A key plank in California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s (R) job creation plan is completely eliminating her state’s capital gains tax. Such a move would blow a $4 to $4.5 billion annual hole in the budget over the next five years (and the losses would get bigger after that), but Whitman is convinced that such a move would spur job creation and investment in the Golden State.

“If we eliminate this capital gains tax, what you’ll see is more jobs, more businesses, more tax revenues so we can invest in the things we really want to invest in,” Whitman said during a debate this week. “To the Recovery effort that I have planned, tax cuts are a big part of it.” Whitman doubled down yesterday on Fox News, telling Neil Cavuto, “we’ve got a decision to make. Either, as Californians, we’re going to put our head in the sand and say ‘the weather’s great here, but jobs are going to continue to leave the state’ or we’re going to change our whole perspective.” Watch a compilation:

Whitman portrays this idea as a definite job creator, but the truth is much cloudier. What is certain, however, is that this tax cut will primarily benefit the wealthy. 82 percent of the California’s capital gains tax is paid by people who make $500,000 per year. Those people make up just one percent of the state’s population. 93 percent of the tax is paid by people making more than $200,000 per year.

Just 1.5 percent of the capital gains tax is payed by those making between $30,000 and $100,000. Also, California taxes capital at the same rate that it taxes income, making this change even more egregious, as it remakes a system that equally values work and investment, almost exclusively to the benefit of the wealthy.

As for spurring investment, Kirk Stark, a UCLA tax law professor, said, “it’s unlikely that a capital gains tax cut would lead to significantly greater investment in California.” “What we’re talking about here are people buying and selling stocks,” he said. “A lot of capital gains is not related to entrepreneurial activity,” added Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project. “It’s ‘Did I pick the right mutual fund last year or pick Apple stock before the iPad was released?’”

UC Berkely professor Michael Reich noted that the research on capital gains cuts reveals that the “net effect of lower rates on revenues is negative and the effects on economic growth are extremely small at best.” “Eliminating the state capital gains tax would do very little to spur investment in the state,” Reich wrote. “Most California investors’ portfolios are diversified nationally and internationally. Consequently, the vast majority of private income retained by investors would be spent on stock purchases of companies outside the state.”

This is the crux of Whitman’s job creation plan. So if the research is to be believed, that plan leaves a lot to be desired.

While it tells the American public it cares about American jobs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually works to send jobs overseas on behalf of its corporate members, which include some of Asia’s top offshoring companies. Its secretly-funded $75 million political ad campaign attacks the “anti-jobs record” of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jerry Brown (D-CA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL), Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), and others.

As ThinkProgress previously noted, the Chamber has repeatedly sent out issue alerts attacking Democratic efforts to encourage businesses to hire locally rather than outsource to foreign counties. The Chamber has also bitterly fought Democrats for opposing unfettered free trade deals. The Chamber’s anti-American jobs agenda serves not only the profit-seeking of right-wing corporate executives in the United States, but also works to send jobs overseas to the following outsourcing companies, who are some of the dozens of foreign corporations that pay member dues to the Chamber of Commerce’s 501c(6) account, which is used to fund its political ads:

– InfoSys, Bangalore, India (at least $15,000 in annual member dues): “Infosys is the ‘Best Outsourcing Partner’ according to the Waters Rankings for the third consecutive year.”

– KPIT Cummins, Pune, India ($7,500): “Strategic global networking, together with industry-proven practices & processes, give KPIT Cummins a cutting edge in the realm of outsourcing.”

– Patni Americas, Mumbai, India ($15,000): “Patni, the world leader in IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing provides offshore software development, global sourcing, custom software development, and a vast array of product engineering and IT services to companies worldwide.”

– NIIT Technologies, Delhi, India ($15,000): “[L]eadership in the area of outsourcing.”

– QuEST Global, Singapore ($7,500): “QuEST is a leader in the engineering services outsourcing (ESO) space.”

– Rolta, Mumbai, India ($7,500): “Rolta’s global footprint and track record along with its capable off-shoring model gives it a unique positioning in this large market.”

– SKP Crossborder Consulting, Mumbai, India ($7,500): “SKP’s core outsourcing practice is managed out of a fully equipped, spacious premises based in Pune with access to facilities in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bangalore.”

