As ThinkProgress previously reported, Chase Bank had been planning to foreclose on the home of the family of Aaron Collette, who was serving in Iraq. Aaron’s father Tim had fallen on hard times following the recession, and the bank was refusing to work with the family to negotiate for new terms. After an intense pressure campaign from activists and Sen. Jeff Merkely (D-OR), the bank decided to delay the foreclosure past the original June date.

Yet when Aaron Collette returned home to the states this week for what should have been a warrior’s homecoming, he faced his father’s home that had been foreclosed on instead. On the very same day that Collette returned from Iraq, Chase sold the house back to itself during auction proceedings on the local courthouse’s steps. Local news station News 21 covered the event. Watch their report:

Despite the fact that Collette’s family will soon have to leave its home, they remain hopeful that they can help other people keep their residences. “We are going to continue to move forward, because there’s tens of thousands of more people who have not yet lost (their homes). And for those who have lost them, we might be able to try to get them back,” said Tim Collette.

Ironically, the day before the Collette family had their home sold off to the bank, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon bragged to Chase bank employees at a barbecue in Vancouver that his company was helping veterans keep their homes. (HT: Michaelmoore.com)

Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) named three Republicans to the fiscal super committee that was created by the debt ceiling deal. All three have taken the Americans for Tax Reform anti-tax pledge and support a cockamamie constitutional balanced budget amendment. “What I can pretty certainly say to the American people, the chances of any kind of tax increase passing with this, with the appointees that John Boehner and I are going to put on there, are pretty low,” McConnell has said.

But McConnell has not always been so virulently anti-tax. In fact, in a 1990 campaign ad, McConnell said that “everyone should pay their fair share, including the rich,” prompting the Associated Press to say that he sounded like a “populist Democrat”:

“Many Republican candidates are, in fact, holding fast to the no-new-taxes position that Bush embraced and then abandoned, even as they try to portray themselves as friends of senior citizens and the disadvantaged. Others are sounding more and more like populist Democrats. ‘Unlike some folks around here, I think everyone should pay their fair share, including the rich,’ Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says in a campaign ad.” [Associated Press, 10/28/90]

“A twist of untraditional Republicanism is added to McConnell’s message when he says, ‘Unlike some folks around here, I think everyone should pay their fair share, including the rich. We need to protect seniors from Medicare cuts too,’” wrote Roll Call reporter Steve Lilienthal. “After proclaiming his independence from the President and Congressional leaders, McConnell reassures voters that he will back a ‘fair deal for the working families of Kentucky.’” ["Democrats Flood Airwaves Charging GOP Party of Rich," Roll Call, 11/5/1990]

If McConnell truly believes this, he should be appalled by current conditions. Tax rates on the richest Americans have plunged in recent years, and millionaires today pay tax rates that are 25 percent lower than they were in 1995. Meanwhile, income inequality is the worst its been since the 1920s, with the top 1 percent of Americans taking home 25 percent of the country’s total income. Just the richest 400 Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans combined, and the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the country’s net worth.

From the sounds of it, once upon a time McConnell would have found this troublesome. It’s a shame that he doesn’t any longer.

ThinkProgress intern Sarah Bufkin contributed research for this post.

As rioters wreak havoc across Britain for the fourth consecutive day, conservative pundits here are predicting that President Obama’s policies — or his mere existence — will import the same level of chaos to the United States. Last night, Fox News host Sean Hannity determined that London riots are taking place in large part “because their country is going bankrupt” and the rioters are “blaming, quote, ‘rich people’ that it is their fault.” Hannity then asked guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) whether, because the government’s “promises can never be fulfilled, is this coming to America?”

Paul told Hannity that the chief reason behind the riots is “austere measures where people don’t get their [entitlement] checks,” and the only way to avoid such chaos is to fix the “broken” entitlement programs here in the U.S. immediately. And according to Paul, the proper fix is to gradually raise the retirement age because “there’s less young people and we are living longer.” If government instead waits five or 10 years, “there is going to be an abrupt end” to the programs and “that’s when there is rioting in the streets”:

PAUL: The way we avoid chaos, the way we avoid rioting in the streets is to start gradually fixing the problems. Entitlements are broken. And any honest Republican, Democrat or independent will tell you they’re broken because there’s less young people and we are living longer. You can fix those problems by gradually raising the age and changing the way we do the entitlements. But if you wait, if you wait five years or 10 years, then there is going to be an abrupt end, and that is what is happening in Europe when you have these austere measures where people don’t get their checks, that’s when there is rioting in the streets. But the way you avoid that is by fixing the entitlement programs now and doing it gradually.

Watch it:

In fact, the people who are living longer are the wealthy, a gap that has grown steadily over the years. As the Center for Economic and Policy research notes, “there has been a sharp rise in inequality in life expectancy by income over the last three decades that mirrors the growth in inequality in income.” Thus, raising the eligibility age for entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare would unfairly shift the burden of cuts onto middle and lower-income seniors, and increase their out-of-pocket health insurance costs. As Matt Yglesias put it, the “people are living longer than ever, so let’s raise the retirement age” notion and “let’s fix [entitlements] with a benefit cut that hurts the poor really badly while largely sparing the rich” notion are essentially “equivalent ideas.”

