Rachel Maddow's summary here of the deep, wide divide between the Tea Party groups and the so-called "mainstream" Republican party is interesting, but what's more interesting is how the tea party groups themselves are imploding.

First, there was the FreedomWorks meltdown and split with Dick Armey, which has worked itself up to a silly crescendo with the tale of the Hillary Clinton sex-with-a-panda video. Then, there was yesterday's mess with the Tea Party Patriots and their depiction of Karl Rove as a Nazi.

Now we have news of some housecleaning over at Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-backed groups pushing their corporate agenda of privatizing everything and killing government services with an axe and a hatchet. It seems they've turned the hatchet on themselves.

AFP president Tim Phillips wouldn’t comment on specific personnel moves, though he generally cast the cuts to his group, which now has about 190 employees, as an anticipated back-end result of a major election-year ramp up.

“The vast majority of it reflects a field effort that increased dramatically in late 2011 and 2012, and then it comes down to a more long-term sustainable size,” Phillips said. “Washington is an artificial hothouse as far as how folks move and how organizations change. A year or two years is an eternity working for the same organization in Washington D.C.”

But the departure of AFP’s chief operating officer Tracy Henke, which occurred around the time of Charles Koch’s holiday party criticism of AFP, was acrimonious, according to sources.

Henke and other departing AFP staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, and she did not respond to requests for comment, but she appears to have completely left the Koch network of groups.

That’s in contrast to other top AFP officials who recently left the group to join or start other new groups regarded as part of the Koch family, including Cobb’s Association for American Innovation and Phil Kerpen’s American Commitment.

The moves fit a pattern the Koch operation has pioneered of creating — and channeling millions of dollars to — political groups since it began increasing its political involvement.

According to Tracy Henke's LinkedIn bio, she's now with H&H Advisors, a political consulting firm. That's a polite and corporate way of saying she's out on her own, and it doesn't seem like a very amiable split. Henke is a veteran of the George W. Bush administration who worked for John Ashcroft and as Kit Bond's policy advisor. She also has ties to the Abramoff scandal. It could be that Henke's most serious sin was her work lobbying on behalf of the Rockefeller family foundation in favor of the CLEAR Act in 2009. How could the Kochs possibly have someone who acted as a paid shill for climate change and carbon tax proponents, after all?

Do you think she was let go because she was too moderate? After all, American Commitment, Phil Kerpen's new, fully Koch-funded venture, is hardcore right-wing with an extra strong dose of hot love for coal, oil and gas while denying climate change and hating unions. The one thing it seems to be missing is the usual hard core right wing war on women aspects, but the Kochs fund Concerned Women for America to cover themselves on that front.

According to Politico, there is the possibility that the Kochs are going to retreat from campaign politics and stick to policy-building via think tanks like Cato, Heritage, Franklin Center and others:

If they continue an expansion into electoral politics that helped spawn the tea party and push the GOP to the right, they could find themselves on a collision course with Karl Rove, who has pledged to raise big money to boost more centrist or “electable” GOP candidates. But if they begin steering cash away from ads and political organizing and back toward the free-market libertarian ideological and policy spheres, that could diminish their role at the ballot box.

Early indications suggest that they’ll continue playing in politics but will tweak their approach to reflect 2012 lessons.

There's no way the Kochs are retreating from electoral politics. All of their moves indicate a round of "creative destruction" and reorganization toward redoubling their efforts. American Commitment is only one of their new projects. There is the John Hancock Committee for the States, currently overseen by Eric O'Keefe but with assistance from the Ryun brothers of American Majority fame. The most recent Donors' Trust reports show large sums of money going into that operation, alongside another called Empower Texans. Generation Opportunity, referred to in the Politico article, is another front group for the Kochs aimed at young voters, with leadership apparently connected back to the tobacco lawsuits in the 90s.

Meanwhile, over at FreedomWorks, there's no doubt about their direction. It's not toward the center. It's farther right --so far right, we'll start thinking of Karl Rove as the party moderate.

The only soul-searching going on with Republicans, whether of the corporate type like Rove or of the super-corporate type like Americans for Prosperity, is how far right they think they can go.