– Tata Group, Mumbai, India ($15,000): “[W]orld-class solutions in outsourcing – business process outsourcing, application outsourcing, infrastructure outsourcing.”

– Wipro, Bangalore, India ($15,000): “India’s biggest destination for U.S. offshoring.”

In its “American Free Enterprise” campaign, the Chamber says that there is no “greater or more important” policy challenge “than creating the 20 million jobs needed in the next decade to replace the jobs lost in the current recession and to meet the needs of America’s growing workforce.” Perhaps the Chamber should actually start working toward that goal of creating jobs in America, instead of promoting the offshoring agenda of its foreign sponsors.

Earlier this month, as its competitors were issuing foreclosure moratoriums following reports that many foreclosures were approved by “robo-signers” — employees who weren’t verifying information on the thousands of foreclosures they approved daily — Wells Fargo issued a statement reassuring everyone that its practices were sound. “Wells Fargo policies, procedures and practices satisfy us that the affidavits we sign are accurate. We audit, monitor and review our affidavits under controlled standards on a daily basis,” the bank said.

According to documents unearthed by the Financial Times, Wells may want to go back and revise that statement:

Legal documents obtained by the Financial Times suggest that Wells Fargo, the second-largest US mortgage servicer, also used a “robo signer”…In a sworn deposition on March 9 seen by the FT, Xee Moua, identified in court documents as a vice-president of loan documentation for Wells, said she signed as many as 500 foreclosure-related papers a day on behalf of the bank.

Ms Moua, who was deposed as part of a foreclosure lawsuit in Palm Beach County, Florida, said that the only information she verified was whether her name and title appeared correctly, according to the document. Asked whether she checked the accuracy of the principal and interest that Wells claimed the borrower owed – a crucial step in banks’ legal actions to repossess homes – Ms Moua said: “I do not.”

The timing is particularly bad for Wells, as Yves Smith reported that the bank “has been making the rounds among policy types in DC this week to tell its story that (of course) the foreclosure crisis is overblown. Moreover, Wells reportedly said that it was not like the other major servicers, that it ran a tight shop and hadn’t engaged in the bad practices of other firms, particularly the use of improper affidavits, aka robo signers.”

At this point, Wells Fargo should be joining Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and GMAC Mortgage in announcing a foreclosure moratorium until this mess is sorted out. JP Morgan yesterday extended its moratorium from 23 states to 41, and according to a report from the investment bank Morgan Stanley, “as many as 9 million U.S. mortgages that have been or are being foreclosed may face challenges over the validity of legal documents.”

JP Morgan has even gone so far as to set aside $1.3 billion to cover potential legal costs that will emerge as a result of the ongoing scandal, and an additional $1 billion for mortgage-buybacks that may result from investors proving that the bank sold them bogus securities. Wells Fargo is the second largest mortgage servicer in the country (behind only Bank of America), and with the herd mentality of the industry, I’d be surprised if Wells’ practices were dramatically different from those of its competitors. So it’s time for the bank to pull the plug on its foreclosure machine until it can detail the extent of its problems.

Read more in today’s Progress Report, “Investigating Foreclosure Fraud.”

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd hosted the Chamber of Commerce’s chief lobbyist Bruce Josten this morning to discuss our reports documenting the Chamber’s foreign sources of funding. As he has done in the past, Josten resorted to name-calling as a defense for his organization, suggesting that we’re a “liberal left wing blog” that can’t be trusted.

When Todd pressed Josten on the substantive charge ThinkProgress leveled – that foreign dollars from undisclosed sources are helping to support the Chamber’s political activities – Josten responded, “I think this is a canard, absolutely absurd.” But Josten then ironically offered a huge “canard” of his own, peddling a conservative blog’s report. Josten claimed the Chamber won’t release its foreign donors because a 527 organization that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs worked for in 2003-04 skirted the law by delaying disclosure of their own donors.

In fact, 527s are required to release their donors, and as Todd informed Josten, the group for which Gibbs worked “did eventually disclose.” So Todd pressed the Chamber on whether his organization, which is operating like a 527 by running partisan political ads on television, would hold to the same standard:

TODD: Are you guys eventually going to disclose?

JOSTEN: No! […]

TODD: So your donors are afraid of a public backlash?

