Whether He Releases Them Or Not, The Trumpanzee Tax Saga Is A Window Into His Character And Fitness For Office

Mike Pence was on Meet the Press yesterday and said "Donald Trump and I are both going to release our tax returns. I'll release mine in the next week." Yes? Yes? And what about your crooked boss? When will his returns be released. No news there. Pence reiterated the dishonest excuse Señor Trumpanzee has been giving all along for not releasing his tax returns. Pence said the crooked Trumpanzee will be "releasing his tax returns at the completion of an audit" and added that "we'll see" if that comes before the election of not.

El Trumpanzee, Pence and their crooked spokespersons will continue lying about why the crooked Trump won't release his taxes, but yesterday Judd Legum tore the coverings off the self-inflicted wound up for everyone to see, first pointing out what's been clear since Trump made up his silly audit excuse that "an audit, according to the IRS, does not preclude the release of tax returns. In fact, it actually makes the release of returns less risky. The primary issue with making your tax returns public is triggering an audit. Trump doesn’t have to be worried about that."

Trump has claimed that he can't release any of his tax returns because they're all being audited. But, according to his own accountants that just another in a long series of Trumpanzee lies.

The truth is disclosed in a letter from his accountants that was published to the Trump campaign website in March. It reveals that Trump’s returns from 2008 and prior are not under audit and have been “administratively closed” by the IRS.

So when Trump and his campaign staff say they are not releasing his taxes because they are under audit, that’s not true. None of his taxes from 2008 or prior are currently under audit, and yet Trump still hasn’t released those returns.

It’s also worth noting that nothing in the letter from his accountants advises him not to release his tax returns.

Trump’s tax advisers do note that in a “sense” the “pending examinations are continuations of prior, closed examinations.” But this fiction would justify perpetual non-disclosure of Trump’s returns.

Trump, apparently, is audited every year. He is currently arguing that the audit of his 2015 return precludes the release of his 2002 return, even though it is not under audit. Under this theory, even if the 2015 audit is closed, his upcoming 2016 audit would preclude the release of all his returns from 2002 to present.

Trump has also not addressed at all why he’s not releasing returns prior to 2002.

Trump also is reluctant to reveal even basic information about his taxes, such as his overall tax rate. Asked in a May interview about his tax rate, Trump recoiled. “It’s none of your business,” he snapped.



A few days ago, Eric Trump--  Donald’s son and a close adviser --  said it would be “foolish” for his father to ever release his taxes.

This point of view doesn’t seem consistent with someone who ever intended on making any of his tax returns public--  at least not before election day. But one thing should be clear: It has nothing to do with an audit.

So on this Labor Day, let's stop thinking about Trump's unpaid taxes and unwillingness to open up his tax returns to public scrutiny for a moment and instead think about how he's screwed ordinary workers all his life and what a Trump presidency would mean for American workers. Watch him discussing his unscripted, non-teleprompter ideas of worker pay and a minimum wage with the Morning Joe principals:

Mylan Didn’t Lower EpiPen Prices After All; They Just Appeared To

Senator Joe Manchin's daughter Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, and some of the work she's been doing. Note — the EpiPen price is actually around $640 at most pharmacies (source).

by Gaius Publius

These days have seen a number of stories about the Mylan EpiPen scandal, the essence of which is captured in the graphic at the top (note, though, that the graphic understates the EpiPen price; it's now around $640). Heather Bresch, Mylan's CEO, decided to increase corporate profit by increasing the price of a mature product, EpiPen, a device that delivers life-saving epinephrine to people who suffer life-threatening anaphylactic shock from allergic exposure to, for example, bee stings and peanuts. In the view of most observers, she did it simply because she could.

There's no economic reason for the price increases, any of them. Epinephrine (basically adrenalin) is not proprietary. As Dr. Lee Rogers notes in the first link below, "As a hormone, it's a product of nature and cannot be patented." And the delivery mechanism (the "pen") has been around since 1977. All of the R&D is done, and the medicine is cheap. All told, each EpiPen contains just one dollar worth of medicine. (And it seems the original EpiPen was at least partly developed with taxpayer money.)

Yet under Heather Bresch, Mylan has steadily raised the price from about $50, its price when Mylan acquired the 50-year-old product, to more than $600 — because they could. In 2009, the year Bresch became president, the price of the EpiPen was increased 19%, followed by 10% hikes each year from 2010 through 2013. Then:

After successfully pushing for legislation requiring all public schools to carry emergency epinephrine [devices], Mylan jacked up the price by 15 percent every other quarter from the end of 2013 to the second quarter of 2016 [emphasis mine].

And that's how the game is played.

A Shakedown Scheme with a Sidecar of Murder

As I noted here, this is basically a shakedown scheme with a sidecar of murder — "Got a peanut allergy? Pay my new price or the kid dies." In the meantime, corporate profit went through the roof, as did CEO compensation, as the graphic shows.

Dr. Lee Rogers, a medical doctor and a former progressive House candidate, broke the story here:

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s Daughter-- the Next Martin Shkreli

and DWT issued a follow-up story here:

Why Do We Pay The Highest Prices For Drugs In The World?

Two side wrinkles and you're up to date:

First, CEO Bresch may have engaged in insider trading when she sold over 100,000 shares of Mylan stock in advance of the latest price increases. As noted in the second link above, the stock price fell drastically after Dr. Rogers' piece was published.

Second, Bresch has taken Mylan through a corporate "inversion," a scheme by which a U.S. company buys a foreign subsidiary, then becomes a foreign corporation, with nothing else changing but its U.S. tax status. LA Times reporter Michael Hiltzik has written a full report on Mylan's inversion here.

Shamed by the Scandal, Heather Bresch Pretended to Lower EpiPen's Price

Mylan's price-gouging on its EpiPen business is indeed a scandal, not just on the business pages because of the sudden stock decline, but in the larger press because of the "vulture CEO" angle. Even MSNBC, which tends to keep hands off of Democrats, covered it, and tagged Sen. Joe Manchin in the story. (For more on Manchin and his responsibility for his daughter's career, do read Dr. Rogers' well researched story. Manchin's been involved at almost every stage of it.)