Rachel Maddow is a great commentator and host, but she is a bit too glib about what's going on right now with the right wing. There's a lot of sound and fury, but it's just cover for the alignments they're making for 2014. Stay on guard.

[The Kochtopus, in all its glory]

Nothing smacks of Scrooge quite like hearing the Kochtopus tell New Jersey to suck it up and deal with the terrible storm damage left behind by Hurricane Sandy. After all, it's not like people lived in those homes or anything like that. Lee Fang has the story over at The Nation:

Earlier this week, AFP, which is chaired by Koch and believed to be financed by several other plutocrats from the New York City region, released a letter warning members of Congress not to vote for the proposed federal aid package for victims of the storm that swept New Jersey, New York City, and much of the surrounding area in October. An announcement on the group’s website says that the vote next week for the Sandy aid package will be a “key vote” -- meaning Senators who support sending money for reconstruction could face an avalanche of attack ads in their next election. Already, opposition to the bill is growing, although it passed one procedural hurdle last night.

There is some legitimate criticism with aspects of the legislation, including the fact that some of the money will go to non-Sandy related reconstruction efforts in disaster areas. For AFP, however, the whole bill must die and victims of the storm deserve no help from the government.

Koch’s top deputy in New Jersey, a surly gentleman named Steve Lonegan, who heads the local AFP state chapter, called the aid package a “disgrace.” “This is not a federal government responsibility,” Lonegan told reporters. “We need to suck it up and be responsible for taking care of ourselves.”

It boggles my mind that there would be this kind of radical, insane, irrational bias against a government doing what a government is supposed to do. I realize that the Kochs would like to own the entire country so they can tell us all to suck it up, but that hasn't happened. Yet.

Here's what needs to happen, and sooner rather than later. The IRS needs to untangle the hairball at the center of the Kochtopus and the right wing non-profit machine, revoke their tax exemption and shine the sunlight at the center of their corrupt empire. It's not only them, of course, but it's a start. As I'll show in my next post, the Kochs and their cronies have built a labyrinth of non-profits that they use to launder money to buy politicians, policy and good will.

On the day the IRS exposes that mess, I'll be standing by to tell the Koch Brothers to suck it up. Every last damned drop.

Senator Gretchen Whitmer slams Michigan Republicans over right to work legislation.

Big surprise, right? Who'd a thunk the usual suspects were pushing to break the unions in Michigan? The part that I don't get is (and if any lawyers can explain the distinction, I'd appreciate it), don't these sort of threats and coercion cross the line from First Amendment expression to criminal extortion? Remember, the threats are tied to specific legislation. If this isn't illegal, it ought to be:

The day after Michigan’s legislature held an abrupt voteon right-to-work legislation, United Auto Workers President Bob King blamed the influence of the Koch brothers, Charles and David, as well as “the extreme right wing.”

“In the end, [Michigan businessman] Dick Devos and the extreme right-wing control what’s going on in the state,” King told Detroit radio station WDET. “And the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity was in there, and there was a lot of money all pushing for the passage of this legislation, threatening the governor, threatening the different representatives.”

King also said that Republican legislators had been bullied into voting for the bill. “The stories we were told by Republicans, who I’m sure won’t admit to it publicly…was that they were threatened, that they would have a primary challenge from the Tea Party.”

He suggested that the same threats had been made against Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who recently announced his support for a state right-to-work law after previously opposing the idea.Scott Hagerstrom, the state director for Americans for Prosperity’s Michigan operation, denied the charges, saying, “People may have done that, but that was not Americans for Prosperity.” He said that he was “surprised, but very pleased” by Thursday’s vote.

According to the non-partisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network, David Koch gave a total of $988,604.44 to the Republican Governors Association Michigan PAC in 2010, the year when Snyder was elected governor. Of the PAC’s donors, 98% were from outside Michigan.

Americans for Prosperity also erected tents in front of the Michigan capitol before the right-to-work vote, and the Michigan Freedom Fund aired radio and television ads in favor of the legislation that day.

