Carl Bearden

From a must-read article in the Christian County Headliner on an event featuring Jim Moody, former Ashcroft Administration official, and Carl Bearden, Sinquefield lackey, check out this condemnation of the Everything Tax inititiatives from Keith Robinette, Ozark accountant and leader on the Ozark Chamber of Commerce’s Legislative Committee: 

Robinette wasn’t shy in offering his opinion on the measure, saying if successful, the change would have a negative impact on Missouri. He said he didn’t think the 7-percent flat state sales tax could offset the revenue generated by the state’s income tax. And, he said, it would adversely impact growing school districts like Ozark.

“The ballot (issue) that’s being circulated in southwest Missouri has a significant amount of exemptions in it, which brings into question how much revenue would be created by this,” he said. “Several areas of concern I have is one, impact on local school districts that are expanding, like in Christian County.”

Spread the word:

But we believe the proposal [to replace Missouri's income tax with a much higher, more expansive sales tax] would be a disruptive and potentially dangerous tax shift, putting more of the burden on lower-income and middle-income residents.

It would lead to a dramatic increase in the state sales tax -- capping it at 7 percent (compared to the current rate of 4.225 percent).

It would lead to a much broader set of goods and services being subject to the sales tax -- chief among them, would be a sales tax on food that could be as high as 5.5 percent.

It could starve state government of needed money -- with critical implications for education funding and a host of other important programs.

And it would limit the ability of local governments to raise money as it would cap the total sales tax at 10 percent. That will inevitably put more pressure on governments to turn to the property tax as a source of revenue.

Image credit: Southwest Missouri Magazine

Sinquefield and his lackeys have made Art Laffer's alleged expertise a centerpiece in their campaign to devastate Missouri's public systems and structures

Berger's Beat reacts to today's big story in the Columbia Tribune: 

When you’re the noted Reaganomics guru, Arthur Laffer, it must be humiliating when a reporter from a mid-sized Missouri newspaper busts you in the Sunday paper for using incorrect data to promote benefactor Rex Sinquefield’s viewpoint.  That’s just what [Columbia Tribune] statehouse bulldog Rudi Keller did this weekend.  Laffer and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annually produce a jointly-branded report on “Economic Opportunity Outlook” of the states...

Keller did some digging and found Laffer overstated Missouri’s marginal personal income tax rate as 7 percent instead of the correct figure, 6 percent.  The result was to make Missouri rank worse than Tennessee. 

The folks at Pelopidas and Let Voters Decide continue to insist that Tennessee is a "no income tax" state as part of their campaign for Rex Sinquefield's diastrous Everything Tax.  But the talking point just isn't true.  

Tennessee does have an individual income tax, as you can see at this Tennessee Department of Revenue page titled, "Individual Income Tax."  And regardless, Sinquefield isn't proposing a Tennessee-style tax system -- he's pushing a  far more radical and devastating proposal. 

Update:Ed Martin is in on the conspiracy too!

Former representative/lobbyist Carl Bearden may be working for Rex Sinquefield's United for Missouri organizations now, but did you know that he was recently part of a progressive conspiracy to destroy America ?   Glenn Beck says it's true.  And as our deep thinking Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer says, everything you hear from Beck "must be true because nobody's refuting it."

While listing off a series of progressive organizations that all have "pro-American sounding names" — including the Center for American Progress — Fox News host Glenn Beck claimed that the Koch-backed right-wing activist group Americans For Prosperity was part of the progressive conspiracy.

Carl Bearden -- currently of United for Missouri, a Rex Sinquefield-funded organization -- thinks that the ongoing filibuster by one-term Senator Jim Lembke, Brian Nieves, Will Kraus and Rob Schaaf is just peachy. Posted this evening to Nieves' incomparable Facebook page:

You guys are doing a great job! I'm interested as to how other Senators believe that they can trust any "deal" they make in the future seeing that the "deal" you and the others are honoring has not been honored in return!

