When you read this sort of thing, you might get the impression that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is little more than a corrupt political hack. Because really, the fact that his employees set up their own intranet to communicate on campaign work would indicate that someone higher up the food chain directed them to do so, and that a culture of corruption was pervasive on his staff. But since we all "know" Scott is really a God-fearing man, there must be some other explanation, right?

Two staffers who worked directly for Gov. Scott Walker while he was county executive were charged Thursday with illegally doing extensive political work while being paid by taxpayers to do county jobs.

One of the two, Darlene Wink, cut a deal with prosecutors under which she agreed to provide information in a related investigation about the destruction of digital evidence and to aid in further prosecutions. This is the first indication that the multifaceted John Doe investigation may be pursuing charges of evidence tampering.

Milwaukee County prosecutors also made the surprising disclosure that top Walker aides set up a private Internet network to allow them to communicate with one another by email about campaign as well as county government work without the public or co-workers' knowledge.

The emails Walker officials traded via the shadow network could provide investigators with a trove of information as they pursue other angles in the case. Earlier this week, the Journal Sentinel reported that the probe was focusing on possible bid-rigging and other misconduct in the competition to house the county Department on Aging in private office space.

In a statement, Walker's campaign said he had a policy against county employees using government resources to do campaign work.

"Scott Walker expected everyone to follow the law and made that clear publicly and privately," the statement said.

There, you see? He had a "policy" against it, so I'm sure everything's going to be just fine for Scott!

On Thursday, prosecutors charged Kelly Rindfleisch, deputy chief of staff to Walker in 2010, with four felony counts of misconduct in office for working for then-Rep. Brett Davis' 2010 campaign for lieutenant governor while on the county clock. Davis, who lost in the Republican primary, is now Walker's state Medicaid director.

The complaint says that Rindfleisch told a friend in an Internet chat shortly after taking the job with Walker that "half of what I'm doing is policy for the campaign."

During work hours between February 2010 and early July 2010, it says, Rindfleisch sent more than 300 emails to Davis and 1,380 fundraising emails. The John Doe also turned up more than 1,000 emails between Rindfleisch and top staffers on Walker's 2010 campaign during work hours over the same period.

Communications Workers of America has renewed its efforts to convince Verizon to negotiate with its workers in a fair manner and to stop its union-busting efforts with a powerful new video that highlights the voices of Verizon workers. The video features numerous employees of the telecom asking for Verizon to do the right thing, Specifically, they ask Verizon to:

Stop exploiting tax loopholes while cutting medical benefits

Settle a contract with the workers

Stop outsourcing

Pay a fair share in taxes

Participate in society, support society, and support middle class jobs

CWA has a petition for those supporting Verizon workers:

From 2008 – 2010, despite billions in profits, Verizon paid no federal income taxes. Anyone that paid even a penny in federal income taxes paid more than Verizon did from 2008 – 2010. At the same time, Verizon is trying to destroy middle class jobs.

Tax evasion and union-busting are wrong. America needs a strong middle class, not corporate greed. I urge Verizon to stop trying to destroy middle class jobs and stop using corporate tax loopholes and dodges to avoid paying a fair share

Crooks and Liars has previously reported extensively on Verizon's anti-union tactics and the efforts of CWA and others to fight back. Verizon is a profitable company that is demanding extreme concessions from workers that are not necessary, particularly at a time when Verizon had a -2.9 percent tax rate in recent years.

More information and action opportunities can be found at CWA's Unity@Verizon website.

Payday lending is just a gentle term for loan sharking. Payday lenders give signature loans to people against future paychecks, locking them in with incredibly high interest rates. Missouri's laws are some of the most lax on the books.

According to a Missouri Better Business Bureau study (PDF) published in 2009, Missouri's state laws allow interest rates of 1950 percent to be charged on a two-week loan of $100.00, while most neighboring states' laws limit those rates to around 400 percent, which is not wonderful, but not as obviously impossible as Missouri's.

A report published by National Public Action this month has even more devastating details of the effects of this type of predatory lending, and link payday lenders to big banks' profits:

• Payday lenders take at the very least $3.4 billion from our communities every year in fees alone. This figure represents some $3.1 billion in wealth stripped from desperate borrowers -money that could have gone to buy needed groceries or school supplies- to pump up the payday lenders' fat bottom lines.
• Nationwide, revenues for the major payday loan companies (Advance America, EZ Corp, First Cash Financial, Dollar Financial, Cash America, QC Holdings) have risen to their highest level - $1.48 Billion per year- more than before the financial crisis.
• Big banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and US Bank finance approximately 42% of the entire payday loan industry, providing the industry the capital for usurious and predatory loans.