“If you do that, you’ve been planning it for a while,” said Gordon Lafer, an expert in American labor law. He said that well-funded conservative interest groups had likely been laying the groundwork for a right-to-work vote in Michigan for some time. He also said that the campaign in Michigan was part of a nationwide battle against the labor movement.

Back in March I wrote about the ongoing non-profit abuse by the Koch brothers, as exemplified in their effort at a hostile takeover of the Cato Institute so they could use it and its long reach to meddle in election messaging.

ThinkTanked Blog reported today that they've come to an agreement, which would dissolve the original corporate "shareholders'" agreement. In exchange, President Ed Crane would step down, the board will expand to twelve seats, and the Kochs would have the right to appoint three of those new board members.

As Muckety reports, this means the Kochs win the whole shebang:

Of the current board members, three, including David Koch, have direct ties to the Koch network.

Director Kevin Gentry is vice president of the Charles Koch Foundation. Another director, Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer, is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries.

Expand that network to include organizations funded by the Kochs and you add four more board members. Three are trustees of the Reason Foundation, where David Koch is a trustee and the Charles Koch foundation has been a benefactor.

Allison is a director of Mercatus Center, where Charles is also a director and his foundation is a funder.

Then there’s director Ethelmae Humphreys, whom we described earlier this month as a “hub on the Koch network.”

That puts the count of Koch connections to eight of 12. Add the three slots the brothers can now fill, regardless of whom Allison chooses, and the Kochs have a majority.

The "Allison" referred to there is the new President, retired banker John A. Allison. Allison is just the kind of guy the Kochs love. A retired banker with lots of good buddies in the banking profession, he's a libertarian with a penchant for Ayn Rand. He used to make all of his executives read Atlas Shrugged. Yippee. And he thinks sharing is very, very bad.

Speaking at a recent convention in Boston to a group of like-minded business people and students, Mr. Allison tells a story: A boy is playing in a sandbox, only to have his truck taken by another child. A fight ensues, and the boy’s mother tells him to stop being selfish and to share.

“You learned in that sandbox at some really deep level that it’s bad to be selfish,” says Mr. Allison, adding that the mother has taught a horrible lesson. “To say man is bad because he is selfish is to say it’s bad because he’s alive.”

Let's see how many cable networks keep using Cato commentators. Wanna bet they'll use more than they have in the past? I was never a huge Cato fan, but at least felt that they stuck to some principled analysis of issues, as seen through their lens. Now, academic principles be damned. Objectivism, full speed ahead!

As information continues to come to light about the attempted hostile takeover of the Cato Institute to make it into a tool of their political empire, the plan both confirms and exposes the ultimate realization of the Powell memo, which set out to create an indestructible infrastructure to support and sustain the far right as the dominant political force in this country. There was only one purpose to this infrastructure: Consolidation of political power to benefit business in the name of "free enterprise."

As we now know, that infrastructure extends from right wing radio networks to non-profits like Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity. Although the Cato Institute was funded with Scaife, Olin and Koch money, it has managed to remain true to libertarian principles in their purer form.

But no more. With the death of one of the founding board members and shareholders, the Kochs have made a move to pack the board with their ideological counterparts and take majority control of Cato in order to use it as an "ammo shop" for AFP, as Susie wrote about Sunday.

Dave Weigel has more details:

“They said that a principle goal was to defeat Barack Obama,” remembered Levy. “The way David [Koch] put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato's work to advance their electoral goals.”Levy asked them: “What gives you the impression that [Cato isn’t] providing intellectual ammunition?” He says now: "I never got a satisfactory answer. The only answer that makes sense was that Cato needed to be more responsive to their needs. We would take closer marching orders. That’s totally contrary to what we perceive the function of Cato be.”

Cato’s leadership didn’t respond to this directive, nor did they change anything about the think tank. The Kochs began to change it for them. In February, they nominated 16 people for four slots on Levy’s board. Levy and others were aghast at some of the names. One nominee, Tony Woodlief, a former leader of several Koch-funded groups, had blogged in the past about “sanctimonious libertarians” who refused to get serious about policy. “Libertarianism in practice largely consists of a homogeneous group of people talking to one another about a narrow set of things that matter most to them (legalized drugs, lower taxes), and hoping that the rest of America will wake up and elect them to office,” he sneered in a 2002 post. “The majority of Americans are not, in fact, ‘live and let live’ types.” John Hinderaker, a lawyer and founder of the blog PowerLine, had backed the Iraq war and called George W. Bush a “man of extraordinary vision approaching to genius.