Birther-curious vanity candidate Herman Cain is coming to Missouri for an April 12 Capitol rally sponsored by the Rex Sinquefield-financed United for Missouri.

Cain made news last month when he tried to stake out out his position in the GOP field of presidential candidates as the most Islamophobic of the bunch, Constitution be damned. "Based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them," he told Christianity Today in March.

Here's a taste of what to expect. "The liberals' objective is to destroy America...They're trying to destory this country at all costs and they don't care about the truth."

h/t @JMSummers

The News-Leader has a story today on a recent strategy session by Rex Sinquefield lobbyist Carl Bearden, former birther Rep. Ed Emery and Springfield area activists allegedly called to figure out "how to talk to others" about their shared desire to replace Missouri's income tax with a much higher sales tax. 

But sadly, the story by reporter Roseann Moring doesn't adequately explain what they're trying to do.   The article summarizes legislative proposals by Rep. Andrew Koenig (R-Winchester) and Sen. Luann Ridgeway (R-Smithville) that would phase out the state's income tax and cap the state sales tax at 7%, but only in the most abstract of terms.  The piece doesn't mention the 7% cap, or even give a hint of what Bearden, Koenig or Ridgeway think the new sales tax rate should be. 

Wednesday night, Andrew Breitbart lackey Mike Flynn threatened Peter Kinder and Carl Bearden that he would "go nuclear" if Speaker Steve Tilley refuse to "walk back" his statement that opponents of local control legislation had engaged in "race baiting at a level that I haven't seen since I've been here."  Tilley is understandably annoyed and upset with allegations from the St. Louis Tea Party, affiliated blogger Darin Morley and perhaps others who have tried to manufacture absurd arguments regarding the Speaker's alleged "association with the New Black Panther Party" in their fight to stop the local control bills.

Flynn demanded that Tilley "walk back" his comments before a scheduled interview with Dana Loesch, a leader in the St. Louis Tea Party who just happened to be an active participant in distributing the New Black Panther smear, and who just happens to "edit" a sister Breitbart propaganda site.   This might lead you to think that Loesch, who purports to be a tough-talking, straight-shooting independent conservative, would confront the Speaker about his "association" with racist, anti-Semitic radicals. 

You'd be wrong.  Here's the full interview, for your listening pleasure:

Note that Loesch states in the interview that "I don't think that anyone was specifically trying to tie, like, you to the New Black Panther Party,"  (6:25 mark).   This is absurd, and Loesch knows it.  She tweeted a blog link to her followers on Tuesday that was explicitly about "Tilley's recent association with the New Black Panther Party."

Said Reboot Congress blog post then linked readers to another post titled, "Why has Missouri House Leadership aligned with the New Black Panthers?"  Doesn't that sound like she was specifically trying to tie Tilley to the New Black Panther Party?

It gets worse. 

After Tilley hung up and after Loesch's patrons at KFTK paid a few bills with a commercial break, Loesch turned on Tilley and Bearden, unleashing criticisms and accusations she didn't think of bringing up when Tilley was actually in a position to defend himself.    She repeated the obviously false claim that "no one ever said that Speaker of the House Steve Tilley was associated with the New Black Panther Party," and then railed against "the Republican establishment here in Missouri."

A must-listen:

While right-thinking persons were watching Mizzou beat Baylor last night, right-right-right-thinking persons were threatening Speaker Steve Tilley and Rex Sinquefield lobbyist Carl Bearden on the twitternets. 

Late Wednesday afternoon, Mike Flynn, the "editor in chief" for Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, came to the defense of the St. Louis Tea Party and their bizarre New Black Panther party conspiracies.    Specifically, local leaders Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch (who "edits" the sister Breitbart site Big Journalism) claim to be outraged with Tilley's complaint that St. Tea Partiers' activism against local control legislation had devolved into race baiting.  A message from Bearden makes it clear that Tilley's frustration was directed at downright bizarre content created and published by another tea party leader, Darin Morley, lamenting "Tilley's recent association with the New Black Panther Party" (i.e., Rep Jamilah Nasheed). 