As a result of the horrible press, Mylan responded. It was initially reported that Mylan would lower the price of its EpiPen package by 50% in response to public outrage. For example, from The Hill:

EpiPen maker lowers price after uproar

The maker of EpiPens announced Thursday that it is reducing the price of the device following an uproar in Washington over the cost of the treatment for serious allergic reactions.

Mylan, the company that makes EpiPen, said it will provide a savings card worth up to $300 for people who had been paying the full price out-of-pocket, effectively reducing the cost by 50 percent.

The company is also making it easier to qualify for its patient assistance program, which eliminates out-of-pocket costs for uninsured and underinsured people....

Mylan announced the changed a day after Hillary Clinton denounced the company for hiking the cost of EpiPens 400 percent in recent years. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had also sounded the alarm, sending letters to the company and to the Food and Drug Administration pressing for answers.

Mylan also pointed to insurance companies in its Thursday statement, noting that higher deductibles have left patients picking up more of the cost of drugs like EpiPens.

I hope you noted that last sentence, in which Mylan says "higher deductibles have left patients picking up more of the cost of drugs like EpiPens." Remember, each EpiPen contains about $1 worth of medicine. Patients are actually picking up the cost of CEO Bresch's nearly 700% compensation increase.

But it didn't take long for that "50% reduction in cost" claim to be more carefully looked at. For example, from USuncut:

EpiPen did not actually lower their price — it’s just another Pharma scam

Mylan Pharmaceuticals is now running a slick PR campaign to try and convince Americans they lowered the price of the EpiPen. Don’t buy it.

On Thursday morning, it was widely reported that Mylan responded to consumer outrage by lowering the price of the drug by 50 percent. While that may be true on the surface, the company didn’t actually change the price at all. The drug company’s rollout of EpiPen price cuts only applies to uninsured and underinsured consumers, who are given a $300 savings card while still having to pay roughly $300 more for a [$640] package of two EpiPens.

The bottom line?

However, the market price of the EpiPen remains the same.

And that's how the game is played.

This is Heather Manchin Bresch, by the way, in case you see her on the street. I'm sure she'd be glad to explain the numerous price increases at length. Maybe there's a nuance she can point you to that I've missed.

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch (source; photo credit Joe Wojcik)

Or maybe not. This really is shakedown scheme, with a sidecar of "or your kid dies." Is predator too strong a word for this behavior? Or is predation just business as usual in drug company CEO suites and the DC political offices that take their money?

Hate the Drug Companies? Support California's Prop 61 Next November

If you think predator is not too strong a word for drug company "shakedown or death" profit schemes, consider supporting California's new Proposition 61, which will end Big Pharma's hold on unchecked and sky-high prices. Prop 61 is a serious attack on drug pricing, and it will work if it's passed. It will also appear in a number of other states if it's passed — hope for us all.

More on Prop 61 here.

GP
 

Why Do We Pay The Highest Prices For Drugs In The World?

And why is Bernie blocking Obama's nominee for FDA head? Obama's done a lot of good things as president and there's a tendency for progressives to be favorable towards him. But it behooves us to remember he's a politician-- from Chicago-- and that he's done a lot of bad things as well and to be wary of what he's up to now. Bernie's 100% right to block Obama's FDA nominee-- and 100% is more than 99%.

This morning in a letter to his supporters, southwest Michigan congressional candidate Paul Clements, a progressive who supported Bernie in the primary, asked "What does a 10% cost increase mean to you? For many seniors a 10% increase in the cost of medication can mean the difference between this medicine or that one, between taking the whole pill, or half. Or it can mean the difference between food and medicine. Right now our laws put corporate profit above seniors' needs. A new independent analysis published yesterday says the cost of hundreds of medications in the Medicare Part D program rose by 10% since 2014. Even more, the cost of simply enrolling in Part D rose 13% over last year alone. We need to let the government negotiate drug prices. In Congress I will be a leading proponent for it, and Congressman Upton has led efforts banning such negotiations. That's why I'm running, because simple, practical changes to our laws can make life changing differences to millions of Americans." (You can support Clements' bid to defeat anti-health care reactionary Fred Upton here. His opponent, Fred Upton, is among the biggest bribe takers from Mylan and Big Pharma in general, and makes sure their agenda sails through his committee and through Congress.)

A few days ago, Lee Rogers broke the story about how Joe Manchin's greed-driven, avaricious daughter-- who, like her father, has a clear record of being a cheat and a lowlife-- right here at DWT. Yesterday Lee reminded me that aside from the Manchin daughter giving herself a 671% pay increase to celebrate all the people who would die when she raised the price of EpiPen-- from $2,453,456 nine years ago to $18,931,068 today-- she also illegally used inside information to trade over 100,000 shares in early August, anticipating her company's stock collapsing when news broke about Mylan's plan to murder their customers. The average price she got was around $50/share, bringing the greedy little monster $5,010,000.00, leaving her with another 828,318 shares valued at $41,415,900.00. The share price has been crashing ever since Rogers wrote his piece about how she raised the price of EpiPen to $635. (from $57).

And this is how the stock was performing as I was writing this post:

Were the Manchin daughter to sell her 100,200 shares at $43 instead of the $50 she sold it at when only she knew what was about to happen, she would have netted $4,308,600, nearly a million dollars less than she was able to bank. I have a vague recollection from my days working inside corporate America that insider trading is highly illegal and that all senior level executives are warned about the dangers, but from what I've been able to discern, she hasn't been fired or arrested yet-- or even questioned.

The Manchin daughter is a former lobbyist for the company and when she took over as CEO, the amount Mylan spent on lobbying soared astronomically. She contributes to political campaigns-- a legalistic term for bribery-- through the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, which spent $175,448 bribing members of Congress last cycle. The crooked Members who took the biggest bribes in 2014 were notoriously corrupt Republicans Mitch McConnell (KY), Joe Pitts (PA), Fred Upton (MI) and Lamar Alexander (TN) and so far this cycle Manchin's daughter has made sure the crooked members who got greased we're Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Tim Scott (R-SC), hometown boy David McKinley (R-WV), Keith Rothfus (R-PA), Fred Upton (MI) again... and she made sure Pelosi's corrupt DCCC chairman Ben Ray Lujan got a taste as well. And what did she want for her bribes? Mylan successfully pushed through legislation to encourage use of the EpiPen in schools nationwide, as well as about $4 million in lobbying for the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act.