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If you were on a scavenger hunt and had to come up with a principled conservative, you might find one at the Cato Institute. They're slightly more intellectually consistent than the rest of the Republican think tankers (remember, in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king), although of course they have their barking mad moments, too - like most conservatives. Now Charles and David Koch have filed suit to take control of the organization, and the Cato people are not very happy. Via the Volokh Conspiracy:

The Kochs deny any such intent, but it seems like they want to buy the Cato credibility and use it as an attack dog in the presidential election:

We seek no ‘takeover,’ and this is not a hostile action.

This is at odds with both the words and deeds of the Koch brothers of late. Last year, they used their shares to place two of their operatives – Kevin Gentry and Nancy Pfotenhauer – on our board against the wishes of every single board member save for David Koch. Last Thursday, they used their shares to force another four new board members on us (the most that their shares would allow at any given meeting); Charles Koch, Ted Olson (hired council for Koch Industries), Preston Marshall (the largest shareholder of Koch Industries save for Charles and David), and Andrew Napolitano (a frequent speaker at Koch-sponsored events). Those four – who had not previously been involved with Cato either financially or organizationally – were likewise opposed by every member of our board save for Gentry, Pfotenhauer, and David Koch.

To make room for these Koch operatives, we were forced to remove four long-time, active board members, two of whom were our biggest donors. At this moment, the Kochs now control seven of our 16 board seats, two short of outright control.

Why are they forcing out Cato board members, all strong, principled libertarians who have been heavily involved with Cato – financially and organizationally – for years? The answer was given in early November of last year when David Koch, Richard Fink (he of many Koch hats), and Kevin Gentry met with Cato board chairman Bob Levy. They told Bob that they intended to use their board majority to remove Ed Crane from Cato and transform our Institute into an intellectual ammo-shop for American for Prosperity and other allied (presumably, Koch-controlled) organizations. That statement of intent is certainly consistent with what we’ve been hearing from both Kevin Gentry and Nancy Pfotenauer. They’ve frequently complained during their short time on our board that Cato wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists like those at AFP.

We want to ensure that Cato stays true to its fundamental principles of individual liberty, free markets, and peace into the future, and that it not be subject to the personal preferences of individual officers or directors.

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As a quick glance at January's presidential fundraising numbers confirms, the unlimited cash flowing into SuperPACs is fundamentally distorting the 2012 election. The millions flowing into conservative SuperPAC coffers are not only far outpacing the GOP candidates' own campaigns, but continuing to overwhelm their Democratic counterparts. But for the likes of Charles and David Koch, the Walton family, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Meg Whitman, the Marriotts and the rest of the SuperPAC-Men, a multimillion dollar contribution isn't an eccentric hobby, but a wise investment. After all, if Republicans win in November, their plan to eliminate the estate and capital gains taxes would divert billions of dollars from the United States Treasury to the accounts of nation's richest families. Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.

As Mother Jones reported last month, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPACs reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups. That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Mitt Romney's Restore the Future, Rick Santorum's Red, White and Blue Fund, Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul worth an estimated $25 billion, said, "I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich." And as Amanda Terkel detailed, the Koch brothers and their allies pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November. Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress explained last year:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers' heirs' would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney's plan.

Each of the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it's almost certain that the Koch's have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney's plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

Here's why. Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute "less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect." Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone.

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.

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Federal Election Commission filings released this week showed that conservatives groups are amassing an ocean of cash for the 2012 presidential campaign. Thanks to the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton clan and other of the usual suspects on the right, in 2011 conservative SuperPAC's outraised their liberal counterparts by more than seven to one. But if they win, rich Republican donors could more than get back the millions they invested. As it turns, just one law they are trying to buy - the elimination of the estate tax - could put billions of dollars back into their families' bank accounts. Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.