[Full report - PDF]

Needless to say, the CFPB could not be investigating these loan sharks any sooner, particularly when they prey upon the working poor who are already struggling. These types of loans are typically targeted at minority communities, but also military families and other struggling groups. But while the CFPB investigation continues, a coalition of churches, bankers and nonprofits are working to create an alternative around a microlending model. In addition, petitions are being circulated for voter initiatives to limit interest rates on payday loans to more - ahem - reasonable rates.

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Republican lawmakers are busy rubbing their hands together and waiting for the US Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. They believe this will give them the momentum they need to begin selling their "replacement plan" for Obamacare, after they repeal it, of course. Actually, they're hoping the Supreme Court will repeal it for them by upholding the non-severability clause which allows the entire law to be struck down if one provision is struck down.

Here's what they're planning to replace it with, via The Hill:

The Republican plan will not preserve one of Obama’s most politically popular reforms: the requirement that insurers cover people who have pre-existing conditions. Some Republicans have said in the past that it would be difficult to walk away from that provision. But Pitts said the GOP will instead propose state-based pools in which the government would take over the cost of the sickest, most expensive patients, rather than requiring private insurers to cover them.

The rest of the plan Pitts outlined draws from long-standing GOP priorities. It will include limits on medical malpractice suits and allow the sale of insurance across state lines, Pitts said, while also expanding the use of health savings accounts.

Ask Susie Madrak how those state-based pools are working out for her. Yes, they're better than having nothing. But they don't help with high deductibles in the least. Selling insurance across state lines? Which state will race to the bottom to compete for the business? North Dakota? South Dakota? And health savings accounts? I've told you all about how those work until they don't.

I repeat: The Affordable Care Act was all about pre-existing conditions. Not mandates, not Medicare Advantage, not insurance exchanges, and not private versus public insurance. Pre-existing conditions exclusions have always been and will forever be the barrier to universal health care in this country. Now House Republicans have confirmed that.

But hey, at least they can call those pre-existing conditions plans a public option. I can hardly wait to see how states like Texas and Alabama would implement such a thing, can't you?

The only good idea to come out of Pitts' committee right now is decoupling employment and health insurance so individuals get the tax deduction for insurance rather than companies. Of course, it doesn't work as well with the Republican plan as it does with the Affordable Care Act.

Can we please stop hating on the Affordable Care Act and consider defending it now? Because what Republicans are proposing will do absolutely nothing at all to help people who need access to affordable health care. At least the ACA offers some government help toward that, and yes, it eliminates the pre-existing conditions exclusion, which established a level ground for everyone.

Bernard Avishai has a wonderful article in the February 13, 2012 issue of The Nation discussing Paul Starr's book about the development of health policy and passage of the Affordable Care Act. Of Starr, he writes this:

Starr’s great fear is repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which would not only deny healthcare to more than 30 million people but would cast doubt on whether “Americans will ever be able to hold their fears in check and summon the elementary decency toward the sick that characterizes other democracies.” Obamacare, in short, was healthcare reform’s best—and last—shot, and it would be unconscionable for liberals to remain cavalier about its defense, or Obama’s, for that matter. It’s past time to discard the misguided assumption that in a better economy, or with more of “a fighter” in the White House, something like a Canadian-style single-payer system might have been (or might sometime fairly soon be) enacted.

Indeed.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he doesn't coordinate with the super PACs that support him, but apparently he doesn't coordinate with himself either.

During the CNN-hosted debate in Florida on Thursday, the former Massachusetts governor couldn't remember an ad attacking Newt Gingrich, even though he approved it and his campaign paid for it.

"You've had an ad running that says Speaker Gingrich calls Spanish the language of the ghetto," CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer told Romney.

"I haven't seen the ad," Romney replied. "I'm sorry I don't get to see all the TV ads. I don't know. Did he say that?"

"No," Gingrich objected. "I said we want everybody to learn English; I didn't use the word Spanish. ... So I would say that as much as Gov. Romney doesn't particularly like my use of language, I found his deliberate distortion equally offensive."