While progressive entitlement reform and staving off street riots make the list of noble goals, raising the eligibility age to unduly disadvantage society’s most vulnerable does not.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced today their picks for the fiscal super committee created by the debt ceiling deal, naming Sens. Jon Kyl (AZ), Pat Toomey (PA), Rob Portman (OH), and Reps. Jeb Hensarling (TX), Dave Camp (MI), and Fred Upton (MI) to the body. The committee is tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by November, and one of the key issues will be whether revenue increases are included. Basic economics and the American people call for increasing revenues, with a new CNN poll showing 63 percent of Americans want the committee to raise taxes on the wealthy, but several of the GOP picks are hard-right conservatives who likely oppose such a “balanced approach.” Other critical issue will be entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and whether the committee makes cuts to military spending.

Here’s what you need to know about each of the GOP super committee members: Read more

An overflowing town hall in Tuscon, Arizona quickly turned hostile yesterday when constituents confronted Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on a range of issues from the debt ceiling deal to the war in Afghanistan. The event got off to a rocky start when many residents were turned away at the door because the room was not large enough. As McCain entered, he was greeted by sustained chanting of “Where are the jobs?”

McCain, apparently sensing the crowd’s anger, felt the need to lay out some ground rules at the outset to keep things civil, but had to keep reminding people what they were.

At one point McCain tried to defend his support for slashing the corporate tax rate, prompting boos and cat calls from the crowd. Engaging a crowd member he said, “Sir, you’ve got to let me finish and then I’ll let you talk. Ok? Remember what I said at the beginning. So let me just finally say, let’s cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.”

Watch it:

McCain then tried to pacify the crowd by explaining that he also supports closing special-interest loopholes. But that didn’t work either, as someone shouted “oil!” when he failed to include it in his list of subsidies that should be ended. The senator was also jeered for his position on entitlements — he believes cuts to Social Security and raising the retirement age should be on the table.

Throughout the town hall, McCain found himself answering variations of the question “Why do you believe that tax breaks to the wealthy create jobs?” “I do not believe that raising taxes on anybody is helpful in making our economy better and providing people with the wherewithal to make investments and jobs,” McCain responded. Audience members clearly didn’t like what they heard.

One constituent demanded to know why McCain won’t support higher taxes on the wealthy. A chorus of “no’s” greeted McCain’s response of “I think we all want to be rich.” “We have a group of people who don’t want to be rich. That’s fine,” said McCain.

Afterward, Melissa Donovan, a 38-year-old small-business owner, said she didn’t think McCain came with an open mind. “He seemed to have his opinions set. He listened politely and then just ignored a lot of us,” she said.

While in Florida today to announce the endorsement of Jeb Bush Jr., GOP presidential contender Jon Huntsman took giant corporations to task for not paying their fair share in taxes. The former Utah governor and ambassador to China singled out General Electric and companies like it for avoiding their tax burden by exploiting loopholes in the tax code:

“It’s criminal that you’ve got some corporations not paying taxes,” the former ambassador to China said in Miami, where he was announcing a new endorsement in his presidential campaign. “Like GE, for instance. That’s got to come to an end.”

Huntsman’s remarks came in reaction to a question about the so-called “supercommittee” being formed as a result of the debt-ceiling deal that will consider new ways to reduce the deficit. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) named three representatives each to the panel this morning.

Earlier this year the New York Times reported that in 2010, GE, the nation’s largest corporation, functionally paid no taxes on $5.1 billion in profits in the U.S. alone. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Democrats are pushing for the super committee’s deficit reduction plan to include new revenues and tax reform, with a heavier tax burden falling on the wealthy and corporations who have seen their taxes plummet in recent years. Like other Republicans, Huntsman supports ending loopholes and exemptions to pay for lowering overall tax rates.

Two weeks ago, the Chicago city council passed a new statute that “will make lenders liable for the upkeep of vacant homes even when the borrower still holds the title.” The law was passed unanimously and will take effect in September. The importance of this new law came into focus last week when two firefighters were injured battling a fire that sprung up in a vacant home in the Englewood neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.

As Aaron Krager notes, this outraged activists from Action Now, a local community group. Marsha Goddard, who is a board member of the organization, led a group of five people to a local branch of Bank of America, which owned the vacant property, to inform the bank about code violations that it would be liable for when the law goes into effect.

The megabank responded by having Goddard arrested. Action Now explains that it was not engaging in a civil disobedience action and simply wanted to share the code violations with Bank of America:

Marsha Godard, 52, a Westside mother and account holder at Bank of America, is a board member of Action Now. She led a group of five people into the Bank of America headquarters at LaSalle and Jackson today with copies of complaint forms filled out by community residents who want the bank to clean up and maintain the thousands of vacant properties the bank owns in neighborhoods across the city. Bank of America had refused to accept the complaints, and Marsha had said she wasn’t leaving until they did. They had her arrested immediately. [...] This was not a planned civil disobedience action. We had no intention of taking arrests. In fact, we thought we had gone out of our way to do Bank of America a favor by doing the research for them on code violations.

