(photo: Gage Skidmore)

When you have the kind of power Grover Norquist has held — namely, decades of unquestioned dictatorial control over the Republican Party as its grand ayatollah of anti-tax orthodoxy — it’s easy for a wee bit of hubris to creep into your thinking.

The result is the occasional burst of excessive honesty, as exemplified by Norquist’s infamous statement that he’s like to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” (which came back to haunt him after hurricane Katrina a few years ago).

Apparently, our friend Grover has had another one of those moments.  This is from an interview with Nancy Cook of the National Journal, posted yesterday afternoon:

NJ At the end of 2012, a number of major tax provisions, including the Bush-era cuts, are set to expire. Do you have any predictions?

NORQUIST [...] If the Republicans have the House, Senate, and the presidency, I’m told that they could do an early budget vote—a reconciliation vote where you extend the Bush tax cuts out for a decade or five years. You take all of those issues off the table, and then say, “What do you want to do for tax reform?” … And, if you have a Republican president to go with a Republican House and Senate, then they pass the [Paul] Ryan plan [on Medicare].

NJ What if the Democrats still have control? What’s your scenario then?

NORQUIST Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.

Now, to be fair, this claim relies on the nearly delusional fantasy that ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will cause an intense popular backlash in favor of the Republicans, resulting in 67 GOP senators after the next midterms.  But it’s also a reminder of what these guys consider an impeachable offense — and how far they’re willing to take their desire to protect the rich.  They play for keeps.

(photo: cobalt/flickr)

Today is Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) awareness day!

EITC, the Earned Income Tax Credit, sometimes called EIC is a tax credit to help you keep more of what you earned. Congress originally approved the tax credit legislation in 1975 in part to offset the burden of social security taxes and to provide an incentive to work. When EITC exceeds the amount of taxes owed, it results in a tax refund to those who claim and qualify for the credit.

Since we are on the topic of the EITC, today is a good day to highlight a proposal to strengthen both the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit so that they are more effective tools for reducing poverty.

• Jeannette Wicks-Lim & Jeffrey Thompson, Political Economy Research Institute – Combining Minimum Wage and Earned Income Tax Credit Policies to Guarantee a Decent Living Standard to All U.S. Workers:

..we begin by proposing a 70 percent increase in current minimum wage rates. This would raise the federal minimum from today’s rate of $7.25 to $12.30 per hour.

We also propose two expansions of the EITC, the federal program that provides tax relief and cash benefits for low-income working families. These include raising the maximum EITC benefits by 80 percent and the income eligibility threshold to three times the federal poverty line. The maximum EITC benefit would rise from $5,028 to $9,040 and households with incomes up to $57,000 could receive some benefit.

In combination, these two policy measures would guarantee 60 percent of all low-income working families a decent living standard through full-time employment. The other 40 percent of low-income working families offer more difficult challenges, because they either live in high-cost areas or they depend on only one wage-earner to raise children. But our proposed measures would substantially improve conditions for these households as well. Current policy terms guarantee a decent living standard for only 12 percent of low-income working families.

[cont'd.]

Roy has an interesting post up about how Charles “Coloreds Is Dumb” Murray has moved on from explaining why white people are superior to the dusky races and how now Murray is trying to instigate Whitey class war by pointing out that chain-smokin’ cheap-beer-drinkin’ NASCAR-watchin’ God-botherin’ lunchpail-totin’ gone-fishin’ crap-TV zombies are real Americans and those who don’t do any of those things are effete communist space aliens who have invaded America because Mars Needs Arugula. Or something like that.

Roy, his own badself, took Murray’s How Thick Is Your Bubble pop quiz to gauge whether he is a real ‘Murican or just some snotty East Coast book-larnin’ elitist.

Well, Murray’s been making the rounds, as has a quiz from his book which is supposed to tell you “How Thick Is Your Bubble” — that is, how isolated you are from the real down-home white America that Murray thinks needs redemption. Among the questions: “Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian?” “How many times in the last year have you eaten at one of the following restaurant chains? Applebee’s, Waffle House,” etc., and “Have you ever watched an Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Judge Judy show all the way through?”

Nonetheless I scored 63, as many of the questions had to do with low birth, manual labor, cheap beer, and stupid shit on TV and at the multiplexes, notwithstanding that I have become over the years a hoity-toity scribbler.

Fortunately for Roy, by rolling up that impressive 63 (A first- generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and moviegoing habits. Range: 42–100. Typical: 66), he won’t be rounded up by the Tea Party Freedom Troopers of Liberty & Jesus (following a dramatic yet slow speed Rascal chase) and placed in a reeducation camp where he will be whacked unconscious with a SlimJim due to his inability to make the connection between the number 3 and Dale Earnhardt Sr. (may American Jesus bless his terminated Terminator soul).

I, on the other hand, will not be so lucky. [cont'd.]