Michael Hiltzik pointed out for L.A. Times readers that little Heather, Manchin's horrid daughter, has condoned a tax-dodging scheme for her company as well, as had Rogers when he first broke the story on Monday. "[T]here’s another reason," wrote Hiltzik, "to detest this remarkably amoral corporation: It’s also a tax dodger. Mylan is one of the leading exploiters of the technique known as inversion, in which a U.S. company cuts its tax bill by acquiring a foreign firm and moving its tax domicile to the acquired company’s homeland." Heather's not making America great again.

Mylan’s 2014 deal involved its buying a generics manufacturer from Abbott Laboratories and reincorporating in the Netherlands, the subsidiary’s home. As in all inversions, nothing else changed: Mylan’s operational headquarters remained in Pennsylvania, and its main workforce didn’t relocate. At one point, Mylan even appealed to U.S. antitrust officials to help it block a takeover bid from an Israeli company. But the deal did allow the firm to cut its U.S. tax bill.

President Obama has labeled inversions “unpatriotic” and “one of the most insidious loopholes out there.” The Treasury Department has tightened tax rules several times to discourage them, and public disapproval has spiked a deal here and there.

Mylan’s inversion helped give this variety of loophole its noxious reputation, in part because defense of its deal was so transparently self-serving. Its CEO, Heather Bresch, daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), wrung her hands over the anguish she suffered in deciding to skip out on the company’s obligations as a U.S. corporation. She told the New York Times, “You can’t maintain competitiveness by staying at a competitive disadvantage. I mean you just can’t.” Credulously, the Times regurgitated that she made the decision “reluctantly, and she genuinely seems to mean it.”

Should Mylan be believed? Let’s judge it by its marketing of the EpiPen. The spring-loaded syringe-like device is designed to deliver a measured dose of epinephrine, which instantly reverses the swelling, breathing problems and other manifestations of severe reactions to peanuts, bee stings and other allergens. The pens come in two-packs in order to provide a second dose if needed. Families with allergy-prone kids have to lay in a supply of several packs, say for home and school, and replace them once a year when they expire.

Since acquiring rights to the product in 2007 when a two-pack sold for about $100, Mylan has relentlessly raised its price, to more than $600 now. That can place the product out of reach of families whose insurance doesn’t fully cover the cost, forcing them to use expired pens or resort to hand-injections, which can be dangerous.

The price increase isn’t driven by Mylan’s costs. The manufacturing cost is essentially pennies per device, and the active ingredient, epinephrine, is a generic drug that has been in use for decades, so the company isn’t working down any research and development costs. Instead, it’s simply profiteering from market dynamics: Its main competitor, a product made by Sanofi, was taken off the market last year because of manufacturing defects. Another potential rival, from the generics company Teva, hasn’t yet won approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Mylan’s price-gouging has enraged patients and doctors and created whitecaps on Capitol Hill. On Monday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), ranking member of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into the matter. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also has questioned the increases.

“There does not appear to be any justification for the continual price increases of EpiPen,” Klobuchar wrote the FTC. “Manufacturing costs for the product have been stable and Mylan does not need to recover the product’s research and development costs... Not only is this alarming price increase unjustified, it puts life-saving treatment out of reach to the consumers who need it most.”

Mylan rationalizes the EpiPen’s price as the fair cost of “a life-saving drug,” as Bresch told Wall Street analysts this month. Under the circumstances, she said, “I think that you can see it falls as not an expensive product.” She did acknowledge, however, that “as employers shift more cost to employees and make that everything has got to come out of pocket before you hit your deductible... you’re seeing a lot of noise around EpiPen.”

A lot of profit too. Mylan recorded $847 million in net income last year on sales of $9.4 billion. The EpiPen was a significant contributor, with sales of $1 billion.

The company has tried to have it both ways in relation to its inversion deal. Let’s examine Bresch’s assertion that the company found it just impossible to “maintain competitiveness” under U.S. tax rules. At a 2015 forum sponsored by Fortune Magazine, she griped that “there is an unlevel playing field in our country. We really penalize U.S.-based companies.”

Is that so? As we pointed out at the time of its inversion, over the previous two years, its sales had increased 12.7% and profits 16%; among its big competitors paying putatively lower taxes, British-based GlaxoSmithKline had gained only 3.14% in sales and 11.23% in profits. Israel-based Teva’s sales had risen 11%, and its profits declined 54%. Israel’s top corporate tax rate is 26.5%, the equivalent top U.S. federal rate is 35%.

But Mylan didn’t pay that top rate, of course. Almost no U.S. corporation does; CEOs use the statutory rate as a political boogeyman. Mylan’s effective tax rate had been only 16.2% in 2013, 20% in 2012 and 17.7% in 2011.

Bresch’s contention that Mylan was a “reluctant” inverter doesn’t hold much water. At that Fortune event, she reiterated the claim that Mylan hadn’t been seeking an inversion partner but had been willing to look into a deal “if the opportunity presented itself.” But she also seemed to say that its search for a partner was rather more proactive than that. “When we were inverting, we … looked at a lot of countries because we had the opportunity to really domicile where we wanted to, and the Netherlands was a... natural.”

Corporate mouthpieces and other defenders of inversions say there’s nothing wrong-- even something admirable-- in a company’s trying to do the best for its shareholders by cutting their tax bites. The argument is: “You don’t like it? Change the tax law.”

The problem with this position is that U.S. corporations have lots of advantages over foreign competitors that have to be paid for by taxes; inversions just amount to sticking the cost to someone else. Mylan itself proved this point last year, when it tried to fend off a takeover attempt by Teva by asking the U.S. government to declare it a U.S. company. That would have given U.S. antitrust officials the opportunity to block the takeover by a foreign company. Teva’s takeover attempt eventually broke down anyway.

Dena Grayson is running for an open congressional seat in central Florida. Her statement on Mylan is exactly the kind of strong position voters are looking from for leaders. Please wrap your head around what she's saying and then, if you agree, consider contributing to her campaign here.