Goddard and her fellow activists are not deterred by the arrest. They plan to hold rallies outside the bank branch every day for the rest of the week and will continue to call attention to dangerous vacant properties that it will soon be liable for maintaining.

Yesterday evening, local news station KMOV aired a special report about unemployment. At one point, the news station asked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) about the unemployment situation and said she “suprised” them with her response. The station asked the senator if unemployment benefits should be extended and if the payroll tax cut implemented as part of the tax cut deal last year should continue:

MCCASKILL: I’m not for extending unemployment benefits any further. The payroll tax cut, I’m always for tax cuts for working folks, because I think that helps our consuming economy.

Watch it:

McCaskill’s Democratic party colleagues from Missouri, Reps. Russ Carnahan and Lacy Clay, were also asked about the two measures, and they both said they supported them.

The senator’s response is shocking at a time when unemployment remains so high and unemployment insurance continues to remain important to stimulating the economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 270,000 Missourians remain out of work as the state’s unemployment rate hovered at around 8.8 percent in June. As the Wall Street Journal reported that month, nearly 23 percent of these unemployed Missourians have been out of work for 52 weeks or more. Nationwide, 44 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.

The Economic Policy Institute noted recently that Congress’s failure to extend unemployment benefits could cause the loss of as many as 582,000 jobs in 2012. By opposing extending unemployment benefits, McCaskill is not only advocating to not help thousands of Missourians who are out of work through no fault of their own, but she is also calling for a policy that could throw hundreds of thousands of more people out of their jobs too.

Ever since the credit rating agency S&P downgraded U.S. credit to AA+ on Friday night, Republicans have desperately trying to pin the blame on President Obama, even though, as National Journal put it, “it’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans.” S&P called out the GOP for using the debt ceiling as a political football and for its flat refusal to consider new revenue as part of any plan to reduce long-term deficits.

Earlier this week Rep. Allen West (R-FL) claimed that the S&P downgrade “has nothing to do with increasing revenues,” while some Republicans have said that passing a Balanced Budget Amendment would have prevented the downgrade, both of which S&P disagreed with. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday jumped into the same pool, saying that the downgrade could have been avoided if only Democrats had embraced the House Republican budget and its plan to eliminate Medicare:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed President Obama and the Democrats Tuesday for the recent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, saying that if Democrats had joined with Republicans in passing the GOP budget, which the House passed in April, “it’s unlikely anyone would be talking about the United States being downgraded today.” [...]

“S&P said in its own report Friday that entitlement reform is the key to long-term financial stability. We passed a budget through the House in April that includes entitlement reform, and cuts more than $6 trillion. The Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama have prevented most of those reforms from happening. And that’s why we have a downgrade,” Boehner said in an excerpt of his prepared remarks obtained by The Hill. [...]

“The President and the Democratic leadership in Washington are trying to blame the tea party, because they know this downgrade is on [the Democrats]. When we took the bold step of proposing entitlement reforms, they reacted not by embracing them and joining us, but by demonizing those proposals for political gain,” Boehner said.

While the S&P release announcing the downgrade does say that containing costs in Medicare is key to long-term fiscal sustainability, it also explicitly says that the fact that “new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options” was a justification for the downgrade. Nowhere does it say that wholesale voucherizing of Medicare is in any way a preferable policy.

S&P also noted that “compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.” But for Boehner, the downgrade is not reason for reexamining the GOP’s intransigence on taxes, but occasion for doubling down on its plan to end Medicare and throw seniors into the individual health insurance market.

At a town hall meeting yesterday, Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) became the latest Republican member of Congress to face a backlash over the GOP’s intransigence against raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. As the Lincoln Journal Star reported, “many of the loudest voices and waving fingers urged Johanns to include tax increases — particularly applied to the wealthiest Americans — as part of the solution to debt reduction“:

“The wealthy just hoard the cash.”

“The old tax rates worked well for the economy under Clinton.”

“Quit listening to the scare tactics, all the crap in the media.”

Jennifer Wendelin, who waited to be recognized by Johanns before voicing her opinion, said additional revenue has to be part of the debt reduction solution along with spending cuts.

“Big corporations and the rich have to pay their fair share,” she said after the meeting had concluded. “If we have to bite the bullet, they do, too.

“We can’t be forced to shoulder the entire burden,” she said.

For his part, Johanns “continued to oppose an end to the Bush-era tax cuts.”

Last week, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) faced similar criticism at one of his town halls, which is no surprise considering that, according to recent polls, Americans overwhelmingly support raising taxes on the rich. As Travis Waldron put it, “Republicans continue ignore that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are among the main drivers of American debt and that falling tax rates on the rich have led to widening income gaps between the richest and poorest Americans.”