Flynn is now demanding that Tilley "walk back his...smear" of the tea party on Loesch's radio program this afternoon, or "we'll go nuclear."  "We," in this context, is presumably the right-wing Breitbart echo chamber.

Here are Flynn's messages to Bearden and Peter Kinder (more on him below) in chronological order:

• Tilley on Dana's show tomorrow. He walks back attack on tea party or we go full throttle. Stupid fight you picked.
• As God is my witness, this will not end well for you. Every dollar ever to you will be public
• Peter, don't make the mistake Carl did. Stop trashing the tea party. Full pain coming tomorrow afternoon
• Spkr Tilley will be on Dana's show tomrw. If he doesn't walk back his and Carl's smear against TP, we'll go nuclear
• Carl, must feel good, I guess, that the left has your back. No doubt you are proud.

Unhinged stuff. 

Auditor Tom Schweich boldly announced today that he's not going to try to help Missouri voters understand the cost of Rex Sinquefield's sales tax hike proposals.  The closest he came to providing an honest assessment of Rex's plans was to say that he can't "predict that the petitions will have little or no fiscal impact on the state."  Impressive stuff, right there.

Sinquefield helped get Schweich elected and has made huge contributions the Republicans around Schweich, of course, so perhaps this isn't all that surprising.  It's also not surprising that Sinquefield's hired guns in Jefferson City were quick to tweet out the news of Schweich's big punt. 

Lobbyist Travis Brown, Sinquefield's top lobbyist and Speaker Steve Tilley business partner:

And unethical hack Carl Bearden, a Sinquefield lobbyist and director of the Sinquefield-funded "United for Missouri" organizations:

Any questions?

Despite Schweich's punt on the issue, Missourians have plenty of research to know how devastating Rex's plans would be.  Last year, the General Assembly's Joint Committee on Tax Policy found that the 7% cap on sales taxes would be far from revenue neutral, and would have to be much higher if a prebate program was instituted.  

We also have the recent analysis of Sinquefield's petitions by Jim Moody, a lobbyist who used to be Governor John Ashcroft's Commissioner of Administration, who found that Rex's plans would "bankrupt the state, or in the alternative, bankrupt the poor and the working lower and middle income classes."  GOP gubernatorial candidate Peter Kinder cited Moody's research in his explanation for why he isn' t endorsing Rex's plans (this year, any way). 

And the Missouri Budget Project and Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy have determined that a sales tax rate with a prebate program would need to be close to 11% to be revenue neutral.  

Rep. Andrew Koenig (R-Koenig) presented his version of the Rex Sinquefield sales tax hike in a House Committee this morning, professing to care about whether or not his plan would be revenue neutral (i.e., bring in as much revenue with a higher, broader sales tax as is produced now by the corporate and income taxes he wants to eliminate).

Yet Koenig, Sinquefield and the others on Rex's payroll continue to insist on a seven percent cap on the state sales tax rate, even though nonpartisan and independent analyses have show that such a cap would be devastating to state revenues.

It's no longer a matter of real debate:

• The Joint Committee on Tax Policy evaluated a Senate "fair tax" proposal last year, and found that the state sales tax rate would have to be 7.56%-7.94% to be revenue neutral, and at least 10% if the state created a rebate/prebate program.  This was reported by the News-Leader's Roseann Moring as recently as December 18, and the Committee's analysis can be read here.
    
• Jim Moody, a lobbyist who used to be Governor John Ashcroft's Commissioner of Administration, looked at the numbers and found that the plans put forward by Sinquefield would "bankrupt the state, or in the alternative, bankrupt the poor and the working lower and middle income classes..." 
   
• GOP gubernatorial candidate Peter Kinder cited Moody's analysis as one of the reasons why he's flip-flopped on the whole issue.
    
• Research conducted by the Missouri Budget Project and Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy determined that the sales tax rate with a prebate program would need to be close to 11% to be revenue neutral.  Their study, published in February 2010, may be found here, and you can read testimony from the ITEP submitted to the Senate in January 2010  here.
    
• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued a report in September stating that Missouri would have to raise its sales tax rate to 11 percent or more under the 2010 proposals to replace lost revenue from the personal and corporate income taxes and franchise taxes.
    
• Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer (R-Dexter) has acknowledged that seven percent is not realistic.

A new letter to Auditor Tom Schweich from former Governor John Ashcroft's Commissioner of Administration, Jim Moody, slams Rex Sinquefield's initiative petitions to hike the state's sales tax as "fiscally untenable" proposals that would bankrupt the state or Missouri's middle and working classes. 

The Star and Tribune have stories on Moody's letter, sent on behalf of Missourians Against Higher Sales Taxes, which asks the Auditor to produce sound fiscal notes on the petitions that accurately predict the devastating impact they'd have if enacted. 

From the letter:

We believe that a sound analysis by your office will reach the conclusion that we have reached—that is, all of these petitions are fiscally untenable. They will either bankrupt the state, or in the alternative, bankrupt the poor and the working lower and middle income classes...

As we will explain in our analysis below, proponents of the increased consumption tax have been using calculations that are simply wrong on their face. They have all calculated a rate that is too low in determining the real consumption tax rate, primarily because they have overstated the taxable base subject to the increased consumption tax...

The proponents would leave you to believe that you can have a reduced tax base, a relatively low and capped tax rate, and a prebate fully funded. That notion, however, is a pure fantasy, and a basic “bait and switch” tactic. The “bait and switch” would attempt to make you believe that these three components are not absolutely inter-related. The 7% cap is a gimmick to get around the significant problems with these initiative petitions.

Sinquefield is obviously a major GOP donor -- and provided financial backing for Schweich in his 2010 campaign - and the Auditor's actions on these petitions will provide an early indication of whether he can be the independent and honest official he promised to be (when he wasn't promising to be a hyper-partisan auditor, of course). 

Moody's full letter, as made public by the Star, is embedded below the jump.  

When we last heard from the uberconservative Missouri Leadership Project, they were working to oust Kevin Engler (R-Farmington) from the Senate leadership because it wasn't quite radical enough for their tastes.   This week, they're kicking off the new legislative session with a Jefferson City rally "to unite in a rally for the cause of liberty." The list of sponsors for the rally indicates that there will be talk about a state sales tax hike and other tea party fare. But an email sent to prospective supporters also focuses on the House Republicans' omnibus "ethics" legislation from last year -- the greatest ethics reform bill in the universe -- as a rallying cry.   

But somehow, event organizers completely forgot to mention the bill they dislike was rammed through the House by Speaker-elect Steve Tilley, Birther Rep. Tim Jones and then-Speaker Ron Richard over the objections of everyone who wasn't a member of the House GOP.   And it was tempered by moderate Republicans and Democrats in the Senate the Missouri Leadership Project's members hate so much.    Check out the full email below the break.

To be clear, the Missouri Leadership Project is right to oppose legislation and skullduggery like that perpetrated by Richard, Tilley, Jones and other House Republicans last year.  But they could be a little more honest about how it all came to pass. 

For more on last year's fiasco in the House, click here, here, here and here.  

A good weekend story by the News-Leader's Roseann Moring captures one of the most incredible aspects of the debate about Rex Sinquefield's plan to replace the state's income tax with a much higher sales tax:  supporters are convinced it's a great idea, even though they don't know what the new sales tax rate will actually be under their super awesome plan.   

An official Senate estimate of a version proposed last year put the rate at around 7.5 to 8 percent. If the plan had included a prebate to every Missourian, the rate would have been closer to 11 percent.

An 11 percent rate means consumers would pay more than a dollar in taxes for every $10 they spend on food, clothing, entertainment, medical bills or almost anything else....

Even economists can't totally predict the effects of the fair tax because no state has implemented it.

Joe Haslag is an economist who works for the Show-Me Institute, a free-market think tank based in St. Louis and funded in part by Rex Sinquefield, a businessman who espouses and funds free-market ideas.

