Earlier today, Gibson excerpted a few graphs from an AP story that shows that the wealthiest people in the United States are paying less than they used to pay in taxes. But the AP conflates that with the fact that the lower end of the economic spectrum escapes income taxes as well:

There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

"It's the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center, which generated the estimate of people who pay no income taxes.

The problem with Williams' quote is that he's suggesting that people are paying "no taxes," which is completely false, but a popular right-wing meme. As David Cay Johnston pointed out in last week TW, people at the bottom of the economic ladder pay plenty in Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes, etc.:

Data from the Tax Foundation shows that in 2008, the average income for the bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300. This year, the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles, and $18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means millions of poor people do not make enough to owe income taxes.

But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax-free in America.

When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent for those who make $229,000 or more.

In terms of percentages, Arizona happens to have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country, according to a 2009 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Non-elderly Arizona families that earned less than $20,000—which amounts to the bottom 20 percent of earners—paid about 12.5 percent of their income in taxes; the middle 60 percent paid 8.5 percent of their income in state taxes; and top 1 percent paid just 5.6 percent of their total income in taxes. (As you can see from the chart on Page 21, the more money you make, the smaller the percentage of that income that you pay to the state.)

The numbers are a few years old, but Arizona's regressive structure has almost certainly gotten worse since the study was done, given that voters increased the sales tax by a penny per dollar last year. And while taxes have gotten more regressive, programs that benefit the poor and the middle-class have been steadily cut back—so the average Arizonan is now getting fewer services while paying more in taxes.

When you consider all of that, the Star's headline on the AP tax story, "Tax breaks so extensive many pay zip," is utterly misleading and disgraceful.

Dyna Moe, the artist behind the Mad Men illustrations that everyone seems to have a Facebook profile photo for awhile, has a new project, Hipster Animals. It's exactly what it sounds like. I'm particularly a fan of the red panda/trust fund asshole.

It's possible that mentioning Donald Trump's strangely quixotic flirtation with a run against Barack Obama only empowers the semi-professional businessman/fully professional loudmouth, but it's still a good thing that the Atlantic Monthly is trying to call him on some of the nonsense that comes out his mouth by comparing the new Trump to the old version, right?:

Health Care:

* 2000: "We must have universal healthcare... Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork... The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees. If the program were in place in Massachusetts in 1999 it would have reduced administrative costs by $2.5 million. We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.
* 2011: "I will fight to get rid of Obamacare, which is a total disaster."

The Budget:

* 1987: "The fact is we don't need a tax increase. We should have a tax decrease. We should have Japan and we should have Saudi Arabia and we should have all of these countries who are literally ripping us off left and right. . . . They should pay for our $200-billion deficit." [Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1987],
* 2000: "By imposing a one-time 14.25 percent net-worth tax on the richest individuals and trusts, we can put America on sound financial footing for the next century. ... The plan would cost me $700 million personally in the short term, but it would be worth it."
* 2011: “I think hundreds of millions of dollars of money, and let’s call it tax money, could come from other countries when we stop them from ripping us off... As an example, we are protecting South Korea from North Korea... Why aren’t they paying for this protection? ... So, when you look at a hundred other items just like this, hundreds of millions of dollars could come in, so you wouldn’t have to play around with Medicaid and Medicare, and things that are really dear to people’s hearts."

Military Policy

* 2008: Criticizing President George W. Bush, Trump said, "He'd go into a country... attack Iraq, which had nothing to do with the World Trade Center, and just do it because he wanted to do it."
* 2011: "In the old days, when we won a war, we won a war. ...You keep the nation, you keep the land, you keep the oil. ... I'm only interested in Libya if, again, we get the oil."

Robot journalists are making technological advances, at least in the world of sports writing, which probably doesn't bode well for my career as a blogger. While I'd like to think there's a specific human touch to posting photos of otters hugging or wistful recollections of soon-deceased soap operas, but sooner or later, they'll figure out a way to digitize that too. Oh well. I should enjoy the work while it lasts.

If you haven't gotten around to filing your taxes and decided to blow off working on your return this weekend to actually have fun, today's the day you need to actually get the slide rule out and compute your offering to our federal and state governments. The Cherrybell post office, as is tradition, will be postmarking envelopes until midnight tonight, in case you still actually use paper forms and stamps and such.

This probably isn't helpful or encouraging, but it turns out this day isn't quite so ominous for America's super wealthy, since it seems most of them are either paying less percentage-wise than most of us common folk, or even better, nothing at all:

Still scrambling to file your taxes? You'll probably take little consolation in hearing that the super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago. And nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation's tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.

There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

"It's the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center, which generated the estimate of people who pay no income taxes.

Nice to see a mainstream (well, as much in the mainstream as Salon is, I guess) news outlet allow the anti-1070-but-also-anti-boycott side of the story be told:

And you think this boycott is happening specifically in Arizona not just because of the publicity around the state, but for financial reasons as well?

As a talent-buyer for an Arizona venue, what gets to me is — yes, Arizona put out a horrible piece of legislation. But as everyone knows, it's now been joined by the federal courts and the Ninth Circuit ruling. But it seems to me that Arizona is an easy state to boycott, because we only have two major markets: Phoenix and Tucson. It's just not a very important place for a lot of these mid-size artists that are on that Sound Strike list, and they can afford to give up gigs here to be part of this boycott.