"As a doctor and medical researcher, I know first-hand how much innovative new treatments can relieve suffering and save lives. And I know that it takes many years and extraordinary effort to discover and develop effective treatments for deadly diseases. But this isn’t scientific innovation by Manchin’s daughter at Mylan. It’s good ol' fashioned greed, plain and simple. Even worse, it's at the cost of the most vulnerable members of our society: sick kids. While Manchin’s avaricious daughter relaxes in her mansion, parents are forced to make a choice that no parent should ever have to make: whether to protect their child from dying from a fatal allergic attack, versus paying the rent. Yes, Mylan produces a tried and true medicine that saves lives, but it’s not innovative. It’s as though Mylan stumbled upon an cheap, old print of a Monet painting in their grandmother’s attic, and are now trying to pass it off as an original masterpiece. If Mylan is unable or unwilling to control their greed, then we will have to do it for them. Plain and simple."

Blue America has billboards up all over Polk County right now

UPDATE:

Manchin's not very bright daughter-- and utterly devoid of a moral compass-- has cost Mylan's shareholders in the realm of $3 billion dollars, just so she could pocket a few million for herself. So far she's still neither fired nor arrested... but I bet no one's too happy about this:

There Are 7 House Democrats Enabling Anti-Working Family GOP Tax Policies, Like Kyrsten Sinema

Last night we briefly touched on a NY Times article by Noam Scheiber and Patricia Cohen, For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions, in regard to relatively esoteric tax evasion schemes wealthy and politically-connected scofflaws use to avoid paying taxes. Scheiber's and Cohen's quick look at the well-funded mania of the very wealthy to abolish the estate tax isn't something we got to. So let's.

The inheritance tax has been a primary target. In the early 1990s, a California family office executive named Patricia Soldano began lobbying on behalf of wealthy families to repeal the tax, which would not only save them money, but also make it easier to preserve their business empires from one generation to the next. The idea struck many hardened operatives as unrealistic at the time, given that the tax affected only the wealthiest Americans. But Ms. Soldano’s efforts-- funded in part by the Mars and Koch families-- laid the groundwork for a one-year elimination in 2010.

The tax has been restored, but currently applies only to couples leaving roughly $11 million or more to their heirs, up from those leaving more than $1.2 million when Ms. Soldano started her campaign. It affected fewer than 5,200 families last year.

“If anyone would have told me we’d be where we are today, I would never have guessed it,” Ms. Soldano said in an interview.

Some of the most profound victories are barely known outside the insular world of the wealthy and their financial managers.

In 2009, Congress set out to require that investment partnerships like hedge funds register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, partly so that regulators would have a better grasp on the risks they posed to the financial system.

The early legislative language would have required single-family offices to register as well, exposing the highly secretive institutions to scrutiny that their clients were eager to avoid. Some of the I.R.S.’s cases against the wealthy originate with tips from the S.E.C., which is often better positioned to spot tax evasion.

By the summer of 2009, several family office executives had formed a lobbying group called the Private Investor Coalition to push back against the proposal. The coalition won an exemption in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, then spent much of the next year persuading the S.E.C. to largely adopt its preferred definition of “family office.”

So expansive was the resulting loophole that Mr. Soros’s $24.5 billion hedge fund took advantage of it, converting to a family office after returning capital to its remaining outside investors. The hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, a former business partner of Mr. Soros, took the same step.

The Soros family, which generally supports Democrats, has committed at least $1 million to the 2016 presidential campaign; Mr. Druckenmiller, who favors Republicans, has put slightly more than $300,000 behind three different G.O.P. presidential candidates.

A slide presentation from the Private Investor Coalition’s 2013 annual meeting credited the success to multiple meetings with members of the Senate Banking Committee, the House Financial Services Committee, congressional staff and S.E.C. staff. “All with a low profile,” the document noted. “We got most of what we wanted AND a few extras we didn’t request.”

After all the loopholes and all the lobbying, what remains of the government’s ability to collect taxes from the wealthy runs up against one final hurdle: the crisis facing the I.R.S.

President Obama has made fighting tax evasion by the rich a priority. In 2010, he signed legislation making it easier to identify Americans who squirreled away assets in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Islands shelters.

His I.R.S. convened a Global High Wealth Industry Group, known colloquially as “the wealth squad,” to scrutinize the returns of Americans with incomes of at least $10 million a year.

But while these measures have helped the government retrieve billions, the agency’s efforts have flagged in the face of scandal, political pressure and budget cuts. Between 2010, the year before Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, and 2014, the I.R.S. budget dropped by nearly $2 billion in real terms, or nearly 15 percent. That has forced it to shed about 5,000 high-level enforcement positions out of about 23,000, according to the agency.

Audit rates for the $10 million-plus club spiked in the first few years of the Global High Wealth program, but have plummeted since then.

The political challenge for the agency became especially acute in 2013, after the agency acknowledged singling out conservative nonprofits in a review of political activity by tax-exempt groups. (Senior officials left the agency as a result of the controversy.)

Several former I.R.S. officials, including Marcus Owens, who once headed the agency’s Exempt Organizations division, said the controversy badly damaged the agency’s willingness to investigate other taxpayers, even outside the exempt division.

“I.R.S. enforcement is either absent or diminished” in certain areas, he said. Mr. Owens added that his former department-- which provides some oversight of money used by charities and nonprofits to further political campaigns-- has been decimated.

Groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Tax Reform, which are financed by the foundations of wealthy families and large businesses, have called for impeaching the I.R.S. commissioner. They are bolstered by deep-pocketed advocacy groups like the Club for Growth, which has aided primary challenges against Republicans who have voted in favor of higher taxes.

In 2014, the Club for Growth Action fund raised more than $9 million and spent much of it helping candidates critical of the I.R.S. Roughly 60 percent of the money raised by the fund came from just 12 donors, including Mr. Mercer, who has given the group $2 million in the last five years. Mr. Mercer and his immediate family have also donated more than $11 million to several super PACs supporting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, an outspoken I.R.S. critic. and a presidential candidate. [Mercer's contribution to Cruz's campaign is now at $30,000,000.]