Haslag has written several essays about the tax proposal. The latest, co-authored with Washington University doctoral student Grant Casteel, says the average Missourian's welfare would at first decrease, but end up increasing over the course of several years, with predicted tax rates between 10 and 11 percent...

United for Missouri's Carl Bearden, a former House budget committee chairman, has a rosier outlook.

He forecasts just a 7 percent sales tax rate, and in fact prefers a version of the constitutional amendment that caps the rate at that amount.

United for Missouri is also funded by Sinquefield.  In fact, the Beacon reported this summer that Sinquefield is the organization's "initial financial backer" (singular, not plural).  

So we have one Sinquefield-backed economist saying that the rate would be ten to eleven percent -- and he fully admits that it will harm Missouri's welfare at a time when families are already struggling to make ends meet.   And we have an unethical Sinquefield-backed political hack who says the rate will only be 7ish percent.   Bearden may honestly believe his own figure and support a plan without a "prebate" -- but with the added bonus that if his preferred rate is too low, crucial services and programs would be cut because it's capped in the constitution. 

Either way, the very fact that we have no idea what sort of radical change is being proposed is just a little disconcerting.  How are businesses, local governments and citizens supposed to evaluate how bad a big sales tax increase will be if proponents can't give a straight answer about what they want?  The folks on Sinquefield's payroll in and around the Capitol answer to him -- so why won't his operation clear up the confusion?

A harsh new editorial in the Post-Dispatch takes a look at Carl Bearden's new organizations, United for Missouri and United for Missouri's Future, which are funded (at least in part) by uberconservative financier Rex Sinquefield.    The editorial is mostly concerned with the the lack of disclosure required of 501(c)4 and 501(c)3 organizations, but it also includes this helpful reminder to anyone who might be persuaded by Bearden's populist tea party rhetoric:

To paraphrase the immortal Chico Escuela, politics has been very, very good to Carl Bearden.

Since 1993, he’s gone from representing the Harvester area on the St. Charles County Council to representing rich people who want to influence elections and public policy in Missouri without the public knowing who they are.

Along the way, he served seven years in the Missouri House while simultaneously building his lobbying business. Despite the massive potential for conflict of interest, it’s become common for lobbyists and political consultants to serve as legislators. Mr. Bearden was one of the pioneers.

Using my Tea Party crowd estimate conversion chart, there were about 7 approximately 71,000 angry Republicans (not counting paid staff) at the Capitol this morning for the Americans For Prosperity protest against Ike Skelton.

The grassroots support for the AFP's "November is Coming" tour is truly overwhelming.

It's not a debate or healthy democratic process.

It's "war," writes former state representative/ lobbyist Carl Bearden, and "it's far from over."

If the leaders of the Imperial Congress thought that everyone would just go away they are delusional. Well ok, they are delusional but you know what I mean. Not only will the Million Med March be in Clayton on Saturday, but the patriots down in Branson are hosting a TEA Party tomorrow also!

The Branson TEA Party Coalition activity will begin at 11 a.m. this Saturday, November 21st for a one-hour roadside demonstration which will be held on the Highway 76 Strip in the area stretching from the Fall Creek Road intersection to the Apple Tree Mall...

This war is far from over. Don't even think about getting discouraged, get mad, get involved!

This weekend, it was reported that Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer would not be holding any town hall meetings to talk about health care reform.  According to Luetkemeyer's spokesman, that was because his office had not received "specific requests to host health care town halls." Instead, Blaine would be sharing his thoughts about health care "at regularly scheduled events."

Given the selective outrage from conservative organizations about the alleged hiding from the public by other Congressmen, that didn't look so hot. Thankfully, Americans for Prosperity -- which has been helping coordinate and stoke the flames for the hysteria at town hall meetings held by Democratic Members -- has come to the rescue.  How?  By rebranding today's "We the People Forum" in Westphalia as a 'We the People' Town Hall for Luetkemeyer.