What seemed obvious to me for quite a while is that this boycott isn't effective because it punishes us as a non-profit, it punishes the fans that don't get to see them, but it has no effect on the larger tourism industry or big business in the state. The boycott of the convention and tourism business in Arizona is costing millions of dollars of losses, and that is quantifiable. But I'm sure if Jan Brewer or [Arizona State Senator] Russell Pearce had even heard of Sound Strike, they'd be happy these artists who oppose their legislation are staying away and not coming here to oppose them with the platform afforded to musicians.

The state of Texas also has really messed up immigration laws, but no one is going to boycott Texas, because it is too important to them financially to play in San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Houston. No one is going to stop playing in Los Angeles either, despite their drafting of a similar bill.

And the really ironic thing to me is that LiveNation, the biggest corporate music promoter in the world, put on a concert by Rage Against the Machine and other groups participating in the boycott in Los Angeles. We were telling these artists before the 2010 election, "Come here, help register voters, we need you." If they had come and helped register young people, Hispanic people with their message during that critical election, they could have made a difference. But they didn't do that. They held their rally and event in Los Angeles in conjunction with a giant corporation that has more stake in keeping tourism alive here — that actually is more in line with working to help Arizona's lawmakers — than opposing them.

Our state Attorney General is Tom Horne, a rabid right-winger (and the main supporter of a bill to ban ethnic studies in Arizona schools). He won by about 4 percentage points. So if these bands could have come and helped us get the word out about voting, had hit those youth demographics and helped get 5,000 to 10,000 extra votes, things might have turned out much differently for our state.

While it does appear that Greg Mortenson has done some amazing work Afghanistan and Pakistan, when you're making up stories to sell a book and raise money, that's definitely not a good thing. Or when as the Bozeman Daily Chronicle says, some of the schools aren't being used and maybe some don't even exist and the charity itself seems to largely exist to promote Mortenson's books, something's definitely not right at the Central Asian Institute.

The investigation by correspondent Steve Kroft, to be broadcast Sunday night, quotes "Into Thin Air" author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer as saying he learned from one of Mortenson's companions that the tale of how Mortenson got started was "a beautiful story" but "a lie."

The book told how Mortenson got lost on a 1993 climb of K2, the world's second highest peak, and then stumbled exhausted into the remote village of Korphe, was cared for by villagers, and promised to return and build a school.

"I stand by the story of ‘Three Cups of Tea,'" Mortenson said in a written statement, but added, "The time about our final days on K2 and ongoing journey to Korphe village and Skardu is a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993.

"As the co-author of the book, along with David Oliver Relin, I am responsible for the content in the book. There were many people involved in the story and also those who produced the manuscript. What was done was to simplify the sequence of events for the purposes of telling what was, at times, a complicated story."

On its website Friday evening, "60 Minutes" also reported that it interviewed three men whom Mortenson photographed and described as Taliban fighters who kidnapped him in 1996. They denied to CBS being Taliban and said they had protected, not kidnapped Mortenson. One man charged the writer's version was "totally false," a tale told "to sell his book."

Mortenson responded that the men, armed with AK-47s, had "detained" him, kept his passport and money, and had not allowed him to leave for eight days.

"I thought it best to befriend the people detaining me," he said, adding they may have perceived it differently.

While I'm generally not too excited to link to this city's daily newspaper, when Al Melvin gets an outlet for his disjointed angry rantings, that's always a good time. Turns out while I think the Weekly still occupies the top spot on his media enemies list, it's encouraging to see that the Star is going to keep it competitive.

You lament the cuts that have been made and the fact that I did not pursue higher taxes as a solution to our state's budget woes. You suggest that letting criminals out of jail earlier would save us money. And you refer again and again to "the children" as victims of the budget that was passed, particularly in the area of education.

Your advocacy for liberal solutions is not a surprise.

You have endorsed my liberal opponents in every race I have ever run. You were a cheerleader for the big-spending policies of then-Gov. Janet Napolitano that dug the hole that Arizona now finds itself in.

You have a knee-jerk reaction against the education reforms that would provide parents with more and better choices for their children's education, denying them a better education for less money.

You ignore the inefficiencies that are present in our university systems that increase the cost of an education without improving the quality of that education. In many cases, these are expenses that often have nothing to do with the education of the students.

Tedski has given Rum, Romanism and Rebellion a whole new look. Be sure to stop by and check the new place out.

Here’s how the annual Pie Party—taking place this year on Sunday, May 1—goes down: Endless pie comes from all corners of Tucson to the Dunbar School (325 W. Second St.) and is laid out on very long tables. Judges convene and sample pies for several hours before the doors are thrown open so a million fork-wielding, pie-loving folks can lay waste to the largest assortment of pies they’ve ever seen.

It’s a spectacle. There are pies made from everything, and the pie artistry knows no bounds. Last year, there was a pie with a crust cut into puzzle pieces, as well as an apple-caramel pie no less than four inches thick. There are hundreds and hundreds of pies, and you buy tickets and walk around pointing at what you want as volunteers do the serving.

It’s fun and sort of crazy, and the proceeds are donated to the winner’s favorite charity. Last year, the money went to the Desert Harvesters.

There’s more information over here.