Another prominent donor is Mr. Yass, who helps run a trading firm called the Susquehanna International Group. He donated $100,000 to the Club for Growth Action fund in September. Mr. Yass serves on the board of the libertarian Cato Institute and, like Mr. Mercer, appears to subscribe to limited-government views that partly motivate his political spending.

But he may also have more than a passing interest in creating a political environment that undermines the I.R.S. Susquehanna is currently challenging a proposed I.R.S. determination that an affiliate of the firm effectively repatriated more than $375 million in income from subsidiaries located in Ireland and the Cayman Islands in 2007, activating a large tax liability. (The affiliate brought the money back to the United States in later years and paid dividend taxes on it; the I.R.S. asserts that it should have paid the ordinary income tax rate, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars more.)

In June, Mr. Yass donated more than $2 million to three super PACs aligned with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has called for taxing all income at a flat rate of 14.5 percent. That change in itself would save wealthy supporters like Mr. Yass millions of dollars.

Mr. Paul has suggested going even further, calling the I.R.S. a “rogue agency” and circulating a petition in 2013 calling for the tax equivalent of regime change. “Be it now therefore resolved,” the petition reads, “that we, the undersigned, demand the immediate abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service.”

But even if that campaign is a long shot, the richest taxpayers will continue to enjoy advantages over everyone else.

For the ultra-wealthy, “our tax code is like a leaky barrel,” said J. Todd Metcalf, the Democrats’ chief tax counsel on the Senate Finance Committee. ”Unless you plug every hole or get a new barrel, it’s going to leak out.”

When Paul "Muslim Beard" Ryan was reviled by his party's far right-wing for compromising with the Democrats on the Omnibus recently, he defended himself by listing several "wonderful" aspects of the bill. Number one, of course, was a giant wet kiss for Big Oil in the form of a repeal of the oil export ban. As Mike Huckabee pointed out, working families don't care about that, only wealthy political contributors do. In his explanation of GOP attempts to further cripple the IRS, Ryan tried spinning it as a boon for ordinary Americans. It isn't. "The IRS continues to act with impunity against the interests of hardworking taxpayers," lied Ryan. "This bill freezes most IRS operations and maintains budget cuts necessary to ensure this agency roots out wasteful spending and redirects resources to serving the American people."

Last summer we looked at a video from the History Channel about how Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and JP Morgan worked together to subvert the 1896 election and steal it from William Jennings Bryan (D) for Wall Street shill William McKinely (R). Their machinations led to the greatest wealth inequality in American history and, inevitably, the Great Depression. That kind of inequality-- nearly half the wealth in the country in the grasping paws of just 1% of the people-- is back... and not by coincidence. Republicans and conservative Democrats-- Blue Dogs and New Dems-- have worked to build the foundations for the rise and dominance of an American aristocracy based on inherited wealth. Robert Reich, working with MoveOn, talks about an antidote to this anti-democracy scourge in the video up top.

At a time of historic economic inequality, it should be a no-brainer to raise a tax on inherited wealth for the very rich. Yet there’s a move among some members of Congress to abolish it altogether...Today the estate tax reaches only the richest two-tenths of one percent, and applies only to dollars in excess of $10.86 million for married couples or $5.43 million for individuals.

That means if a couple leaves to their heirs $10,860,001, they now pay the estate tax on $1. The current estate tax rate is 40%, so that would be 40 cents.

Yet according to these members of Congress, that’s still too much.

Abolishing the estate tax would give each of the wealthiest two-tenths of 1 percent of American households an average tax cut of $3 million, and the 318 largest estates would get an average tax cut of $20 million.

It would also reduce tax revenues by $269 billion over ten years. The result would be either larger federal deficits or higher taxes on the rest of us to fill the gap.

This is nuts. The richest 1 percent of Americans now have 42 percent of the nation’s entire wealth, while the bottom 90 percent has just 23 percent.

That’s the greatest concentration of wealth at the top than at any time since the Gilded Age of the 1890s.

Instead of eliminating the tax on inherited wealth, we should increase it-- back to the level it was in the late 1990s. The economy did wonderfully well in the late 1990s, by the way.

Adjusted for inflation, the estate tax restored to its level in 1998 would begin to touch estates valued at $1,748,000 per couple.

That would yield approximately $448 billion over the next ten years-- way more than enough to finance ten years of universal preschool and two free years of community college for all eligible students.

Our democracy’s Founding Fathers did not want a privileged aristocracy. Yet that’s the direction we’re going in. The tax on inherited wealth is one of the major bulwarks against it. That tax should be increased and strengthened.

It’s time to rein in America’s surging inequality. It’s time to raise the estate tax.

A few months ago the Associated Press released a poll showing that most American voters are very aware that the wealthy aren't paying their fair share of taxes and that the burden falls on the shoulders of the middle class. It looks like the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren message has finally started making inroads in the collective consciousness of the country (if not the Congress).

According to the poll, 68 percent of those questioned said wealthy households pay too little in federal taxes; only 11 percent said the wealthy pay too much.

Also, 60 percent said middle-class households pay too much in federal taxes, while 7 percent said they paid too little.

Obama laid out a series of tax proposals as part of his 2016 budget released this month. Few are likely to win approval in the Republican-controlled Congress. But if fellow Democrats were to embrace his ideas, they could play a role in the 2016 race.

One proposal would increase capital gains taxes on households making more than $500,000. In the survey, 56 percent favored the proposal, while only 16 percent opposed it.

Democrats, at 71 percent, were the most likely to support raising taxes on capital gains. Among Republicans and independents, 46 percent supported it.

Since then, Republicans have ratcheted up their war against the Estate Tax and are moving to abolish it entirely. If they keep control of both Houses of Congress and win the White House in 2016, there will be no Estate Tax, which is great news for around 5,400 wealthy families-- and bad news for everyone else. Killing off the estate tax would increase the deficit by $269 billion over a decade. On April 16, the House passed an Estate Tax repeal 240-179. Only 7 right-wing House Democrats voted with the GOP:

• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Dutch Ruppersberger (MD)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)

State Of The Union Preview: Making The Tax Code Fairer-- Much Fairer-- For Working Families

No, this isn't a Bernie Sanders infographic

Paul Ryan's spokesperson has already chirped in that the bold tax plan President Obama is including in his State of the Union Tuesday is "not a serious plan. We lift families up & grow the economy with a simpler, flatter tax code, not big tax increases to pay for more spending." Ryan's plan is, of course, is based on the Austerity Agenda that has mired Europe in endless recession and on the so-called "dynamic scoring" (i.e., trickle down economics) that has bankrupted Kansas. I can't wait to hear Joni Ernst's response. The White House released the plan Saaturday evening, giving her plenty of time it read it and figure out how to denigrate it.