"I doubt that's my ad," Romney insisted. "But we'll take a look and find out. There are a bunch of ads out there that are being organized by other people."

In fact, Blitzer did return to the subject after a few other questions.

"We just double-checked and it was one of your ads," Blitzer explained. "It's running here in Florida on the radio, and at the end you say, 'I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this ad.'"

While Romney had the support of the Republican audience for a large part of the night, that tidbit of information was met with groans and boos.

"Let me ask the Speaker a question," Romney spoke up, trying to salvage the moment. "Did you say what the ad says or not? I don't know."

"It's totally out of context," Gingrich said.

"Oh, OK, he said it," Romney interrupted. "Let's take a look at what he said."

In a 2007 speech, Gingrich did say that bilingual education should be replaced "with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto," according to a fact check from The Washington Post.

Gingrich had not specifically used the word "Spanish," but it was widely perceived to be aimed at Spanish speakers. The Georgia Republican eventually apologized for creating "a bad feeling within the Latino community."

BAGnewsNotes: tiny angry teabagger assaults President Spock.

Gothamist: serial adulterer and disgraced politician admits lying on national TV.

Taylor Marsh: old irrelevant failed presidential candidate wants Newt to get off his lawn.

The Impolitic: robotic GOP presidential hopeful failed to disclose a few of his many investments.

Towleroad: the Senate's leading libertarian sociopath blew TSA incident out of all proportion.

blogenfreude blogs at Stinque - send your MBRU recommendations to mbru@crooksandliars.com

Georges Melies - A trip to the moon (1902) -3 from sinematek on Vimeo.

A Trip To The Moon (silent film from 1902).

Open Thread below....

Here's a favorite from Marshall Crenshaw's eponymous 1982 debut, performed live on MTV back when they played music. .

It's true. Mitt Romney really does like firing people. With a somewhat condescending tone after Newt Gingrich paints a grand picture of his dream of a moon colony (not that it wasn't a bald pander or anything), Mitt lets him know that corporate investors would guffaw at him right before they fired him. The joy Mitt gets out of saying "you're fired" just shines through. Channeling his inner Donald Trump, perhaps?

BLITZER: We're going to move on, but go ahead, Governor Romney.

ROMNEY: I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, "You're fired."

The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea. And we have seen in politics -- we've seen politicians -- and Newt, you've been part of this -- go from state to state and promise exactly what that state wants to hear. The Speaker comes here to Florida, wants to spend untold amount of money having a colony on the moon. I know it's very exciting on the Space Coast.

In South Carolina, it was a new interstate highway, and dredging the port in Charleston. In New Hampshire, it was burying a power line coming in from Canada and building a new VHA hospital in New Hampshire so that people don't have to go to Boston.

Look, this idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear, promising billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy, that's what got us into the trouble we're in now. We've got to say no to this kind of spending.

I spent some time yesterday going through Willard's 2010 return and 2011 estimates of his taxes, and I agree with David Shuster in this segment. There's every possibility that the Romneys paid no income taxes at all in 2009 and possibly also in 2008. Here's why, starting at about 1:08 in the video above:

SHUSTER: Actually, Governor, if you think a limited release is going to put this issue behind you, you're politically tone-deaf. First, your 2010 return indicates you paid a rate of 13.9 percent. Furthermore, it suggests you paid far lower than that in 2009. You see, the 2010 return reveals you carried over $4.9 million dollars in losses from the previous year. That means you paid no taxes on capital gains in 2009, including no taxes on your carried interest.

So how much did you pay in 2009? Zero? How close to zero was it, Governor? Or how about the 2008 year, where the investment market first crashed?

Taxpayers are limited on the amount of capital losses they can use to offset income. In a year with low capital gains, high capital losses can offset the amount of those gains for a net-zero result. Any losses not used are carried forward to the following year, where they can be used there. The bottom line on Romney's tax return is that he likely paid minimal taxes in 2009, since his charitable deductions probably offset any speaker's fees, dividends and interest he was paid. I'm guessing he paid payroll tax on the speaker's fees up to the cap, and that is about it. Must be pretty nice, eh? Perhaps that's why Ann Romney thinks it's unfortunate that he had to release even 2010, since she's concerned about people knowing how successful he is.

Willard's financial disclosures also indicate he profited greatly from foreclosures in Florida, which would certainly explain his desire to let the housing market fall into the tank while he reaped the benefits, both tax-wise and personally.

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