JOSTEN: Absolutely. […] Corporations, as I said, have employees, vendors, suppliers, and shareholders of all political stripes. They’re not trying to alienate anybody. They’re looking for representative organizations, such as mine and thousands of others, to be an express organization to advocate for them on their behalf.

TODD: It’s kind of a depressing outlook, the fact that we think that being public about where you stand on an issue, you don’t want to go public because of — you just fear some sort of potentially negative retribution.

“Corporations, I think, sit in a very different space here than individuals,” Josten explained, as a reason for why corporations shouldn’t have to disclose. (But of course, Josten is all to pleased to support the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision establishing corporate personhood.) Watch it:

So there you have it. The Chamber believes that while it is engaged in trying to influence the outcome of elections, it should not be held accountable to the public. And therefore, the Chamber claims it doesn’t have to abide by the rules that apply to other organizations that run political ads on television.

The Chamber has admitted to taking foreign funds for the same 501(c)(6) account they use for attack ads, and ThinkProgress caught them collecting $885,000 from over 80 foreign companies by investigating the Chamber’s own fundraising documents. Normally, organizations take international funds through a 501(c)(3), which is prohibited from political activity. However, what the Chamber is doing, fundraising from foreign corporations and asking them to deposit the money in their 501(c)(6) — an undisclosed, unlimited vehicle for their attack ads — is unprecedented.

As for the Chamber’s concerns that disclosure would lead to negative retribution, Paul Blumenthal at the Sunlight Foundation referred to this as “the coward’s argument against transparency.” He wrote, “The powerful, the wealthy, are hiding behind a cloak of secrecy out of fear that citizens may discover their political positions and hold them accountable. Shiver.”

As I told Raw Story, “It seems like the Chamber has a problem with democracy. They run ads on behalf of corporations that are afraid to reveal their agendas to the public. If the Chamber wants to engage in the democratic process to influence the outcomes of elections with paid TV advertisements, they shouldn’t be ducking a debate over their donors.”

Yesterday, all 50 state Attorneys General opened a joint investigation into the ongoing foreclosure fraud scandal that has led some of the country’s biggest banks to suspend foreclosures as they sort out whether or not they improperly threw borrowers out of their homes. “The financial institutions would be well served by working with us to get it cleaned up,” said Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. “And they’d also be well served to think about reaching negotiated resolutions with borrowers in cases where they’ve created exposure for themselves by committing fraud upon the courts.”

I wrote last week that federal policymakers should take advantage of the voluntary foreclosure moratoriums that the banks have imposed to streamline and improve federal mortgage modification programs (which, to this point, have been incredibly disappointing and dysfunctional). Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan also has an idea: reviving cram-down legislation, which would authorize bankruptcy judges to reduce loan principal for troubled borrowers in court:

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said she was preparing to introduce legislation meant to tighten foreclosure laws and prevent document errors in the future. She also is pushing federal representatives to resurrect a bill that would allow bankruptcy judges to “cram down,” or cut, a troubled homeowner’s mortgage debt.

When it comes to housing fraud issues, Madigan is worth listening to. After all, she was warning federal regulators about the dangers of subprime lending long before the housing bubble burst. Those regulators simply failed to act on the information she was giving them.

Cram-down legislation, remember, has repeatedly come before Congress in the last few years, only to run into the buzzsaw of the banking industry and its allies in the Senate. But authorizing cram-downs would provide homeowners with a key stick in their often hopeless quest for a mortgage modification. Banks are far more likely to play ball with a homeowner if they know that a judge may unilaterally alter a mortgage.

But allowing mortgages to be altered in bankruptcy is also a simple matter of equity. As David Abromowitz noted, “few Americans realize that single family homeowners living in their own primary residence are the only real estate owners without cram down protections in bankruptcy.” Second homes, vacation homes, and properties owned by real estate moguls all enjoy cram-down protection that main residences don’t.

Now, I’m not overly optimistic about the chances of legislation authorizing cram-downs getting through the Senate. The idea has been proposed over and over — and has made sense on the policy-merits for years — but never garnered close to the 60 votes that would be necessary to surmount the almost inevitable Republican filibuster. But cram-downs could make a big difference in pushing the banks towards making more modifications, which to this point, they have been loathe to make.