The White House press release emphasizes that "Middle class families today bear too much of the tax burden because of unfair loopholes that are only available to the wealthy and big corporations. In his State of the Union address, the President will outline his plan to simplify our complex tax code for individuals, make it fairer by eliminating some of the biggest loopholes, and use the savings to responsibly pay for the investments we need to help middle class families get ahead and grow the economy." That sounds a lot more like the Obama who ran in 2008 than the Obama so many of his early supporters didn't vote for in 2012.

The President will put forward reforms that include eliminating the biggest loophole that lets the wealthiest avoid paying their fair share of taxes:

•  Close the trust fund loophole-- the single largest capital gains tax loophole-- to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share on inherited assets. Hundreds of billions of dollars escape capital gains taxation each year because of the “stepped-up” basis loophole that lets the wealthy pass appreciated assets onto their heirs tax-free.

 •  Raise the top capital gains and dividend rate back to the rate under President Reagan. The President’s plan would increase the total capital gains and dividends rates for high-income households to 28 percent.

 •  Reform financial sector taxation to make it more costly for the biggest financial firms to finance their activities with excessive borrowing. The President will propose a fee on large, highly-leveraged financial institutions to discourage excessive borrowing.


By ensuring those at the top pay their fair share in taxes, the President’s plan responsibly pays for investments we need to help middle class families get ahead, like his recent proposal to make two years of community college free for every student willing to do the work. The savings will pay for additional reforms that will help the paychecks of middle-class and working families go further to cover the cost of child care, college, and a secure retirement: 


•  Provide a new, simple tax credit to two-earner families. The President will propose a new $500 second earner credit to help cover the additional costs faced by families in which both spouses work-- benefiting 24 million couples.

 •  Streamline child care tax incentives to give middle-class families with young children a tax cut of up to $3,000 per child. The President’s proposal would streamline and dramatically expand child care tax benefits, helping 5.1 million families cover child care costs for 6.7 million children. The proposal will complement major new investments in the President’s Budget to improve child care quality, access, and affordability for working families.

 •  Simplify, consolidate, and expand education tax benefits to improve college affordability. The President’s plan will consolidate six overlapping education provisions into just two, while improving the American Opportunity Tax Credit to provide more students up to $2,500 each year over five years as they work toward a college degree – cutting taxes for 8.5 million families and students and simplifying taxes for the more than 25 million families and students that claim education tax benefits.

 •  Make it easy and automatic for workers to save for retirement. The President will put forward a retirement tax reform plan that gives 30 million additional workers the opportunity to easily save for retirement through their employer.


Ryan, Ernst and their allies are, no doubt, flipping out over the new tax on the 100 biggest financial institutions-- with north of $50 billion each-- basing the fee on liabilities in order to discourage risky borrowing (i.e., reckless gambling with taxpayer-insured funds), although there are some responsible mainstream conservatives that actually embrace this idea and it is similar to the one proposed last year by the pre-Ryan chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp (R-MI). Matt O'Brien, writing for the Washington Post calls this Obama's Piketty moment-- "Piketty with an American accent." He wrote that "Obama's State of the Union... will call for $320 billion of new taxes on rentiers, their heirs, and the big banks to pay for $175 billion of tax credits that will reward work. In other words, it's fighting a two-front war against a Piketty-style oligarchy where today's hedge funders become tomorrow's trust funders. First, it's trying to slow the seemingly endless accumulation of wealth among the top 1, and really the top 0.1, no actually the top 0.001, percent by raising capital gains taxes on them while they're living and raising them on their heirs when they're dead. And second, it's trying to help the middle help itself by subsidizing work, child care, and education." Republicans are no doubt rending their clothes and tearing out their hair. Can you imagine daring to propose raising the top capital gains tax rate from 23.8 to 28%? It should be interesting to see how Wall Street fave Hillary Clinton reacts to this proposals that will be so hated by the people she's counting on the finance her presidential run.

Note: Picketty moment or not, late last week the White House was heavily lobbying freshmen Democrats to back away from signing a letter circulating that adamantly opposes fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama's horrific, job-killing trade bill detested by progressives and demanded by Big Business and Wall Street. Many freshmen had their first experience of telling the White House, "Sorry, but no."

Will Illinois Elect A Sleazy Billionaire Sociopath As Governor? Meet Bruce Rauner

There is no way to shame a Republican. None of their selfish, narcissistic behavior ever seems to embarrass them. As Wall Street attorney Oliver Budde explained, "[O]ur ethos in a nutshell: grab every dollar you can, for as long as you can, using every scheme you can think of, and pay out to yourself and your cronies as much as you possibly can, as quickly as you can. You don't sweat morals or ethics; if it looks doable without getting caught or at least without serious risk of penalty to the executives (who couldn't care less if the corporation has to kick back some of the loot later), you do it. So subprime MBS and CDOs rated safe as mothers' milk, lying to and stealing from clients, misleading investors and the public (including Congress, even under oath), cheating on taxes, financing drug lords, laundering terrorist and Ponzi cash, ripping off the central bank that just saved your bacon, hell, even proclaiming love for America while simultaneously raking in hundreds of millions persuading American corporations to move offshore or even driving your own bank right off the cliff if the money's right: it's all good in the 'hood if you like the odds."

Last week, Senate Democrats tried shutting down the Republican filibuster of a bill meant to close tax loopholes that actually encourage corporations to avoid paying American income taxes. S.2569, had 25 cosponsors, from liberals like Brian Schatz (D-HI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) to so-called "moderates" like Mark Pryor (D-AR), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE)… but no Republicans; not one. Although a majority of the senators voted to end the filibuster and move on to a vote, they couldn't get the 2/3 majority they needed for that, but the Republicans had decided to obstruct the bill and kill it. It failed 54-42, only one Republican voting with the Democrats, scared that she could be defeated in November.

