have affected her (and me) for life to have something similar happen to her at 16. Six weeks in detention, five minutes each week speaking with her mother on the phone, the rest in the hands of the government that brought you Abu Ghraib.

Yes, this is outrageous beyond words - but it begs the question - how many more 16 year old girls are being currently held on U.S. soil under similar circumstances?

God Bless This Mess

Ezra Klein talks about a new ABC pilot that has Drudge (and the Drudgekateers) up in arms. Commander-in-Chief, starring Democrat activist Geena Davis as the President of the United States, for the fall schedule.

Jesse Taylor talks about it here: You do, however, have to love the unironic link to the Newsmax summary of the Joe Klein article in which Klein points out that it might be a bad idea for Hillary to run because publications like Newsmax will go batshit crazy.

NOWHERE in the Constitution is the Senate required to provide an up-or-down vote on the President’s nominees:

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution outlines the President’s power of appointment. It reads:

“He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.” read on

From the forward:

"Gold Star Mothers is an organization made up of women who sons were killed in military combat during service in the United States armed forces. Recently a delegation of New York Gold Star Mothers made a trip to Washington, DC to discuss various concerns with their elected representatives. According to NewsMax.com there was only one politician in DC who refused to meet with these ladies. . .

. . . You got it! None other than the Queen herself, The Hildebeast, Hillary Clinton. She refused repeated requests to meet with the Gold Star Mothers."

It's a timely claim, in a way, since the right is outraged that she might be running for president. It's also completely false. Here's what the Gold Star Mothers themselves had to say about the "incident" on their official site:

"With regard to the NewsMax article concerning our organization, the American Gold Star Mothers, Inc., deeply regret the misunderstanding about Senator Hillary Clinton. The two mothers who visited Washington did not have an appointment with the Senator and she was not in her office on that day. We would appreciate it if the e-mails and negative comments about Senator Clinton would cease."

Case closed. Sadly, the rabid righties aren't the type to let the proverbial facts get in the way of a story.