As Mother Jones reported, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPAC's reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups. That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Mitt Romney's Restore the Future, Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs. And as Amanda Terkel detailed, at a secret conclave last week, the Koch brothers pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:

At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November. Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress explained last year:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers' heirs' would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney's plan.

Each of the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it's almost certain that the Koch's have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney's plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

Here's why. Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute "less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect." Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone./em>

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.

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Addressing Americans for Prosperity on Friday, Mitt Romney laid out a bevy of federal spending cuts which doubtless were music to the ears of AFP's funders, Charles and David Koch. To be sure, raising the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security, capping Medicaid and converting the system into block grants for the states and shrinking federal spending below 20 percent of GDP are helpful parts of Romney's intense effort to woo the Koch brothers. But his biggest gift of all - eliminating the estate tax - would let the Kochs' heirs pocket billions of dollars at the expense of the United States Treasury. And as it turns out, the Romney clan wouldn't fare too badly, either.

Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute "less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect." Who pays the estate tax?

TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earn-errs and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone.

Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.

Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are Charles and David Koch.

And as ThinkProgress explained, the elimination of the estate tax supported by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate means a staggering windfall for the Koch heirs:

According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers' heirs' would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney's plan.

Each of the Koch brothers -- Charles and David -- is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it's almost certain that the Koch's have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney's plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

As would the Romneys.

Despite his claims that "I'm also unemployed" and part of the "middle class," Mitt Romney is worth an estimated $250 million. So, the five Romney sons - the same ones who serve their nation by "helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president" - when their parents Mitt and Ann leave the scene. Their payday courtesy of all other American taxpayers could reach $84,000,000 (35 percent of $240 million).

Of course, the Romneys' winnings would start well before their demise. After all, Governor Romney has called for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, lowering his own income tax rate from 39.6% in 2013 to 35%. Mitt would also see some gains from the elimination of the capital gains tax on the first $250,000. Despite his boast that "I focused my tax cut right there" on "the people in the middle," the Tax Policy Center found that "67 percent of the entire benefit from lower capital gains tax rates goes to millionaires." Millionaires, that is, like Mitt Romney.

Not that Mitt Romney needs any more tax breaks. After all, as Time's Michael Sherer pointed, Romney's own tax rate was estimated at only 14 percent, lower even than Warren Buffett:

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In July of 2010, two dozen members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus led by Michele Bachmann co-sponsored a resolution announcing support for Israel "to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force." So, Tea Partiers must have been shocked - shocked! - to learn that Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers underwriting their "movement," were also in business with Iran. As it turns out, the Kochs are merely following Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney among the Republican luminaries caught up in dirty deals with Tehran.

Twenty four years after Ronald Reagan sent a Bible, a cake and U.S. weapons to the mullahs in Tehran, Bloomberg News reported that, in the words of a former employee, the Koch brothers in likely violation of the American sanctions used "every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else."

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism...

Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show.

The company's products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran's state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.

In response to the allegations, Koch spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia said, "During the relevant time frame covered in your article, U.S. law allowed foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies to engage in trade involving countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions, including Iran, under certain conditions," adding that Koch has since stopped all of its units from trading with Iran.

If this story sounds familiar, it should. Just change the company to Halliburton and the CEO's name to Dick Cheney.

As the New York Times explained in March 2010, even as the Obama administration was seeking tougher UN sanctions to press Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, "of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave."

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington's efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

Among the U.S. contractors also profiting from Iran was Halliburton, which pocketed $27.1 billion from American taxpayers between 2000 and 2009:

Halliburton, former Vice President Cheney's old company, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through foreign subsidies. After a political furor erupted over the work, the company announced it would do no new business in Iran, and it exited the country altogether in 2007. While still operating in Iran, Halliburton won huge contacts from the federal government, including a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil sector, as did its subsidiary at the time, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As Perrspectives detailed four years ago, Halliburton had side-stepped the U.S. sanctions regime in place against Iran since the 1990's by using a Cayman Islands subsidiary. And what should come as a surprise to no one, CEO Dick Cheney opposed those very sanctions until, of course, he became George W. Bush's Vice President.

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