Elizabeth Warren called the Republicans and their corporate allies out for free-loading. "These companies," she told her fellow senators, "are renouncing their American citizenship, turning their backs on this country, simply to boost their profits. They are taking advantage of all the good things that our government helps provide-- educated workers, roads and bridges, a dependable court system, patent and copyright protections-- and then running out on the bill. If a person did that, we'd call them a freeloader. For a person who doesn't want to pay a fair share, our message is clear: you can renounce your citizenship, but don't come back and expect the rest of us to pick up your tab. But we don't do that for corporations. Corporations can renounce their American citizenship-- and make absolutely clear in legal documents that they're doing so to avoid their US tax obligations-- and not suffer any consequences. In this corner of the tax code, we've gone way past treating corporations like people. In this corner of the tax code, we treat corporations better than people." Water off a duck's back. It's part of the nature of conservatism.

Take Bruce Rauner, a typical crooked financial manipulator, a tax-cheat, and a shady billionaire who bought himself the Illinois Republican gubernatorial nomination, writing himself a nice $9.6 million check to crush his opponents. His three main priorities are lowering taxes on the super-wealthy, lowering the minimum wage, and wrecking the public schools system and replacing it with for-profit charter schools.

Would it surprise you to know that Rauner also hides much of his wealth offshore to keep from paying his fair share of taxes? Chicago media has been reporting that he has refused to release a full set of his most recent tax returns that would show the full extent of what many know is a great deal of unethical and probably criminal behavior.

Brooke Anderson, the spokesperson for Governor Pat Quinn, pointed out that Rauner "doesn’t just use exotic methods to dodge taxes. He even uses exotic, offshore locations. No wonder why Mr. Rauner won’t release his full tax returns. He’s been stashing money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying U.S. and Illinois taxes." He's a real sleaze bag and was once caught in an elaborate scheme to cheat on his property taxes for just a $1,600. He's just a greedy, selfish sociopath who can't help himself.

Margaret Niederer a former long-term care ombudsman in Springfield penned an OpEd for the State Journal-Register last week, Bruce Rauner is not the change Illinois needs.

Nursing homes and disability homes owned by Republican governor candidate Bruce Rauner’s firm have been implicated in numerous and repeated incidents of abuse, neglect, rape and even death of residents.

As a former Illinois Long Term Care Regional Ombudsman who protected the rights of residents in long-term care facilities for more than a decade, I am appalled.

Leading up to the primary election, I was horrified by the stories of elderly individuals suffering preventable deaths because of avoidable falls, pressure ulcers and infections in nursing homes owned by a company that Rauner helped found.

Rauner shrugged off responsibility and refused to explain to the voters of Illinois why these patients received such atrocious care.

Now we know that the extreme negligence that occurred in Rauner’s nursing homes were not isolated incidents. Illinois voters recently learned from news reports the gruesome stories of sexual abuse, assault and death at facilities for people with developmental disabilities owned by another company Rauner’s firm created. These crimes were so horrendous that one of the facilities was shut down by the state of Texas.

Rauner simply blamed the management team and called the company a bad investment.

I am all too familiar with long-term care companies skirting their responsibility of providing person-centered care to their patients. Horrendous incidents like this don’t happen repeatedly by accident. They occur in poorly run facilities owned by companies that value profit margins over the lives and well-being of residents.

Rauner and his investor buddies cut staff, which subsequently led to poor patient care. I have seen first-hand the effects of this scheme before. Residents are left frightened for their safety and personal well-being and, inevitably, a resident unnecessarily suffers or even dies from lack of care.

Rauner says he will come to Springfield and run it like a business. If the morally bankrupt and slipshod manner in which he ran his health-care companies is any indication of how he will run government agencies, including the Illinois Department of Public Health, which is responsible for oversight of long-term care facilities, then this is indeed, a very scary situation.

I personally have serious doubts that Rauner would be the kind of governor Illinois needs. If he is elected, will he ignore problems in the state’s long-term care system, public education and our rapidly deteriorating infrastructure?

The voters of Illinois deserve a governor who puts people first, always.

I sense Illinois voters hunger for change, but I know that Bruce Rauner, who has shown no interest in protecting our most vulnerable citizens, is not the change Illinois needs.

Elizabeth Warren: "The Time For Free-Loading Is Over"

Just a week ago we warned about how conservatives were eager to prevent progressives to end a tax loophole that allows corporations to do "inversions" that allow them to pay no taxes. Yesterday, the Senate failed to break a Republican filibuster lead by Wisconsin corporate whore Ron Johnson. Breaking the filibuster requires 60 votes and the Democrats only mustered 54, so it failed 54-42, all but one Republican joining the filibuster this time.

Elizabeth Warren was up on the floor of the Senate (as you can see in the video above), denouncing the corporations that are taking advantage of this country. "These companies," she told her fellow senators, "are renouncing their American citizenship, turning their backs on this country, simply to boost their profits. They are taking advantage of all the good things that our government helps provide-- educated workers, roads and bridges, a dependable court system, patent and copyright protections-- and then running out on the bill. If a person did that, we'd call them a freeloader. For a person who doesn't want to pay a fair share, our message is clear: you can renounce your citizenship, but don't come back and expect the rest of us to pick up your tab. But we don't do that for corporations. Corporations can renounce their American citizenship-- and make absolutely clear in legal documents that they're doing so to avoid their US tax obligations-- and not suffer any consequences. In this corner of the tax code, we've gone way past treating corporations like people. In this corner of the tax code, we treat corporations better than people."

Robert Cyran tried explaining to NY Times what exactly had happened a few minutes after the vote.

Inversions are starting to spin out of control. A quest for tax savings has made digestible overseas targets attractive to United States buyers. Hospira’s potential $5 billion deal for a Danone unit highlights a fresh supply, for “spinversions.” The odd combination also reflects the perverse incentives distorting corporate decisions.

