Background Briefing: November 1, 2023
MAGA Mike Johnson’s Top Priority to Cut Taxes on the Rich by Gutting the IRS’s Ability to Collect Revenues From Wealthy Tax Cheats
We begin with the top priority of MAGA Mike Johnson, the new House Speaker, which is to serve his benefactors by cutting taxes on the rich. Johnson’s first act is to gut the IRS so they can’t collect revenues from wealthy tax cheats. In the name of reducing the deficit, House Republicans propose cutting the IRS by the same amount destined for Israel which is a non-starter with the senate and White House and will result in an increase in the deficit. Joining us to discuss how this will impact the IRS and whether there is a strategy here, is Edward McCaffery, the Robert C. Packard trustee chair in law and a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler and founder of the People’s Tax Page.
A Report From Israel Inside the Homes Where Hamas Terrorists Butchered Families
Then we go to Israel to speak with Gershom Gorenberg, an historian and journalist who has been covering Middle Eastern affairs for more than thirty-five years. A columnist for the Washington Post and a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, his books include The Unmaking of Israel, The Accidental Empire, The End of Days, Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, and most recently, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East. He joins us to describe what he saw yesterday inside the burned and desecrated homes in which Hamas terrorists butchered Israeli families.
Donald Junior’s Testimony in the $250 Million Fraud Trial In Which the Trump Organization Has Already Been Found Liable
Then finally we get an update on the $250 million fraud trial brought by the New York AG which has found the Trump Organization liable for fraud in exaggerating assets to get better bank loans and lower insurance premiums. Joining us is Jennifer Taub, a legal scholar and professor of law at Western New England School of Law who previously taught at Harvard Law School. Her writing focuses on corporate governance, banking and financial market regulation, white collar crime and corruption. She has testified as a banking law expert before Congress and her latest book is Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay now out in paperback. The host of the new podcast “Booked Up with Jen Taub,” we discuss Donald Trump Junior’s testimony.