Health care companies lead the way trying to move domiciles. In just the past six months, there were $319 billion of announced deals in the sector, a figure that already exceeds the record volume in 2007. Companies with Irish headquarters like Covidien, Elan and Warner Chilcott have already been devoured. Pfizer tried unsuccessfully to do the same with AstraZeneca for nearly $120 billion. Certain post codes now carry premium valuations.

There’s a clever new twist on the situation, though. Big companies can spin off a suitably sized division in a favorable jurisdiction, and if an American company acquires it using shares, the acquirer can advantageously change its address. When Pennsylvania-based Mylan acquired a division of Abbott Laboratories, for example, it suddenly became Dutch for tax purposes.

Buying Danone’s medical nutrition business would accomplish something similar for $9 billion Hospira. Other European companies are also getting the idea they might fetch top dollar for unwanted divisions. Consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser said this week that it plans to separate its pharmaceutical division. GlaxoSmithKline is also studying disposals. Even United States conglomerates could do the same by spinning off unwanted divisions to investors and then having them merge with overseas businesses.

The trouble is that tax motives are increasingly trumping strategic logic. Hospira itself was spun off from Abbott a decade ago, leaving Abbott with a sizable and profitable medical nutrition business. While there might be competition concerns, Abbott is nevertheless a far more natural home for Danone’s competing operation than is Hospira, which specializes in drugs that are injected. To justify these otherwise implausible sorts of deals will require a whole different kind of spin.

Michael Wager is the Blue America-endorsed candidate running in the most winnable Republican-held seat in Ohio, OH-14, a swing district just east of Cleveland where clueless backbencher David Joyce is spending gigantically-- $1,190,471 already-- to hold the seat. But Joyce isn't saying anything to the working families of Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Lake, Portage, Summit and Trumbull counties, all of which were won in 2012 by Sherrod Brown. (The only county in the district won by Republican Josh Mandel was Geauga). This morning Wager explained why this is a real issue for people in northeast Ohio:

As some of the largest, most profitable American companies have "moved" their tax residence to off-shore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share under U.S. tax law, the Congress has failed again to address this corporate tax abuse and close the loopholes. Don’t expect too much of an outcry from Republicans; they’re too busy accepting millions in PAC contributions from the very companies engaged in this  tax dodge. For example, Ohio-based Eaton Corporation moved its tax residence to Ireland, but my  opponent, Congressman David Joyce, has failed to speak out on behalf of American taxpayers. Why?  Well, perhaps it’s because he’s the single largest recipient of PAC contributions from Eaton’s PAC as well as generous contributions from its CEO.

It’s time to amend our rigged and deformed tax code and put an end to tax avoidance by the corporations. Today’s filibuster by Senate Republicans is disgraceful.

Open Secrets shows that Eaton CEO Alexander Cutler has spent 6 pages worth of his own cash on making sure Republicans don't close any corporate loopholes that will disadvantage Eaton after his decision to leave Ohio and move to Ireland. He's given thousands and thousands of dollars to Joyce but also to Republican candidates and committees all over America, including ole filibustering' Rob Portman. And the Eaton corporate PAC gives large sums to candidates and incumbents as well. So far the biggest recipient of their largesse this cycle has been… David Joyce ($4,600).

GOP Passes Bill To Make It Easier For Rich Tax Cheats To Get Away With It

Sometimes we forget that right-wing political parties generally are not really organized around racism, bigotry and societal divisiveness just for the sake of those values. Racism, bigotry and that kind of purposeful divisiveness are not really core values for most legitimate right wing political parties. Greed and selfishness are. The rest is a means to an end, an appeal to base right-wing populism and a system of stoking primitive fears for much narrower ends.

The bill the financial services bill the House passed on Wednesday-- by an almost entirely partyline vote, 228-195-- goes right to the core of what it means to embrace a conservative vision of governance than anything pandering to toothless, superstition-driven racists and primitives in the Old Confederacy. It makes it harder for the IRS to hold tax cheats-- the real core of Republicanism-- accountable. The 6 corrupt New Dems and Blue Dogs who backed the bill-- John Barrow (GA), Collin Peterson (MN), Nick Rahall (WV), Pete Gallego (TX), Mike McIntyre (NC) and Bill Owens (NY)-- are from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and for this kind of vote, they are just plain garden variety Republicans catering to the wealthy donors who finance their sleazy political careers.

And the Hate Talk Radio zombies get some raw meat out of it because the tactic the GOP used to weaken accountability was to partially underfund an already severely underfunded IRS, whose enforcement budget was cut by a debilitating 25%. Win/win for the right. Their tax cheat base is sipping champaign and the rednecks are dancing around their radios with a breweski in each hand.

The bill also includes a handful of policy riders directed at the SEC and its implementation of Dodd-Frank overhaul (PL 111-203), including provisions loosening derivatives rules and imposing new reporting requirements.

A separate Democratic amendment that would have blocked a change in how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded was also rejected. The bill would place the watchdog agency under the annual appropriations process; currently it receives funding transfers from the Federal Reserve.

...“This will prevent the IRS from going after tax cheats,” said Jose E. Serrano, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee.

The Treasury Department estimates that each dollar spent on enforcement yields about six dollars in revenue collection.

...The annual spending bill includes appropriations for the District of Columbia, which sparked a flurry of partisan policy riders. Democrats have repeatedly accused Republicans of trying to dictate local policies through the spending process.

Lawmakers adopted, 241-181, an amendment offered by Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky that would block funds from being used by the District of Columbia to enforce various provisions of DC law related to its handgun ban.

“It’s difficult for D.C. residents to exercise their God-given right to bear arms,” Massie said, adding that “Congress has the right to legislate in this area.”

But Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton-- the sole representative of D.C.-- said Massie is “not accountable to the residents of the District of Columbia.” She called the amendment “entirely inappropriate” and pointed to a slew of dangerous scenarios if D.C. citizens were allowed to carry handguns, including bringing firearms into federal buildings.

Also tucked into the underlying measure is a provision that would prohibit federal or local District of Columbia funds from going toward the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. The D.C. city council voted in March to remove criminal penalties for the possession of small amounts of marijuana, while D.C. residents will vote on legalizing marijuana on the November ballot.